“Great” Gramma Marian

Now we are close to finishing the Vancouver trip sequence of For Better or For Worse, it occurs to me that if I were to pick one of the two, Jim or Marian, who was “great,” it would have been Jim. He takes abuse from the grandkids, walks them by the stream outdoors, puts Michael to bed, and tries to console Michael about his missing Super-Teddy with some good old-fashioned book reading. I suppose if I were analyzing the strip back in those days, I might have come to the conclusion Lynn Johnston was closer to her father than her mother. Given the introduction by Michael that everything about Marian was great, you would think that perhaps Lynn would have had Laura Piché do a retro-strip where Marian was more involved with her grandkids, so Michael could reasonably have gotten that impression. I suppose it is another situation where making a pun on something “great” is more important than actually having Michael make his point. Some people are born to greatness, Others have greatness thrust upon them by their grandchildren posthumously.