Alice and Ellen

I had about despaired of things to snark about today’s strip, until aprilp_katje so kindly pointed out that Ellen, whom I had presumed was Jesse’s sister was in fact, not the sister to whom Jesse referred in an earlier strip. I remember Jesse and a small girl visiting Liz for cookies and when I went back to look, it was Alice and not Ellen. Then I went through the Mtigwaki dailies and found Alice had played a fairly prominent role in the 2004-05 school year. But then this year, when the astronomy lesson started, the prominent girl part in the class was now taken by the upstart Ellen. I would not have thought anything of this until today, when Jesse showed up with Ellen, whose mannerisms were nearly identical to Alice’s in the prior year, i.e. she was shy and put her hand up to her mouth a lot. Recently, a Sunday colour strip had effectively taken roll call of Liz’s class and there was no Alice, so it is clear to me that the Lynnions for the umpteenth had forgotten the name of one of their obscure characters, and despite having easy access to check it, decided to change the name. This behaviour mystifies me. It’s one thing for me to forget Alice and Ellen, but for the actual storywriter to forget tells me much about the way For Better or For Worse is constructed. In other words sloppy, with no attention to detail. These idiots cannot keep the characters the same size from panel to panel in the same strip, a detail which even very poorly drawn comic strips can do. It shows no pride in their craft and it makes me think that the Lynnions are concentrating on other aspects of the business now. No doubt other aspects that will keep them employed once Lynn Johnston officially decides to retire the strip.

Tomorrow’s strip: I suppose I shouldn’t complain about it, because it is giving us the Paul / Liz character development toward their romance we had been demanding for so long. However, Liz is making Paul work so hard for a kiss or any sign of affection, I think qnjones’ perspective that they have never done it, may be correct.