CSotD: Saturday profile: Greg Evans of “Luann”
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(This profile of Luann creator Greg Evans is one of a series I did in 2003 for the Post-Star of Glens Falls NY)
The comic strip, "Luann,"is 18 years old. The comic strip character, Luann, is not 18 and may never be.
Then again, you never know.
A few years ago,when Luann and her friends suddenly made the leap from junior high to high school, the issues in the strip also went from junior high to high school level,and Luann's hairstyle was updated as the artistic style of the strip became slightly upgraded.
Luann creator Greg Evans admits the change was more necessary than planned.
"I never thought she'd go from being 13 to being 16 when I first started the strip," Evans admits. "But after 15 years, she had kind of aged on her own. She looked different, she acted differently, and my own daughter had long since moved on from being that age. I felt I had to make that jump."
Like a real daughter,Luann has always been a work in progress,with its artist/father often just along for the ride.
Evan's youngest child, Karen, supposedly inspired the strip. "She was 7 or 8 when the strip started, and
the first concepts for the strip were about a sassy 6- or 7-year-old little girl," he says, then laughs. "If I'd only given her a stuffed tiger, I might have really been on to something!"
But as the strip went through the pre-release development process, it ended up being about an older girl. Inevitably, Karen,now in her mid-20s, was Luann's age for a time, "but she's nothing like the character and she never really identified with the character," Evans says. "If anything, she's more like Bernice: Tall, beautiful and very smart."
"Luann" also grew, adding cast members over the years until, Evans admits, it's often hard to him to keep track of the characters and to update the various storylines.
"I really want to get back to Gunther, and I've drifted away from Brad, too," he says, and promises to update the charmingly offbeat romance of skater goof Knute and Goth-chick Crystal, as well.
But there are only 365 strips a year, and they don't all fall during the school year, Evans sighs. "It's like Sparky (Charles Schulz) once said, a comic strip is like writing 'War and Peace' 20 words at a time."
At the moment, Evans is working on the strips that will lead into summer, and he hasn't quite decided how that will be structured. The strip works in real time without moving forward, which is to say,there is a break for summer each year, but then the kids are no older when the next year comes along.
Summer is a chance for the cast to interact in different ways, however. As in real life, some characters won't be around, while some who don't normally interact much may be thrown together at a summer
job. It gives Evans a chance to try new combinations and to let overworked lines rest a bit.
One change since 9/11 is the character of Brad. Formerly a lazy older brother who spent all his time tinkering with his car and annoying his little sister, Brad responded to the World Trade Center attacks by becoming an EMT, and, unlike the others in the strip, is in a real-time sequence now.
"Brad is in paramedic school for six months," Evans says. "Then he will go into his firefighting training, which will require me to do some real research. For one thing, I'm going to have to learn to draw fire trucks!"
However, don't expect him to become a superhero: Brad will always be Luann's irritating older brother, even as he becomes a responsible public servant in his working life.
"It's kind of fun to push characters here and there," Evans says, and admits he doesn't always know what's up with his characters or where they're headed next. "I think that, like a lot of real teenagers, they don't really know who they are. And people in real life don't always turn out to be who you thought they were."
Or even who their artist thinks they were.
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