This is where he killed her. Take a moment to look around. Looks like a typical studio loft, doesn't it? The personal workspace of some rich guy. The kind you've seen pictures of in glossy magazine ads. The sort of room you wish you could have above your garage. Check out the polished hardwood floor. Look how clean he keeps it. No trace of her blood.

Jesus, this guy reads a lot, huh? The walls are lined with books on bookshelves. Mostly science fiction - the good stuff, Bova, Heinlein, Asimov. There's also a hell of a lot of action comics. Tarzan, X-Men and what seems to be every Green Lantern ever written.

Did you look inside the bathroom by the stairs on your way up? His cartoonist friends have drawn all over the walls. There's Crankshaft backing into a mailbox above the door. Baby Marvin next to the toilet. Spider-Man, pinching his nose in disgust. "My Spidey sense is tingling," he says. Pretty cool.

There's his desk by the window, the same desk he's used for over 40 years. A wooden monstrosity pitched at a slight angle. He killed her on that desk. It happened last year, but you won't read about it in the paper until October. It'll look like an accident. He's very good at that. But it was premeditated, planned for months. Tom Batiuk deliberately killed Lisa Moore.

To understand why, you have to trace the story to its origins: Kent State University a couple of years before the shootings, in a basement-like section of Stopher Hall known as Pipe Alley.

Tom Batiuk (like "attic" with a "b") was an aspiring comic-book artist, a quiet kid from Akron who'd spent most his life near Grafton, at a school called Midview. He was at Kent State to avoid Vietnam, studying to become a teacher to stay out of the war after he graduated. In his spare time, he drew and wrote, and produced a single-panel comic for the Daily Kent Stater. Light musings on college life, nothing too political.

Then a more refined artist arrived on the scene: Chuck Ayers, boisterous and bearded, a force unto himself. His editorial cartoons targeted students' shared fears: the war, the rising cost of tuition, parking tickets. He skewered the school's administration and quickly became a favorite among readers. Batiuk's cartoon faded away.

After collecting a fine arts degree in 1969, Batiuk hopped a plane to New York to visit the biggest names in the comics biz. He presented writing samples to editors at Marvel and D.C., short mystery stories that could be included in popular collections of the time: Tower of Shadows, House of Mystery. "This is as good as the stuff we have now," one editor told him. "But we don't need that. We need something better. Send us some more of your stuff later."

Batiuk returned home and accepted a job at Eastern Heights Junior High in Elyria, teaching arts and crafts. But he showed his sketch book to an editor for the Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, which at the time published a weekly teen page. The editor asked Batiuk to develop a comic strip for it.

Rapping Around featured short, funny commentary on teenage life derived from observations at Eastern Heights Junior High but also from Kent State. One character resembled a student who had lived down the hall from him, Evan Meyer. The character had dark hair and glasses like Meyer and emulated his somewhat nerdy nature. Another popular character had shaggy hair just like Batiuk's old roommate Thom Dickerson, who everyone called "TD". Batiuk imbued the comic with the snarky, innocent humor that was held in such high regard by the residents of Pipe Alley.

There's a TD story that Batiuk falls back on for inspiration to this day that speaks to the writer's sense of humor. He was sitting in his room with Meyer one day when TD stuck his head in and said, "You guys are a bunch of hotdogs."

Meyer thought for a moment and replied, "And you'll probably never catch up to us. But I'm glad you mustered up the courage to try."

"I relish these little conversations," added Batiuk.

All TD could do was shake his head and back out of the room.

When Batiuk returned to New York in 1971, he took copies of Rapping Around with him. This time, he hit up the syndicates, great conglomerates that own and distribute comic strips to newspapers across the country. The last place he stopped before catching the bus back to the airport was Publisher's Hall, where he left samples and contact info. Shortly after he returned home, a red-and-blue-colored letter arrived in the mail. That meant airmail, a letter of great importance. Publisher's Hall wanted to option his strip right away.

The new strip was to be similar to Rapping Around and in fact would feature characters that first appeared there. What Batiuk needed was a new title, something that represented the spirit of the new comic, which Batiuk thought might center around the character modeled after TD. He asked his students at Eastern Heights to write down interesting names on slips of paper. At home that night he and his high-school sweetheart, Cathy, whom he married later that year, sifted through them. On one, someone had written "Funky." On another: "Winkerbean."

Batiuk danced around his small apartment in anticipation. Publisher's Hall was a large syndicate that could provide a solid launch for Funky Winkerbean. The company gave him almost a full year to develop his strip and to bank months of storylines in advance so that he wasn't under the gun when it started printing. He didn't tell many people what he was working on, though. He didn't want to jinx it.

Much of the sales staff at Publisher's Hall comprised former teachers. A comic strip about high school was something they understood, something they could sell. And so when Funky debuted on March 26, 1972, it appeared in over 70 newspapers, a strong initial run for an unknown.

Batiuk was determined to prove himself worthy. He poured his soul into the strip. That took time and energy. But so did teaching. Something had to give. And even though the syndicate didn't offer health benefits, Batiuk knew he might never get another chance like this, so he abruptly quit Eastern Heights Junior High over spring break. The move cost him his teaching license.

The first years of Funky were the most playful.

Many days, the strips were gag-a-day goodies set in fictional Westview High School, in some alternate reality that resembled Northeast Ohio, but which allowed for flights of fancy. Hall monitors guarded their territory with machine guns; leaves hanging from trees outside the school told corny jokes; a student named Crazy Harry lived inside his locker and spun frozen pizzas on his record player.

Still, this new reality Batiuk created was not too far removed from our own. And at least one man lived in them both.

The art teacher at Westview High was Jim Mateer. Midview High School art teacher Jim Mateer was amused to see the character in Funky. Amused, but not surprised. Batiuk had once been his student.

"I wouldn't let him do cartoons and comics when I had him in my class," says Mateer, who has since retired. "My argument was, "You do those very well already, try doing something you're not good at.' That's what education is. Tom was talented and very intelligent. And he works hard at what he does."

As the comic strip progressed, and Batiuk matured, Mateer allowed him to sit in on classes so that Batiuk could absorb the students' conversations, idiosyncrasies and the ever-changing teenage patois. Batiuk visited Midview frequently, sketching new students, borrowing their countenances for his comic strip, where they would eventually appear after a short layover in his studio. He studied their habits and quirks and transferred what he noticed to Funky to keep it fresh.

Tom BATIUK - Creates new story lines for Funky Winkerbean from his home in Medina.

The recurring characters, though, were modeled after those he knew best when he was young.

The most recognizable character from Funky is the militant Westview band director Harry Dinkle, a man who runs his marching band like platoon of Marines and whose surely glaring eyes were, until quite recently, always obscured by his hat, which must have been stapled on, since it never flew off during the monsoons that arrived each year in time for the Battle of the Bands. High school band directors across the country identified with and took unexpected pride in Dinkle's bombastic personality. In 1986, the Music Educators National Council recognized Dinkle as a spokescharacter for their public awareness campaign. Two years later, Batiuk received the Band Directors of America Medal of Honor.

At band director conventions, everyone had their own theory about who Dinkle was modeled after. At the top of the list was a certain director from Ohio who was remarkably similar to Dinkle, down to the crisp uniform and abrasive nature.

"Yeah, it's me," admits Harry Pfingsten, with a dramatic sigh. For many years, while commanding the high school band at Avon Lake, Pfingsten suspected he was the real Harry Dinkle; he once taught band at the same junior high Batiuk attended. But Batiuk didn't 'fess up to the inside joke until the two bumped into each other at a band convention in Chicago last Christmas. They made peace and Batiuk drew Dinkle with his hat one last time for his old teacher.

"Everything is true," Pfingsten says with a chuckle. "Everything except the turkeys. I never sold turkeys for a fundraiser." Good thing. Harry Dinkle's turkeys were imported from Sam 'n' Ella's farm (a pun worthy of Pipe Alley status).

That dark-haired bespeckled kid from Rapping Around became Les Moore in Funky, where he quickly assumed the lead role in the strip. The lovable loser is not far removed from Evan Meyer.

After leaving Pipe Alley, Meyer had traveled to Europe, bumming around cheap hostels, working his way south to avoid winter. He wound up in Israel working on a kibbutz, shoveling chicken shit to earn enough money to return to the States. The first morning back, he picked up a copy of the Plain Dealer and was surprised to find himself inside. "He didn't ask me if he could use me either and I'm still going to sue him," says Meyer. After a long pause, he laughs loudly.

"Early on, my mother used to call me and say, "Did you see what Tom has you doing in today's paper?'" recalls Meyer, now a lawyer for the city of Philadelphia. One embarrassing storyline featured Les stuck at the top of the rope in gym class for so long that the school basketball team had to play a game underneath him. Storylines like that caused Meyer some gentle ribbing from people who recognized him as the character's inspiration. "I hated the rope in high school gym class," says Meyer. "But I didn't think Tom knew that. How could he?"

At least Batiuk didn't use his real name, like Mateer. After another pause, Meyer says, "It's a secret in Philadelphia, but I was christened "Lesley.' So Les Moore is not so different from Les Meyer."

While Les may be the most prominent character in the increasingly inaccurately titled Funky Winkerbean comic strip, it's Les' wife, Lisa, who has served as the muse for the strip's major changes during its 35-year run.

In 1986, Batiuk negotiated for complete editorial control of Funky after Publisher's Hall merged with another corporation (the strip eventually found a stable home at King Features). For the first time, he was completely free to do what he wanted with his characters. And the first thing he did was get Lisa knocked up. Which was a problem, because she was still in high school.

Though Batiuk never showed exactly what occurred, Lisa implied that she had been raped during a party. Along the way, Batiuk was able to inject humor into the story, as Les began dating Lisa, ultimately becoming her birthing partner. One strip had Les introducing an obviously pregnant Lisa to his father, who nearly suffered a stroke. Lisa carried the child to term and gave it up for adoption.

It was a gamble. Nobody knew if readers would accept such serious discussion in their "funny" pages; it was not the sort of thing you'd read in Garfield, for sure. But it worked. The storyline generated 60,000 requests for reprints from teens, parents, teachers and community groups across the country.

Batiuk followed up with a series of stories on dyslexia. But he soon realized that more mature storylines required less cartoonish characters. So in 1992, he re-imagined his characters, aging the population of his comic strip. Time shifted in Westview and suddenly four years had passed. Everyone, except maybe Harry Dinkle, looked older. Les became the high school English teacher. Crazy Harry moved out of his locker and became a mailman. Leaves stopped telling jokes. Batiuk used his older characters to address subjects like racial discrimination, alcoholism and teen suicide.

Around this time, Batiuk wrestled ownership of Funky from King Features. He no longer needed to fear that the syndicate would hire someone else to write "Funky" if readers rebelled (a rare and drastic measure, but one which has been threatened by syndicates during contract negotiations). Nothing was stopping Batiuk from taking his characters a step further. Naturally, he turned to Lisa again. This time, he gave her cancer. He worked on the story for four years before it appeared in papers in January 1999.

The six-month story arc began with Lisa discovering a lump on her breast during a self exam (she was drawn from behind, but an open and detailed pamphlet on the bathroom sink served to introduce nudity to the comic pages). It turned out to be cancer. Lisa got a mastectomy and endured painful chemo. Again, Batiuk found ways to inject humor, taking the opportunity to poke fun at HMOs (Lisa's was called Denialcare) and homeopathic remedies (Les was forced to sneak out to the pizza shop after Lisa cooked up a batch of asparagus soup to calm her nausea). Eventually, Lisa's cancer went into remission, but the entire series was republished as a book called Lisa's Story in October 2000. And for his efforts, Batiuk was awarded the "Jonquil" by the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center for contributing to the fight against breast cancer. Later, the American Cancer Society inducted him into its hall of fame.

Batiuk acknowledged the strip's changing tone through Crazy Harry, who noted, "It's kind of forcing our merry little band to grow up, isn't it?"

The majority of readers seemed to go along for the ride, but there have been critics. Batiuk's most frequent hater these days is a freelance writer from Baltimore named Josh Fruhlinger, who blogs as the Comics Curmudgeon. When Lisa's cancer returned last year, Fruhlinger lashed out. "I know that cancer is a tragic and serious illness," he wrote, "and affects the lives of its victims and their loved ones in many ways, large and small ... but this, in a nutshell, is why Funky Winkerbean is the single most depressing comic in the newspaper today." Fruhlinger refers to the changes that advanced Funky from a gag-a-day comic to a narrative soap opera as "The Turn to Grim."

And then, in February this year, Batiuk incurred the wrath of a couple of Southern newspaper editors after a strip ended with what appeared to be Wally Winkerbean, Funky's nephew, getting blown up by an IED in Iraq (we later learned it was just a video game that Wally was playing). The executive editor of the Ledger-Enquirer, a Georgia newspaper, said the strip upset his readers and "should never have run in our paper. For the failure to identify the material, I take full responsibility and apologize to the men and women of our Armed Forces."

The editors at King Features continue to support him. "This is an art form that needs to be taken seriously," says Brendan Burford, who inherited his editorship after his mentor Jay Kennedy, a friend of Batiuk's, died in an accident earlier this year. "Tom's carved out a place for himself, and he's done it in a way that hasn't compromised the integrity of the comic medium. If we have to go out there and change the perception of what is acceptable in the comics page, I'm perfectly happy with Tom being our ambassador."

Batiuk is planning major changes for Funky Winkerbean this year. Every character will grow older as the timeline leaps forward again, this time a full 10 years. And once again the catalyst for change is Lisa.

"He takes risks," says Evan Meyer, Batiuk's old friend from Pipe Alley, who has seen strips that will appear this fall. "I think he takes more risks than most comic strip writers. I got quite choked up when I read the strip where Lisa dies."

Remember Chuck Ayers? That cocky kid at Kent State whose editorial cartoons bumped Batiuk's comics out of the Daily Kent Stater? Well, if there's anyone who can give us some insight into Batiuk's motivations behind killing Lisa Moore, it's Ayers. He watched it happen.

Ayers is the artist behind Crankshaft, a Funky spinoff centered around a cantankerous bus driver that began in 1987. (It's actually the second spinoff: John Darling appeared in 1979 and followed the story of a local talk show host, but ended abruptly in 1991 when the title character was murdered). Since 1997, Ayers has also penciled each Funky Winkerbean strip from Batiuk's stories (Batiuk writes both strips and inks and letters Funky; which is colored by Alex Sinclair, known for his work on Batman and Superman books).

Most days, Ayers can be found in his studio on the top floor of a rundown Akron business center, not far from Highland Square. His studio is the antithesis of his partner's - awash in papers, lying haphazard on the floor and every available surface. He still has that beard, but it's white now.

After graduation, Ayers got a job with the Akron Beacon-Journal and eventually became their in-house editorial cartoonist. But his skewering of local politicians and businessmen in his cartoons put him at odds with the paper's management, who invited him to leave in 1994. But by then Crankshaft had become an institution. Plain Dealer readers voted it their favorite comic in a 2002 poll. Funky Winkerbean placed third.

"There's a crabby old man in all of us," Ayers says.

Every two weeks, Ayers and Batiuk meet up at Luigi's in Akron and talk about future storylines over pizza. Batiuk writes short scripts for Ayers that include not only dialogue but action and setting as well. It's up to Ayers to interpret Batiuk's vision. Sometimes Batiuk snaps pictures for him for reference, but other times, Ayers wings it. And when he occasionally includes something Batiuk didn't write himself, strange things occur.

Once Ayers drew an antique radio sitting in the window of Crankshaft's house. It wasn't in the script, and Batiuk didn't say anything. But the next script incorporated the radio as a major plot point. An unconscious addition to one panel had altered the narrative. And that was just a radio. When Ayers, on a whim, drew a Kent State logo on the sweatshirt of Crankshaft's daughter, Pam, things got really weird.

Batiuk called him right away. "He said, "I didn't know that Pam went to school with us.'"

Pam's age was already written into the story and by adding the Kent State sweatshirt, it implied that she would have been there with Batiuk and Ayers, and was there for the 1970 National Guard shootings. (Ayers had been on campus that day. He claims to have seen a Guardsman fire into the air before he stepped inside a building only seconds before the fatal shots were fired.)

"These characters are real to us," says Ayers. "There was almost this real sensation that this was someone we went to school with."

That interference is usually one-way only, but Ayers wonders about that apartment building across the street. It's called Westview. And he didn't notice it when he first rented the space.

But when characters attempt suicide, are diagnosed with Alzheimer's or are blown up by IED's, there's nothing Ayers can do to change it, just like real life. "In real life, you don't get to say, "I don't like how it was written. I want to go back a few days.' But Tom can do that. He has that luxury. When he shows it to me, though, it's like getting that phone call from a family member. I can only react emotionally."

If these people are so real to both men, what does it mean when Batiuk decides to kill off one of the main characters?

"I hesitate to think about it," says Ayers, looking about the room. "I've made a conscious effort not to analyze that."

Batiuk lives in a large house in the isolated hills of Medina, at the end of a long gravel driveway lined by trees decorated with soap that keep deer from nibbling on the lower branches. Parked in the garage, below the studio, is a limited-edition wood-paneled PT Cruiser.

And here is Batiuk himself, walking out of the garage, a skinny, middle-aged man in shorts and a T-shirt. There is a wide smile on his face but his eyes look sad, or at least nostalgic. He leads the way into an enclosed patio.

He talks about his routine, his method. How he starts before 9 a.m. every day and works in batches, writing several weeks of stories at a time before inking several Funky strips that Ayers has prepared. He talks about the history of Funky and the comic conventions he's attended, and the adventures he's had. But he doesn't talk about Lisa's death.

Chuck AYERS - Survived the Kent State shootings before drawing Crankshaft.

And then the gold band on his arm catches the rays of the sun floating through the window. It's a medical bracelet. Next to it is a Lance Armstrong special. It was given to him by his lawyer after Batiuk was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

He started getting annual physicals after the first Lisa story ran in the papers. A routine test hinted at trouble. A biopsy was taken. He got the bad news in the airport as he was getting ready to leave for vacation in 2003. "It's cancer," his doctor said. "But try to have a good time. We'll talk about it when you get back."

It turned out to be an exceptionally aggressive cancer - rated a Gleason-7, sort of the Richter scale for prostate cancer. Anything higher than a 6, the chances that cancer will be found in the lymph nodes increases and life expectancy decreases. The average prognosis for Gleason-7 patients is about 10 years.

"There's a huge void between sympathizing with someone with cancer and going through it yourself," says Batiuk. "I realized I could tell that story now."

And so, Lisa's cancer came back in the strip. It too was more aggressive this time.

"I was in a study at the Cleveland Clinic," says Batiuk. "And a nurse there says to me, "Isn't it ironic that you're writing about cancer and you have cancer?'" He laughs. "I'd rather not be quite that relevant."

But he was mimicking his character, the one that looks so much like his wife, sitting in the next room over. And it continued until he killed Lisa off, writing the script for her final scene in his studio, on that desk where she first appeared. Shortly after that, Batiuk's cancer went into remission. He's been clear for six months. Life, real and drawn, goes on.

"I like to meet with Chuck at Luigi's in Akron and go over the scripts," says Batiuk. "It's a magical place for me. It's a nexus of all things good."

And it exists in both worlds. In Funky Winkerbean, Luigi's is called Montoni's. Les and Lisa Moore used to live in the apartment above the pizza parlor. It's the closest one can get to Westview without being Batiuk.

"I think we live in an amazing and beautiful universe," he says. "But one that is essentially uncaring. It's all random and chaos. I was raised Catholic, but I started thinking like this at Kent State. It doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter if the Cavs win. But that's what's so cool. How beautiful is it that we can eat a slice of pizza and read a comic book while listening to some good music? That's enough for me."

He looks forward to seeing how the characters in Funky Winkerbean carry on without Lisa, how their stories unfold in the future. And now that his own future is open again, he's thought even further down the road. Sometimes, he can see where it all might end.

Baituk leans forward and lowers his voice. After extracting a promise not to tell, he gives an idea of where the characters might finish up in the final strip, whenever that might be.

It's very random and quite beautiful.