UnNews:Cartoonist Greg Evans dead at 106
| A newsstand that's brimming with issues | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, April 18, 2024, 11:56:59 (UTC) |
| Cartoonist Greg Evans dead at 106 | 
|
31 December 2006
Marceline, MO - While speaking at a cartoonists' convention in Marceline, Missouri, Greg Evans, the beloved creator of Luann, the syndicated comic strip about a teenage pain in the ass and her nuclear family and their constellation of friends in low places, keeled over, just like one of his characters taking a pratfall, and died.
"The world is better off, believe me," said Tom Wilson, creator of Ziggy. "His strip was shit."
Surprisingly, many of Evans' colleagues agreed with Wilson's sentiment. "He won't be missed," said Garfield's owner and operator, Jim Davis, "and neither will Luann."
"His strip sucked too much balls." Jeffery Son, creator behind Kitties said. "Believe me, I'm so glad that Luann will NOT be made ever again. It was one of the biggest fuck-up of all comic newspapers."
Evans' least friends from college (who became comic geniuses) were also in the funeral. Suprisingly, Evans' least friends also agreed with Wilson, Davis and Son. "Thank god Evans is gone forever," said Mike Peters, the CEO of Mother Goose and Grimm, "and so will be the fans of Greg Evans and Luann."
"While he intended to shock the public with strips about teenage girls menstruating and teenage boys using condoms instead of engaging in bareback sex, many readers were disgusted and angered by his dwelling on such topics, and he gave the rest of us a bad name," Johnny Hart said. "As a Christian, I try to make B. C. a clean-cut, respectable strip that's funny without being insensitive or offensive. We cartoonists shouldn't have to put up with an ass like the late Greg Evans."
In strip after strip, Evans dealt with such timely topics as abortion, anorexia nervosa, bulemia, condom use, drinking and driving, drug use, enemas, erectile dysfunction, eugenics, exhibitionism, frottage as an alternative to full-bodied sex, homophobia, homosexuality, infanticide, lesbianism, masturbation, matricide, patricide, racism, sadomasochism, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy, and voyeurism.
"Finally, that ugly, unfunny bastard is gone. No one will look at Luann and Greg's ass ever again." said Bill Watterson, the mad behind Calvin and Hobbes. "This is considered one of the worst strip ever, anyway. I mean, nothing is hillarious about Luann. I think Glen or Glenda looked better than this awful, half-assed strip, Luann, or should I say, The Citizen Kane of Craptastic Comics."
"Every one of his damned strips was like a 'very special episode' of a TV show," Brian Crane, creator of the Pickles comic strip, complained. "Why couldn't he just be funny instead of being pretensious and sanctimonious. It was like he was saying none of his peers had anything worthwhile to say and that it's not enough just to be humorous."
"I resent his know-it-all, in-your-face, up-yours attitude," said Sally Forth's Greg Howard. "Plenty of us tackle important issues every day in our strips. Just last week, I addressed the topic of preadolescents making breakfasts for their mothers to eat in bed on Mother's Day. Hilary, the daughter, presented a tray of spilled juice, burnt toast, runny eggs, undercooked bacon, and molasses-thick coffee to her mother, who, pretending to be delighted, exclaimed, 'Oh, Hilary! You shouldn't have!' It was hilarious--and profound--but I didn't call attention to it, the way Evans would have done. I didn't have to. My strip spoke, quite eloquently, for itself."
"You'd think he was the only bastard who ever won a Rueben Award," declared Mort Walker, who still pencils Beetle Bailey from a nursing home in New Jersey every day and twice on Sundays. "I have a whole storage shed full of the damned things back on my estate in--where is it?" The aged cartoonist seemed confused. After pondering the topic a while, he said, "What was it we were talking about?"
Evans began drawing Luann in 1985, when he was 85 years old. Long past his teenage years and living in a world far different than the one in which he grew up before the turn of the 20th century, Evans relied on newspapers, magazines, sitcoms, and reality shows for inspiration and material for his strip, which, his widow admits, may have caused him to become too much concerned with social issues and to make his strip more propagandistic and pompous than entertaining and humorous. "Then, too, he had his funny bone removed last year, and he hasn't been nearly as funny as he was before, not that he was ever really all that funny to begin with."
"Am I the only one thinking that this crap is as pathetic as hell? Seriously, when I go back to high school, I might beat Greg and Luann up in dodgeball! That will make my day," said the creator of Staged Tremor and Strange Trogmire, Kyle Kendall, "because... well if there is a comic about a teenage girl, it should NOT be a lesbian named, Luann, due to the fact that she has Nancy and the election! It's getting too fucking old!"
Evans' own favorite strips were the political commentary Doonesbury, followed by the long out-of-print Pogo and Li'l Abner, which, like Luann, offered social commentary but, unlike Luann, were also actually funny.
Luann featured Luann as Luann, her brat-brother Brad (the proton of the family), her mother Nancy (the electron of the family), her father Frank (the family's neutron), and such token characters as Delta James (the token black girl), Aaron Hill (the token homosexual twink), Tiffany Farrell (the token dumb blonde), Bernice Hapler (the token girl geek), Derek the Dork (the token stalker), and an assortment of other politically correct losers who are so lackluster as to be entirely forgettable, except as symbols of afflictions (a token handicapped boy and a token lesbian with a heart of gold, for example).
The cause of death is not known, although Evans' family physician, Doc Hollywood, suspects that his demise might be related to the cartoonist's complete lack of a sense of humor, an oversize ego, and complications due to creative difficulties.
Besides his wife, survivors include Luann DeGroot and her family and their pets, Puddles (dog) and Cuddles (cat).
Evans' colleagues suggest that people come early to the funeral services so that, in the words of both Jeffery Son and Jim Davis, "we can get it over with and get back to living our lives."
Source[edit]
- Don Markstein "Luann". Don Markstein's Toonopedia, December 29, 2006