For Better or for Worse: Lynn Johnston NOT RETIRING! ! ! !

[auntAgonist]

:bounce:



Sherry Stern
Los Angeles Times

The creator of the popular comic strip For Better or for Worse has had a change of heart -- literally and figuratively -- and won't be retiring after all.
Lynn Johnston announced this week that, beginning Sept. 1, For Better or for Worse -- the story of the Patterson family -- will be retold and redrawn in her old original drawing style from when the feature began. Not long ago, Johnston, 61, had planned to retire this year and offer mostly reruns of her 29-year-old comic strip. But her life changed when she got divorced.

"At this time in my life, I thought I would be on a cruise ship to Panama or the Mediterranean, retired with my Tilley hats, my sneakers. But I'm a single lady now, and I want to keep working,'' she said in a video posted on You Tube. For the past year, Johnston's widely syndicated comic strip has been a blend of new and old strips.

"At first I thought that I could segue back and forth from today to yesterday, but that became very confusing. Some people really enjoyed it and some just wanted us to get on with the story," she says.
"Everything in September is new," she said , "the punch lines, the drawing, all are new. The only thing retro is the way I'm drawing everything. I want it to flow into the classic material seamlessly.

"This first year, the ratio of old to new will be at least 50-50, I want this to be the best thing I've ever done, and I'm having so much fun drawing Lizzie as a baby again and revisiting all the characters." Johnston will select material from her collection of almost 10,000 archival strips to help retell the Patterson family's story, starting at the beginning. She said she will revert to her earlier drawing style: "Over the years, Elly's nose grew up to the size of a potato. Now I'm drawing it smaller again, the way it was when I first started to draw. There is a huge difference between the earlier and the later styles.''

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-forbetter15-2008aug15,0,3657555.story

[Lorien]

1. I'm really sad to hear that she's getting a divorce

I met her about ten years ago, but I never met her husband. She looked much younger then; a bit more like the early Elly. She's a very warm person. My father loves her strip, so she did a beautiful drawing for him on his birthday that hangs in his home still today. Ironic that the creator of a series called "For better or for Worse" is ending up single. :-(

[elshiva]

2. It's an all right strip.

I'm not a big fan, but it certainly is not annoying as Family Circus. Sometimes it is fun.

[regnaD kciN]

3. She won't be RETIRING, but the strip will never progress beyond...

...where it ends on 8/31. It will just go back to the beginning, with some new strips added.

FBoFW used to be one of the gems of the comics page, IMHO, but has really tailed off in recent years. (Mainly, I suspect, as her own kids grew up and assumed lives very different from "Mike" and "Liz" -- she simply ran out of material from her own family, and had to make stuff up from whole cloth.)

[Blue_Tires]

5. who is she, Brett Favre?

and you could be on to something about Johnston's kids growing up...I used to LOVE Dave Barry's books, but he seemed to lose a lot of bite when his kids got older...

[HughBeaumont]

4. This strip has gone straight into the crapper since the introduction of Grandthony.

That milquetoast-ass fool. I don't know whether people find singular unironic shoebrush mustaches sexy up there in Canuckistan (I'm pretty sure they don't), but parading this tall dorkulous shoebox who looks creepily like her father's younger twin as "The one EVERY gal would love to have and settle with" :puke: is kind of silly and unrealistic.

Not that it matters, but this is the sort of regular American fan (from the strip's chat forum . . . called "Coffee Talk" :puke: ) that "the Family Strip of all Family Strips" FBOFW seems to cater to:

Well all the coffee talkers probably notice that I haven't been "spilling my beans" here ever since the big comic controversey of Laurance the Gay man. I was and am still quite dissappointed and furrious about this "political correct" promoting of the Gay Lifestyle in the great comic strip it is very shocking and disturbing to people of Jesus and the Church and Christ. I cried for two days after this happened to my favorite comic.
But I have prayed on it and spoken to Pastor Bill on it and have decided that I will stay and read the rest of the comics! I hope my fellow Chrsitians wont be too harsh on me but I feel that this is the best comic strip of all and the big Wedding day is allready here! So we have to find it in us to overcome the pushing of the "political corrects" AGAIN and stick to our guns and find a way to enjoy the Big Wedding Day that is so lovely and wonderfull!
So Lynn if you can just promise to not talk anymore about Laurence's Gay activities anymore then I will continue to read the most wonderfull comic of all right up to the end of the great wedding. And I am sure my fellow Christians will agree and also Pastor Bill did as well once I told him all about this wonderfull comic that he has not yet read but now he will be monitorring it and I am sure you will have another new fan if you can please please please just keep the gay livestyles and activities out of the family comics! I am sure that the Pattersons would NOT want Laurence to be talking on and on about his Activities in front of their own children so we shouldn't have it either. Whats fair is fair. Isn't it? I think we can all agree on that! Thank you for moving onto the good parts of the wondefull wedding that we all love so much its so amazing and I cant wait to read it ALL!

-Joan from Peoria

"Gay Activities"???? I mean, fuck you, lady. Why is it that most intolerant hetero Christians envision all gay people being involved in multi-player porn orgies in their spare time and just LUUURVE to share that info with everyone instead of just seeing them as normal human beings? Why is it that most intolerant hetero Christians seem to have dirtier minds than most pornographers?

[arcadian]

6. Tilley hats are the best.