Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe
Batiuk, creator of the long-lasting Funky Winkerbean comic strip, subjects one of his supporting characters to cancer in this collection of very special strips. Lisa and her husband, Les, have a pretty good life in their hometown, until Lisa discovers a lump in her breast. She beats back the cancer once, but when it recurs after remission, she has to prepare for the worst. In the meantime, the son she gave up for adoption eighteen years before finally decides it's time to locate his birth mother. While Batiuk's attempt to take on a difficult, life-changing event should be applauded, trying it in the context of a gag-a-day newspaper strip may not have been the best choice. Batiuk works hard to tell a realistic, engaging story of a woman facing one of life's trials, but the relentless demands of a daily strip—and occasional mugging by the characters—cramps his pacing, forcing him to prolong some vignettes, cut short moments that could have used more room to breathe, and pause every few panels for, if not a joke, then something with a jokelike appearance. Artwise, Batiuk's simplified realism has a good sense of detail in the later strips.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.