The First Strip this Week I Didn’t Hate

I have a confession to make. I don’t own For Better or For Worse collections from the old days. Not only that, but I don’t plan to buy any. This week, I really could have used them, because there were some obscure references in the strip this week, like that hand hanging from the ceiling in yesterday’s strip, which is a story that predates the on-line archive. I looked all over the archive for that thing. I can tell it would be near impossible for me to snark an actual reprint from that time period.

I was getting a little stressed this week for writing Michael over at April’s Real Blog. My problems were (a) I could tell the story was not right, but I didn’t know exactly what was not right and (b) I wasn’t sure how to take the part of Mike in the story-telling. Should I do it as Mike just making things up because he wasn’t there and doesn’t know better? Or he doesn’t remember it exactly right because he was told this story a long time ago? Or Mike has some kind of agenda in telling Meredith out-and-out lies? Or should Mike blame Elly? I finally opted with Mike blaming Elly; but I am not sure that was the best choice.

Because I had Mike blame Elly, I ended up yesterday writing one of the most sympathetic posts I have written for Michael, as he realizes Elly tricked John with him, just like Deanna tricked him with Meredith. Mike was an oops baby, and from the phrase Elly uses to explain it to John, it’s pretty clear Mike was only “oops” for John. “Honestly. I don’t know how it happened.” When Deanna pulled the same stunt with Mike, Lynn Johnston had Candace Halloran spell it out in no uncertain terms, what Deanna’s game was. Looking through the FOOBiverse’s Journal yesterday, I didn’t realize how often this had happened with the Milborough kids. Lawrence Poirier, Paul Mayes were others who were oops.

One of the more interesting things, was the decision by the artist to draw university Elly and John in the “modern” style, where they looked essentially like slightly younger versions of their “modern” selves; and then today, to alter the style to more like the strips from 1979. I imagine the reason for university Elly and John to look so much like their modern counterparts, was to get the face recognition for the character. That way, when the switch occurred today to go to the old style of art, the casual reader might be able to follow that Elly was the person on the chesterfield in the last two panels, even though her nose was small and her hair was not in a bun. Personally, I think that was an error. Today’s strip picture of young mother Elly with young Mike, was jarring to me. If university Elly and John looked more like their “classic” selves, then it would have been a better lead-in to their appearance in the classic strips. In my opinion, anyway.