Comic Book by Teens Gets Out Word on AIDS : Health: Assembled by art students, the colorful book is designed to appeal to youth.

It’s not your typical AIDS information pamphlet, but “Sex on Earth and Other Planets” gets the point across.

Designed by six teen-agers enrolled in an art class at the Junior Arts Center in Barnsdall Park, the colorful comic book makes learning about AIDS an experience that a teen-ager can feel comfortable with.

“I’d be more inclined to pick up a comic book . . . than a pamphlet or a book” about AIDS, said Daniel Carnow, a 16-year-old cartoonist who contributed to the project.

That’s precisely what AIDS educators had planned. AIDS Project Los Angeles came up with the idea of producing a comic book about the disease, written by teen-agers for teen-agers.

Aids Project L.A. proposed the idea to the Junior Arts Center, which enlisted senior and junior high school students in a class taught last winter by artist Susan Weller. The two-hour class met Thursday afternoons from early January to the second week of March. Before embarking on their own comic book project, students were taught about acquired immune deficiency syndrome and read and discussed comic books about AIDS designed by adults for teen-agers.

Then students developed characters, a story line and dialogue on their own before Weller helped them combine their ideas into a coherent structure. By late February, they were holding marathon weekend sessions to put the comic book together.

With the help of funding from the Los Angeles Community Development Department, AIDS Project L.A. has printed 100,000 copies in English and Spanish.

The 16-page books are being distributed by social service and AIDS organizations and by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ Sexually Transmitted Disease Program, said Judie Klapholz, director of education and training for AIDS Project L.A. Chicago’s health department has requested 20,000 copies, she said.

So far, the response from local teen-agers has been positive, Klapholz said. “What people like is the fact is that it was designed and written and illustrated by teens for teens,” she said. “Teens talk to teens in a language they understand.”

In the book, leaders of the planet Gython send a floating eye to Earth to learn about AIDS. The eye travels to a party, where teen-agers are anxious about contracting the disease. “Not tonight, Jennie, I don’t have a condom,” says one character, putting a poignant ‘90s spin on the old “I have a headache” excuse.

By the end of the story, a lonely drug addict dies of the disease, and a boy she had sex with tests positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The floating eye returns to Gython, condom in tow, to warn the leaders about the disease.

Large versions of the comic book drawings are on display at the Junior Arts Center at 4814 Hollywood Blvd. through Jan. 3. At an opening reception for the exhibit, the teen-age artists said the project helped shatter some misconceptions they had about AIDS.

“Before I joined this (class), I didn’t know that much about AIDS. It really helped change my views,” said Orlando Godoy, 18, who originally thought AIDS was “more a gay disease.”

The teen-agers also spoke about the recklessness of their peers who do not take precautions against AIDS. “Being young, it makes us think we’re immortal. We can do anything,” Godoy said.

Cristian Equihua, 12, said some of his peers in the seventh grade are already having sex and don’t worry about contracting AIDS. “I think that’s one of the reasons we started making this comic book.”

Some young artists said they had become a resource for friends with questions about the disease, but Godoy said his peers were more comfortable talking about the comic book than about AIDS.

Educating teen-agers about AIDS and HIV was not the only allure of the class. Many of the young cartoonists profess artistic ambitions. Carnow, who hopes to draw for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, said he will add the book to his portfolio.

Weller, the instructor, said she had to work to link the artists’ diverse styles and story ideas together. The connecting element is the eye, which travels from one planet to the next and from one story line to the next. “Stylistically, we wanted to marry a science fiction with a naturalist with a Marvel Comics/Heavy Metal style,” Weller said.

Also on display at the Junior Arts Center are books about AIDS written and illustrated by 8- to 12-year-olds. These children also took a class at the Junior Arts Center with an AIDS theme, but its goal was to dispel myths about the disease rather than to teach about safe sex.

The class took a “humanitarian approach,” said instructor Victoria Howard. She let the children know that people with AIDS needed compassion and friendship. Howard also taught children not to pick up discarded needles, which might be infected with the AIDS virus.

Max, a 10-year-old who attended the reception, wrote and illustrated a book about an animal named Deggie who befriends an AIDS-afflicted giant named Tiny. At the end of the story, a cure for the disease magically drops from the sky. But before the happy ending, “Deggie helps Tiny be comfortable about himself, and he takes Tiny around to different places,” said Max, who delivered a plot summary all in one breath.

Howard said she thought one reason so few parents enrolled their young children for the spring and summer classes was discomfort with the subject matter. “Even last January, the mind-set (wasn’t) the same as it is now,” she said. “(Parents) thought, ‘What on earth?’ ”

The AIDS-related art classes at the Junior Arts Center will not be offered again. But Harriet S. Miller, director of the Junior Arts Center, said she would like to set up a similar program on another sensitive topic, such as racial tension.