The Hybrid Begins
As announced in the For Better or For Worse News Bites, Michael and Meredith are looking at an old photo album and this is to lead into talking about the courtship of John and Elly. Since these strips are to be used crossing back and forth with strips discussing the Liz and Anthony romance, I fully expect we are going to see lots of intentional parallels between the two love stories.
In order for this sequence to work, the reader must suspend disbelief that Meredith is actually interested in those old pictures or the history of how Elly went from Vancouver to Milborough. We must also suspend disbelief that Michael would take the time to do this, particularly when his behaviour with his children before largely focused on activities with them outdoors.
The main purpose of this hybrid appears to be for Lynn Johnston to tell some backstories, she always wanted to tell. I believe she mentioned something about showing why Deanna Sobinski left Milborough when she was a little girl also. It seems odd to have these stories which will show character development, just as the strip is about to end. Most times when something comes to a close, you would like to see the culmination of some epic story. In this case, the culmination of the epic story is that everyone moves back home to reminisce about things which happened before the beginning of the epic story.
In order for this sequence to work, the reader must suspend disbelief that Meredith is actually interested in those old pictures or the history of how Elly went from Vancouver to Milborough. We must also suspend disbelief that Michael would take the time to do this, particularly when his behaviour with his children before largely focused on activities with them outdoors.
The main purpose of this hybrid appears to be for Lynn Johnston to tell some backstories, she always wanted to tell. I believe she mentioned something about showing why Deanna Sobinski left Milborough when she was a little girl also. It seems odd to have these stories which will show character development, just as the strip is about to end. Most times when something comes to a close, you would like to see the culmination of some epic story. In this case, the culmination of the epic story is that everyone moves back home to reminisce about things which happened before the beginning of the epic story.
posted by howard at 2:06 AM
13 Comments:
Bleah, the hybrid. And as I feared, today was a waste-of-space setup. ::sigh:
I suppose in Lynn's mind, she doesn't know how long she'll be doing this, so she could go through years and years of strips, filling in backstories as she goes. But will it be chronological or thematic? Hm.
In his column All Reprints in the Spring, Howard says that the hybrid will end when the Liz/Anthony story is finished. After that all strips will be vintage.
Anon NYC
Howard says that the hybrid will end when the Liz/Anthony story is finished. After that all strips will be vintage.
I know, but I believe that is a misunderstanding. Howard's comment was based on the article's claim that when the Lizthony arc is resolved early next year, the strip will be all "greatest hits." Howard took this to mean no more hybrid, and just reprints, à la Classic Peanuts. But I think this was just clumsy wording on the part of the reporter, who is not making a distinction between "hybrid" and "reprints."
Lynn has made a huge deal over the fact that she would not feel right going to a pure "reprint" format--that she feels the need to add value by having the framing devices and the added back stories. She's made a big deal over the idea that the web page will also continue to fill in more background on the characters.
I think what Lynn and her staff had attempted to convey was that after Liz's arc with Anthony is resolved, the strip will be in "hybrid" mode full time.
April, thanks for the clarification; I'm quite pleased to hear this!
I see my difficulty. The article I quoted made it pretty clear when it said:
But after that is settled, only old strips will be offered; essentially a greatest hits collection. The precedent for that was set by "Peanuts," which has served up repeats from the strip's 1970s heyday since creator Charles Schulz died in February 2000.
The other area of confusion is Lynn’s own press release which says:
Johnston will keep fans engaged with a mix of special strips from the past and newly drawn panels that will help reintroduce favorite storylines. The strip’s current storyline will be interlaced with Michael's remembrances until it gradually reaches a natural closing stage sometime early next year. When that happens, time will stop for the extended Patterson family, but not their stories. The stories will be relived by a current generation of fans and introduced for the first time to a new generation.
The strip’s current storyline will reach a natural closing stage sometime early next year. Based on aprilp_katje’s interpretation then, Michael’s remembrances will not reach a natural closing stage also, just the interlacing with his remembrances. There is also the awkward wording of “time will stop…but not their stories. The stories will be relived….” from which full reprint could be inferred, because you don’t relive new stories. This interpretation appears to be the same mistake the reporter made.
However, what is not clear to me is how much new stuff there is going to be, or if it just framing sequences like we saw in this strip from July, which could have been used to introduce a series of Farley stories. Lynn has made a big deal about how the hybrid is unprecedented, but Greg Evans does framing sequences like that every time he takes a vacation and shows old Luann strips. Moreover, if it is a long story sequence running for weeks, new material may consist only of a strip or two every 1-2 months.
On the other hand, if Lynn is really interested in filling in back stories, a sequence describing exactly why Deanna left Milborough would take more than a few strips to explain, if it were shown and not told. Based on the story-telling techniques shown lately, it would be more like:
Panel 1: Merrie: Who’s that Daddy? Mike: That’s a picture of your mom when she was 7 years old.
Panel 2:
Panel 3: Merrie: Mommy used to live in Milborough? Mike: Yes, she did, until that fateful day when her father received an offer to buy some property inexpensively in Burlington and he couldn’t resist the opportunity….
Panel 4: Mike: to move his family there and start his own hardware store, which had been his dream ever since he was little boy coming over on the boat from Poland. So, he packed up your mother and her sister whom you have …
Panel 4: Mike: never met to move them to Burlington and I thought I would never get to see your mother again. Merrie: Is that when Grandpa Wilf turned evil? Mike: Yes. Yes, it was.
I hate it when I preview something and then the final version misinterprets the tags I just saw look perfect in the preview.
Panel 2 was supposed to say:
"Old picture of young Deanna sharpening a pencil", which I referenced from the picture from the FBorFW website main page.
I do think there's confusion based on poor wording. In the press release from th FBoFW website, I do believe the "it" that will come to a "natural closing stage" will be the real-time Liz-Anthony arc, NOT the reminiscing strips. And the "time will stop but the stories will not" simply refers to Lynn's plans to freeze the characters' ages for the "frame" elements that will intro and outro the old material.
I think, as far as the reporter was concerned, the "hybrid" strips are "greatest hits." I don't think he is making the fine distinctions that we are.
Over on the FOOBiverse’s Journal, someone looking at the Providence Journal described a hybrid strip which had been shown in an article talking about the transition to hybrid. I could not find the picture, although I did find the article which was a buy from the Houston Chronicle article. The description sounds a whole like the Greg Evan’s framing of Luann reprints, where a picture of modern-day Luann is draped over the reprint strip. The Providence Journal hybrid strip had the same thing, except it was Michael draping the strip.
I don’t know how you felt about snarking today’s strip. My Michael did not have much trouble with it, since he is right there; but I was struggling with Honoria and Howard to say anything even remotely interesting. Snarkwise, I think we are going to have a very tough two weeks.
I hate the thought that early Elly/John is going to parallel the Liz/Blanthony story. First, it was a new love, not a childhood sweetheart, and then both John and Elly moved from "home" to begin a new life. This just emphasizes the "blahness"' of the Liz smashup to me.
It will also be painful to see--Liz and Anthony will look EXACTLY like young John and Elly, I fear. That is just creepy.
I wonder if Lynn will try to use John/Elly to again make Liz/Anthony look better. Maybe we will find out they were both involved with someone else and dumped those people as soon as they met each other? That seems to be Lynn's only way of telling any "romance" stories.
howtheduck, I agree about the difficulty of snarking today's strip. I was incredibly grateful for Michael's recounting, as I was at a loss as to how I'd do anything with it. Before I looked at it, I was really hoping that it wouldn't be a nothing-happens set-up. And then it was exactly that. ::sob::
Anon, too true about possible parallels between John/Elly and Anthony/Liz. I can just imagine Lynn doing this to make Lizthony more likeable and only succeeding in making John/Elly less so.
There is always the possibility that Lynn Johnston could treat the John / Elly story like she did the Anthony / Thérèse one and knock the whole thing out in a week, with lots of narration and a few pictures. However, I have a hard time believing Lynn Johnston would treat her lead characters so cavalierly, and I can’t imagine her missing the opportunity to compare Anthony and Liz to John and Elly, considering how many times she has dropped the hint that Anthony to Liz is as John is to Elly. Then again, I figured the Anthony / Thérèse story was going to expand on the previously-existing story, instead of significantly rewriting it. Lynn Johnston’s style is for slow story-telling over a long period of time, and this fast-writing, short-timer Lynn is difficult to predict.
The idea that Elly and John were both involved with someone else and dumped those people as soon as they met each other is an intriguing one, but unlikely, since it would mean introducing the other people and doing some kind of characterization with them. However, I find the idea that John and Elly were attracted to or found attractive by others, an interesting concept. Done right, it might be a fun story.
The odd thing is that there are aspects of Elly and John which are much more like Liz and Paul or Liz and Warren.
1. I thought Elly from Vancouver and the John, the man from Manitoba are more kind of like Paul and Liz both living in Mtigwaki, where neither grew up.
2. Rod Johnston loving small airplanes and Warren as the helicopter pilot also seemed like a natural match.
The childhood sweetheart routine with Liz and Anthony is more a manifestation of “I spent years putting time in Liz and Anthony in junior and senior high schools, and I am not going to waste that by putting Liz together with anyone else.” Despite Lynn Johnston's protest to the contrary that she doesn't know Anthony, he is far better developed than Paul or Warren. And that is the problem with him. He developed into a character people didn't like.
"Why Deanna left Milborough" doesn't sound like much of a story. However, if Lynn felt like telling "the preteen and teenage years of Deanna," she could potentially get years of strips out of that. I don't know if she would want to do that (since it would involve doing entirely new content not previously written or drawn), or whether it would be any good, but it could be done.
"Why Deanna left Milborough" would be an odd thing to cover, I agree. However, there is a whole backstory on how Deanna's mom treated her growing up, how her sister eloped and moved away to get away from her mother, the character of the boy to whom she was engaged before she ran into Michael again after the car accident. Presumably it would be more to explain why it is that Deanna seems to dislike her mother so much, and favour Elly, which has never been adequately explained in the strip, even though it has been covered in the monthly letters. That may be what Lynn Johnston is after. I don't know.
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