In 1999, writer-artist Tom Batiuk made headlines when Funky Winkerbean became the first newspaper comic strip to deal with breast cancer, as character Lisa Moore was diagnosed and then successfully treated for the disease over the course of six months. 18 months ago, however, the cancer came back, and then time the chemotherapy proved unsuccessful. As Editor and Publisher reports, Lisa will die in Thursday’s strip, after which Batiuk plans to skip ahead a decade into the surviving characters’ futures. (This will be the second such fast-forward for the strip, which experienced a four-year bump in 1992, after which the characters began to age in “real time,” which makes Lisa approximately 37.)
Strips from the current storyline, as well as the original 1999 drama, will be collected by Kent State University Press in Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe, also coming out on Thursday. Proceeds from that book are being donated to Cleveland’s Ireland Cancer Center, where a special “Lisa’s Legacy Fund” is being established. Batiuk will tour to promote the book over the following two months, mostly in Ohio.