Funny Faces, Somber Moments

Writing can sometimes be a real pain in the psyche, but at least it doesn’t usually involve any physical discomfort.

Fingers hit the keys of a word processor without a lot of strain, tapping out words from a core of imagination that will hopefully translate into stories.

Some writers dictate into a tape recorder and turn out books like links of sausage, one after the other, hiring people to do the actual typing. Not me.

I need the physical experience of touching the keys to loosen my muse. That’s why I can empathize with Mell Lazarus. He needs that direct contact too, the connection between hand and head that creates his work. But he may be losing it.

Lazarus is a cartoonist, the creator of syndicated comic strips “Miss Peach” and “Momma.” They take us into the worlds of kids and mothers, where humor and tenderness blend into a compelling mix. Funny faces with something to say.

Drawing has been his life for almost half a century. But now Lazarus has a problem. His “touch” is muted.

Like “Peanuts” colleague Charles Schulz, he suffers from cancer. Although the cancer is now in remission, chemotherapy has damaged the nerve endings in his hands. He can barely feel the pens he uses to draw. Being funny isn’t as easy as it used to be.

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I visited Lazarus one day recently. He lives on a quiet, woodsy hillside of the San Fernando Valley in a house that smells faintly of the cigars he smokes.

To the left as one enters is a white piano inscribed with the signatures and characters of virtually every major cartoonist in the country. Their sketches also adorn the walls.

Drawing has always captivated this lean, bearded man of 72. He knew from the very beginning exactly what he wanted to be someday, a guy who drew funny faces and made people laugh.

“My father worked as a messenger and brought home newspapers he’d scrounge here and there,” he says, leading me into a studio that looks out over a swimming pool. “I began reading the comics, and then I began copying their style. . . .”

There’s a drawing table in one corner of the room, a computer in the other. Lazarus has written two novels, one of which has been optioned as a movie. But drawing’s his first love. A work in progress shows Momma lecturing her stubble-bearded son on the evils of sloth and filthiness. The boy replies, “What about cute sloth and filthiness?”

“I guess if there’s a message in ‘Momma,’ ” Lazarus says, “it’s that even when a child fails to meet his or her parents’ expectations, there is still love between them.”

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In high school, teachers scoffed at his cartooning. Funny faces weren’t art. But perseverance is the fuel of dreams. Lazarus said to hell with school and kept right on drawing.

At age 16, he was selling one-joke fillers for comic books for $3. Each published effort drew him deeper into the work he loved.

Miss Peach was first. A teacher in a world of wry kids, she was created by Lazarus in 1957 for a contest he didn’t win. But she was snapped up by the old New York Herald Tribune Syndicate and has been going ever since. Momma followed in 1970.

A past president of the National Cartoonists Society, and honored by them in 1982 as Cartoonist of the Year, Lazarus has had a remarkable career. Momma has become everyone’s mama and the kids in “Miss Peach” everyone’s imps.

Five years ago he married for the second time. His wife, Sally Mitchell, is a four-term city councilwoman in a small community near San Francisco. They see each other on weekends. “It’s a perfect marriage,” Lazarus says, grinning through a cloud of cigar smoke.

Life was sweet for the artist of funny faces, but good things rarely last. A year and a half ago Lazarus was diagnosed with bladder cancer. The chemotherapy left him with a “socks and gloves syndrome,” affecting the feeling in both hands and feet. The connection he needs between head and hand began disappearing.

He panicked at first, then realized if he slowed down he could still draw. The link between imagination and reality remains, though softly.

I’m sure Lazarus will use it wisely. While he shrugs off any importance to his work, laughter is not to be taken lightly. We need it. Funny faces can define cultural idiosyncrasies.

I think of Lazarus as the boy Arthur in a recent “Miss Peach” strip. “Tell me,” his friend Ira asks, “how I can win the acclaim of the world?” “Move to Mars,” Arthur deadpans. “Nobody is a prophet in his own hometown.”

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com