Hybrid Part 2 – The Secret Life of Deanna Sobinski
It looks like our next hybrid story-telling pair will be Michael and Deanna. With any luck Deanna will take the lead. ellcee is April’s Real Blog’s Deanna and she is very funny. However, she has not contributed to April’s Real Blog in a long time. So I anticipate having to fill the gap with the Michael perspective, unless of course, aprilp_katje is tired of Michael Patterson, (since he did almost all last month) and wants to do her version of Deanna, in imitation of ellcee. This involves the use of a lot of inappropriate quotation marks, usually.
As near as I can tell, Deanna Patterson was active as the love interest of Michael Patterson from 1980 – 81, and then disappeared until her reappearance as the car crash victim photographed by Michael Patterson some years later, in imitation of the same situation happening to Lynn Johnston’s son Aaron and not in imitation of the gruesome recent podcast version of the story, where Lynn Johnston described Aaron obsessed with getting a sunset picture with the body of a woman had hanged herself for a shot on the local TV station.
Already we have one Laura Piché-drawn panel. For those who are joining us lately, my theory is that Laura Piché, Lynn Johnston’s background artist, is the person doing the imitation old-style Lynn Johnston art. The reason for my theory is that Laura has long done the background characters in addition to the backgrounds with a style very different from Lynn Johnston’s. The art on those characters matches the style of the foreground characters in the imitation old-style Lynn very closely. The Deanna Sobinski story about moving is not covered in the old strips at all, so I expect we are going to get a lot of Laura Piché in the next few weeks. If you want a background on Deanna Sobinski to reference as we go through this, there is none better than Deanna’s May, 2004 monthly letter.
I expect Lynn Johnston may draw some parallels between early Mike and Deanna and early Liz and Anthony; but I had that opinion back with Elly and John and it did not come true. I am honestly, not sure why it is that Lynn Johnston feels the need to tell the “Deanna goes to Burlington from Milborough” story, but she has talked about it a lot. I hope there is an actual story there with a payoff other than, “Dad decided to move to open up a hardware store, and we had to go with him.”
As near as I can tell, Deanna Patterson was active as the love interest of Michael Patterson from 1980 – 81, and then disappeared until her reappearance as the car crash victim photographed by Michael Patterson some years later, in imitation of the same situation happening to Lynn Johnston’s son Aaron and not in imitation of the gruesome recent podcast version of the story, where Lynn Johnston described Aaron obsessed with getting a sunset picture with the body of a woman had hanged herself for a shot on the local TV station.
Already we have one Laura Piché-drawn panel. For those who are joining us lately, my theory is that Laura Piché, Lynn Johnston’s background artist, is the person doing the imitation old-style Lynn Johnston art. The reason for my theory is that Laura has long done the background characters in addition to the backgrounds with a style very different from Lynn Johnston’s. The art on those characters matches the style of the foreground characters in the imitation old-style Lynn very closely. The Deanna Sobinski story about moving is not covered in the old strips at all, so I expect we are going to get a lot of Laura Piché in the next few weeks. If you want a background on Deanna Sobinski to reference as we go through this, there is none better than Deanna’s May, 2004 monthly letter.
I expect Lynn Johnston may draw some parallels between early Mike and Deanna and early Liz and Anthony; but I had that opinion back with Elly and John and it did not come true. I am honestly, not sure why it is that Lynn Johnston feels the need to tell the “Deanna goes to Burlington from Milborough” story, but she has talked about it a lot. I hope there is an actual story there with a payoff other than, “Dad decided to move to open up a hardware store, and we had to go with him.”
posted by howard at 11:49 PM
6 Comments:
When you get right down to it, Mira is the Canadian equivalent of another well-meaning but destructive meddler who wants to pass herself off as something she's not: Hyacinth Bucket. What they do, they do out of love because they want what they think is best for everyone but lack the knowledge of themselves and the world to do it right.
I can't believe Lynn is launching right into another hybrid sequence. Sadist!
Deanna disappeared sometime in the mid-eighties. When I have more time, I'll try to find the latest date before her disappearance.
dreadedcandiru2,
My problem with the way Mira Sobinski has been portrayed in the strip has less to do with Mira and more to do with the outright cruelties dished out to her by Mike and Deanna, which they justify by the idea she is an unwanted meddler. We have not seen the Sobinskis since the Pattersons moved into the Sharon Park Drive house, and started living life in imitation of the Pattersons. I hope that this hybrid might give us a modern visit by them, and their opinion on the current situation of Mike and Dee.
aprilp_katje,
I really have no recollection of Deanna having a spot in Michael's life for very long, but it would interesting to know where her last pre-car crash appearance was, timewise.
howard
That would be a good thing to see. I can understand Mike hating Mira because she refuses to bow down and worship his imaginary magnificence. Deanna, on the other hand, seems to have a bit of an Electra complex going on. I'm sure that Wilf wasn't the victim his daughter saw him as but you would convince Daddy's Little Girl that. What we see as a man who won't raise a voice or hand in anger to his wife, Deanna sees as a hopeless coward. Mira is caught between a fool who wants unearned respect and an ungrateful little heifer who was half-educated enough to resent her parents.
Oh, and I am nowhere NEAR being tired of your Michael, howtheduck--those posts help make this hybrid business bearable. :)
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