Super-Heroes With Good Taste : Fruits and Vegetables Square Off Against Junk Food and Cigarettes in a Comic Book for Hungry Minds

Is a tomato a fruit or vegetable?

Nowadays, it’s one of five super-heroes in the Snak Posse comic book, the brainchild of Robert Orchanian, a Merrill Lynch financial consultant.

The goal of SNAK (Super Nutritionally Active Kids) is to encourage kids to love the foods they typically hate.

“We try not to be fanatics,” says Orchanian, the comic book’s publisher and editor. “With Snak Posse we try to get kids to eat healthy. We put a balance on that. If kids want to go to McDonald’s that’s fine--occasionally. Not just every day.”

Snak Posse’s fruit and veggie super-heroes--Flash Carotene, Blush the Tomato, Silky Stalker celery, the Kernel and Banana Bolt--aim to show youngsters that nutritional foods are cool. They also take on villainous junk food, soda pop and drugs.

Among the hooligans are camels, which happen to smoke and beat up on folks.

“We put smoking as the bad guys and we know we’re right. Cigarette companies don’t worry us,” says Orchanian, 40, who launched the comic in June from his home in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

The stories are full of zap-pow-bam action with sophisticated writing and lively drawings. The messages are subtle. No homilies. No finger wagging.

“Kids are smart,” says Denny Fincke, chief artist. “They don’t like being preached to, so we have to be very good in executing the comic in a way that doesn’t insult their intelligence.” For example, in one panel Blush the Tomato (a fruit, by the way), is shown lifting dumbbells while talking with her chums. She could have been shown carrying on about the benefits of exercise, but instead her workout is an aside.

“We build education into the super-heroes. The kids are learning and they don’t even know it at the time,” Orchanian says. “People have this built-in prejudice about what kids like or don’t like. If you present good-tasting carrots, they’ll definitely eat them and enjoy.”

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Orchanian had kicked around the comic book idea for about a year before its premiere. He and his wife, Dolores, were already prone to healthy living.

So with family blessings and savings, Orchanian ran newspaper ads in search of a staff. He also tapped on family talent.

Robert and Dolores (she’s an aerobics instructor and nutrition consultant) are the editors. Their five children, ages 5 to 22, have some say in the comic’s creation from color choices to character development.

“It’s a seven-person focus group running around my house all the time,” Orchanian says. Dolores’ sister-in-law, Susan Mormile, a calligrapher in Florida, N.Y., is the letterer--the person who handprints the dialogue.

Orchanian recalls interviewing Fincke, who had answered the ad for an artist. Fincke didn’t have a car, so Orchanian offered to pick him up.

“Denny jumped into my broken-down Honda, which kept stalling out, and I kept driving around in the wrong direction, while I’m telling Denny about super-heroes who are vegetables and fruits. Denny probably thought I was nuts,” Orchanian says with a laugh.

So nuts that Fincke joined up as main artist and brought along his friend April Mosen, also an artist.

The story-line writer is David Pettigrew, a New Jersey dentist.

After office hours, Orchanian, Fincke and Pettigrew would hole up in his reception room where they worked on the story, oftentimes until midnight.

“The best comics are when writer and artist work together,” Fincke says. “Also, our secret is we often ate pizza, double cheese topping.

“Rob is a visionary. He’s very focused . . . like Flash. He sees the big picture.”

Orchanian and Fincke have also done their share of grunt work.

“We had to go up to the Canadian border (where the comic is printed) to pick up the first book,” Fincke says. “We got up at Rob time--6 a.m.--and rented a van. The only tape Rob would play was the Righteous Brothers. That’s 10 hours of the Righteous Brothers. At least we got engrossed in the next story and I was able to block out the music.”

Last Halloween Fincke wore a Banana Bolt costume to a health food store where he handed out Snak Posse. He nearly passed out from suffocation.

Orchanian and Fincke have also worked the comic conventions, including one in San Diego where they met 13-year-old Alex Cahill, a big fan.

“The rest of the comics have too much blood,” Alex says. “You can have a good comic with a good story and action and you don’t need gore. This comic goes beyond originality. It has a whole bunch of good messages. . . . Most comic characters don’t have much personality. The Kernel does. And I like Banana Bolt, too, because of his amazing ability to use the potassium beam.”

Orchanian still does the daily 30-minute commute to his Merrill Lynch office in Mt. Kisco. Along the way he says he thinks about how he would “love to do the comic full-time and develop the characters even beyond comic books to a computer game or maybe a movie.”

* Until Hollywood catches on, you can order the comic book ($1.95) by writing to HCOM Inc., 3198 Quinlan St., Yorktown Heights, N.Y. 10598, or by calling (914) 962-0878.