Backpack Joke for the Dailies
The Houston Chronicle does not keep an on-line copy of the For Better or For Worse Sunday strips but does keep the dailies, so I suppose for that audience, repeating the joke about April carrying the heavy backpack from Sunday, September 2, is reasonable. For the rest of us, it is a little redundant, particularly considering the joke is not done any better than last time, even though the final panel pun makes more sense and April is even more slumped over from the weight of the backpack. The joke is that April is too weak to carry her pack; or she is too stupid to learn how to pack it properly; or that a history essay, a test, a science project and a book review should not be assigned all at once to our girl or it will cause her back strain. As before, I will point out my 9-year-old daughter carries that kind of weight in her backpack, and her posture is much better than April’s.
In today’s strip, an unknown girl asks April about her homework, and April gives her a big list. At one time, this girl probably would have been Becky McGuire, but as it is, she is probably just an unknown girl never to be seen again. I wonder why Eva is not being used here. Did putting her arms around Duncan during the talk with Gerald, forever mark her as a Duncan girl and not an April friend?
In these long school storylines, Lynn Johnston usually likes to throw in a little humour strip to balance out the rest of the drama. Today is that strip. If Lynn follows her usual strip sequence, we will see either Becky McGuire next or Shannon Lake. These would be unfortunate choices as far as the story-telling goes, because the people we really want to see are Duncan, Eva, and Luis to get their opinion on the Gerald situation without Gerald being there. Either of those choices would run the strip into next week. It is also possible that tomorrow’s strip will be April seeking consolation from her mother, as Liz did when she broke up with Paul Wright.
Personally I have enjoyed this week, because for the first time in what seems like months, something happened in For Better or For Worse. The hardest part about the hybrid is the way it creates an air of nothing happening at all.
In today’s strip, an unknown girl asks April about her homework, and April gives her a big list. At one time, this girl probably would have been Becky McGuire, but as it is, she is probably just an unknown girl never to be seen again. I wonder why Eva is not being used here. Did putting her arms around Duncan during the talk with Gerald, forever mark her as a Duncan girl and not an April friend?
In these long school storylines, Lynn Johnston usually likes to throw in a little humour strip to balance out the rest of the drama. Today is that strip. If Lynn follows her usual strip sequence, we will see either Becky McGuire next or Shannon Lake. These would be unfortunate choices as far as the story-telling goes, because the people we really want to see are Duncan, Eva, and Luis to get their opinion on the Gerald situation without Gerald being there. Either of those choices would run the strip into next week. It is also possible that tomorrow’s strip will be April seeking consolation from her mother, as Liz did when she broke up with Paul Wright.
Personally I have enjoyed this week, because for the first time in what seems like months, something happened in For Better or For Worse. The hardest part about the hybrid is the way it creates an air of nothing happening at all.
posted by howard at 10:28 PM
10 Comments:
Today is the ham-fistedly whimscial lull before a weepy storm at that. Too bad that the only thing that happened is April's setting out on her journey to become a carbon copy of Liz but at least she's moving somewhere. The rest of them are fixed in place forever.
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Its not that unlikey for April to have all those things assigned at once. She would have several classes taught by several teachers and in a large metropolitan school, could very easily be the only one in the entire school with the same class schedule as she has. I know that in my high school career (in a suburban public school in Western Canada), I had times when lots of things like that all piled up at the same time and other times where nothing of significance was due in any of my classes, since they had all had major projects that overlapped in time earlier.
dreadedcandiru2,
I suppose we will find out tomorrow what that weepy storm is. Hopefully something interesting, or at least hamfisted.
Anonymous,
While I will agree with you that April's homework load she described is not at all unlikely for a high school student, judging from the Sunday strip back in September 2, before she even started school, it appears that the Grade 11 April, seems to like overloading her backpack.
Well, whatever weeping session April does engage in wil be 'handled' ineffectually by a mother too emotionally removed from the world to do anyone any good. If she can't work up enough concern for her dying father, I don't see how she'll have it in her to help April.
dreadedcandiru2,
I don't see how she'll have it in her to help April.
I have no expectations for this higher than the comfort she gave Liz after she came back from the Paul visit in January. I think it depends on how badly Lynn Johnston wants to show everyone that Elly cares about April. What I am hoping for is a really bad pun.
Same here. A pun so bad it could make April forget her troubles by making her wonder if her parents are dipping into John's nitrous oxide.
dreadedcandiru2,
Sticky-out tongue laughing all around would make more sense then.
Maybe that's how they endure the pain of living meaningless lives: spending them too doped-up to care that they're failures.
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