Oh Well. Back to Milborough
I guess April is not moving to Winnipeg for the rest of her high school in For Better or For Worse. So much for my guess.
Aside from that, this is an odd choice of strips to lead into the hybrid strips. If we don’t get to see the other relatives, I will be extremely disappointed.
Artistically, I see more differences from the way the strip was drawn just a year ago. Auntie Bev and cousin Laura do not look the same. The For Better or For Worse website has long maintained that Lynn is doing the art for the strip. I am almost completely positive, Lynn Johnston is not doing the art. When she goes to the hybrid format, I expect this is really a retirement for Lynn. With someone else doing the art, then her responsibilities are limited to writing. If the hybrid strips end up being joke-a-day strips, then Lynn Johnston may not even be doing that. I suppose she feels the need to maintain the fiction of being the one doing the hybrid, so it will attract the legion of fans who love and adore her. If they think someone else is doing the strip, then the legions of fans will turn elsewhere.
Aside from that, this is an odd choice of strips to lead into the hybrid strips. If we don’t get to see the other relatives, I will be extremely disappointed.
Artistically, I see more differences from the way the strip was drawn just a year ago. Auntie Bev and cousin Laura do not look the same. The For Better or For Worse website has long maintained that Lynn is doing the art for the strip. I am almost completely positive, Lynn Johnston is not doing the art. When she goes to the hybrid format, I expect this is really a retirement for Lynn. With someone else doing the art, then her responsibilities are limited to writing. If the hybrid strips end up being joke-a-day strips, then Lynn Johnston may not even be doing that. I suppose she feels the need to maintain the fiction of being the one doing the hybrid, so it will attract the legion of fans who love and adore her. If they think someone else is doing the strip, then the legions of fans will turn elsewhere.
posted by howard at 12:34 AM
6 Comments:
I think whoever drew today's strip must have gone back to the source pictures of Beth Cruikshank. This Bev looks more like Beth than she looks like last year's Bev.
aprilp_katje,
How about Lauren (Laura)? Does the real Laura have straight or curly hair? I don't think I have ever seen a picture of her.
The amazing whiplash with the stories and all the hurried re-writing of the strip's history has made me wonder about something.
I know there is a 6-8 lead for submitted strips that LJ has to provide. Do you have any kind of timeframe on WHEN Lynn decided to end the strip and then when she reconsidered and decided to do some kind of hybrid? I'm interested in what direction the plot was going and then if the strange twists started occurring in response to that decision--
And it really does seem as though Lynn has handed off the work occasionally but seems to re-insert her ideas no matter what has been depicted.
DebJyn
Debjyn,
I think this article in the Toronto Star from January 10, 2007 was the first mention of the hybrid.
As for the original announcement of retiring, that pre-dates my snarking on this strip, so it was before August, 2005. I think Lynn Johnston had an interview somewhere, where she said something to effect that she planned to retire when her contract for For Better or For Worse came up for renewal on September, 2007. I think she may have said it about 3 years ago. aprilp_katje may remember more about when that was originally announced.
As for plot twists, related to the hybrid, the apartment fire putting Mike into the old Patterson home and the end of Liz’s relationship with Constable Paul Wright occurred in the December, 2006 / January, 2007 time frame; but the seeds leading to both those events occurred much earlier. The only event I can match specifically to the hybrid is the idea that Michael Patterson had to live in the Sharon Park Drive house and Elly left him those photo albums to use for source material. This would mean the idea for the hybrid would have had to have germinated in the mind of Lynn Johnston back before May 30, 2006, when the possibility of an apartment fire was first introduced. Although, Lynn Johnston may have planned for Michael Patterson to move into the Sharon Park Drive house without it being related to the hybrid at all.
howtheduck, I've never seen a picture of Lauren. The closest was when the official site had some pictures from a Johnston family trip to the farm for Lauren's wedding (on April's fake blog, IIRC), but these were all long shots where you couldn't see anyone--just scenery. ::disappointing::
I didn't remember off-hand how long ago Lynn announced that she'd be retiring this fall, but I did some searching and found a Chat transcript from 2001, where she says:
I plan to retire when my present contract is up. That's in about six years. I've thought about having someone else take over the strip, but I know it's not possible. As long as I'm alive, I would not be able to leave them in peace! So I think that when I do retire, it will be a good thing. It will be a story about a family in full cycle, from early childhood to adulthood, and marriage and coming back to childhood again. So it will have run its course, I think.
Thanks to both of you!
I guess I still think that someone (maybe not Lynn) was actually thinking of having Liz stay up North--May 2006 was the sudden "wait" strip where everything up North suddenly was ditched.
DJ
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