A Whole Lot of Information
Today’s strip in For Better or For Worse, despite its lack of dialogue and a punch line or anything even remotely funny, did have a lot of information. I snarked the reappearance of Jennifer the dental assistant with a new hairstyle and the seeming disappearance of Everett Callahan. I am very interested to see if the April monthly letter from John Patterson drops Everett out of the picture or not. The strip is so haphazardly constructed with respect to its own history; I cannot tell if seeming errors, like leaving out Everett Callahan are errors or actual plot devices. If they are plot devices, they are done rather cleverly. Unfortunately, most of the things I pick up on are actual errors from sloppy work. The strips for the last 3 years are on-line. How hard could it be to find the ones with John’s office in them and make them consistent?
Jeremy Jones had his last of 3 blind dates set up by his mother. This time the date was with Shannon Lake and it was fun to write with lots of repetitive dialogue, and running gags. I have enjoyed writing all 3 of those, so I will probably repeat the scenario again next weekend.
Constable Paul Wright snarked the made up food items with food item titles I pulled from an on-line Ojibway cookbook and Baloney and Bannock added for good measure.
Howard did the Jennifer snark and started a storyline which I cannot finish because it was riddled with too many obvious problems, which the very law-knowledgeable qnjones pointed out to me. My idea was to have Howard be tricked into giving Thora a legal marriage, which Thorvald cannot do because he has to wait for his divorce to be final sometime this summer. That tricked marriage plot wouldn’t work because it would be clearly illegal and quickly eliminated. So, I plan to eliminate it quickly and move on to other things.
Tomorrow’s strip: Grandpa Jim celebrates his birthday and this time Mike, Dee and the kids are there and also grandpa Jim appears to be conscious (although he is smiling so much, I am not sure). I cannot tell for certain, but if this celebration is being held at the retirement apartment, then this would mark the second time Mike and Dee have been there, in a 3-year span. I think John Patterson is in the background in silhouette, and if he is there, then it will mark the first time he has gone to the retirement apartment. If I were vain, I would like to think that someone has read my snark about the inattentiveness to grandpa Jim of the Pattersons aside from April and Elly, and decided to do something about it. But it is probably just coincidence.
Jeremy Jones had his last of 3 blind dates set up by his mother. This time the date was with Shannon Lake and it was fun to write with lots of repetitive dialogue, and running gags. I have enjoyed writing all 3 of those, so I will probably repeat the scenario again next weekend.
Constable Paul Wright snarked the made up food items with food item titles I pulled from an on-line Ojibway cookbook and Baloney and Bannock added for good measure.
Howard did the Jennifer snark and started a storyline which I cannot finish because it was riddled with too many obvious problems, which the very law-knowledgeable qnjones pointed out to me. My idea was to have Howard be tricked into giving Thora a legal marriage, which Thorvald cannot do because he has to wait for his divorce to be final sometime this summer. That tricked marriage plot wouldn’t work because it would be clearly illegal and quickly eliminated. So, I plan to eliminate it quickly and move on to other things.
Tomorrow’s strip: Grandpa Jim celebrates his birthday and this time Mike, Dee and the kids are there and also grandpa Jim appears to be conscious (although he is smiling so much, I am not sure). I cannot tell for certain, but if this celebration is being held at the retirement apartment, then this would mark the second time Mike and Dee have been there, in a 3-year span. I think John Patterson is in the background in silhouette, and if he is there, then it will mark the first time he has gone to the retirement apartment. If I were vain, I would like to think that someone has read my snark about the inattentiveness to grandpa Jim of the Pattersons aside from April and Elly, and decided to do something about it. But it is probably just coincidence.
posted by howard at 11:18 PM
2 Comments:
qnjones,
Thanks for all the nice things you said. That made my day.
The thing about Shannon is that Lynn could tackle the sex issue in her own style and do it much more tastefully than I did with my histrionics. For example, April rounds a corner in school one day and finds Jeremy and Shannon kissing. April would represent the slow acceptance of the idea as Jeremy and Shannon explain to her all the things they have in common and that they actually like each other. It could be done in a Lynn-like fashion and still be quite nice. I can easily see it, because she did a very similar thing with Lawrence and Mike, except without having Mike see Lawrence kissing another guy. I suspect that Lynn suffers from the same overprotective stance, since Shannon is based on her relative Stephanie.
I don't know if the lack of controversy is Lynn or because the strip appears to be done by committee these days, which the wide variations in drawing and scripting styles we see representated. Strips done by committee are rarely ever controversial, because someone is thinking they could lose their job over it. The Liz sexual assault storyline you mentioned is the perfect example. It confounds me to this day, that they actually had Howard defeated by an ear tweaking. If it had been a single creator, I think it would have gone differently.
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