The End of Grandpa Jim?
I remember reading some months ago on-line articles about aphasia and the ability to recover from it, in order to snark the Grandpa Jim strips in For Better or For Worse. The articles said that persons with aphasia, if they recover their speech at all, usually do it in the first few months. Since that time we have seen Grandpa Jim with virtually no improvement since his since stroke last year. I thought for sure he would be an aphasia recoverer, so he would be able to narrate the old strips during the hybrid. Then I would also be an aphasia strip snarker, by pointing out the recovery should not have occurred at this point.
Instead I have been led by the nose by a significant number of interviews where Lynn Johnston said she was not going to kill any more characters. I seem to remember Lynn Johnston being coy about what was going to happen between Anthony and Eliazabeth. There has not been any doubt in my mind about those two getting together, but I suddenly have the feeling the same thing has been done to me with Grandpa Jim. After a year of torturing him, Lynn may have decided to finally knock him off. And foolish me, I believed her on those interviews.
Instead I have been led by the nose by a significant number of interviews where Lynn Johnston said she was not going to kill any more characters. I seem to remember Lynn Johnston being coy about what was going to happen between Anthony and Eliazabeth. There has not been any doubt in my mind about those two getting together, but I suddenly have the feeling the same thing has been done to me with Grandpa Jim. After a year of torturing him, Lynn may have decided to finally knock him off. And foolish me, I believed her on those interviews.
posted by howard at 12:05 AM
6 Comments:
I kinda gave up on FBORFW these last two weeks, but today's strip hit me between the eyes. Wow! It's 3:55am here in NYC and I'm in shock...
Anon NYC
You'll notice the timing, right? That this is happening at the same time Lisa is dying? I have a queasy feeling in my gizzard that Lynn is trying to steal Batiuk's thunder out of a need to be the bride at every funeral and corpse at every wedding.
You'll notice the timing, right? That this is happening at the same time Lisa is dying?
The timing of the two strips is interesting because we can clearly see the tremendous difference in the way that Johnston and Batiuk are portraying death.
Anon NYC
The Batiuk version is much more like the death of Marian Richards story Lynn Johnston did years ago, where she lingered over it and had a chance for everyone and their uncle to do their individual good-byes, wringing every ounce of sloppy sentimentality she possibly could out of it.
As for timing, I have to wonder about that, too. It has happened many more times than I can count in the comic strips, where I will see jokes on the comics pages about the same subject coming from different strips on the same day, and I am not just talking about the obviously-coordinated stuff like on April Fool’s day. I have often gotten the feeling that comic strip creators are aware of what their counterparts are doing on even the minor things. Since Batiuk has made such a big deal about his storyline and the timing of it, certainly Lynn Johnston could have known about it long enough to be able to adjust her storyline appropriately. Particularly considering that Lynn Johnston had publicly pledged repeatedly that no one else in her strip will die, this reversal and the timing of it do seem less than coincidental.
I looked up the latest revision of the character list on Wikipedia and noticed that they're plea-bargaining this away by saying that she said only that they wouldn't age with the implication that killing them off was still on the table.
Interesting. That kind of defensive statement practically says death is coming for Jim, if it's not already there.
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