Old Jokes
One of the things about comic strips is that you frequently see the creators of the strips run through the same pop culture items to make their jokes on the comic strip. Many times these things show up on the same day, which shows that the creative talent of the comic strip page thinks a lot alike. In the reprint version of For Better or For Worse today, we have a different trend, where the joke is based on a pop culture phrase which was very popular in the past, but when used today simply reminds me the phrase was once popular and a desperate creator used it. The phrase is “Your place or mine?” and the joke is: “He went to his place and I went to mine.” I actually remember that joke being used before in many different places other than For Better or For Worse in the past. Seeing it today made me feel old, and the joke resonated in areas of my mind which had not resonated in quite some time. It reminded me how difficult it is to create humour which is timeless, that people will find funny no matter how much time passes.
In the comic strip pages, this is especially difficult, because there is a tendency to rely on topical humour. The truly great artists can write material which is enjoyable reading for years to come, however it is a lot easier with drama than with humour. When I think of the great old strips, my memory of quality tends to run to the adventure strips. Unfortunately for Lynn Johnston, what is becoming readily more and more apparent as she runs through the strips from the first year or so of For Better or For Worse, is that she was quite an inexperienced writer and artist when she first started. She did not hit her stride until some years later. The artwork in today’s strip is so bad, it is hard to get past it to the humour of the strip. I am distracted the car drawn so poorly, my kids could have done a better job drawing one from memory. I am distracted by the memory from where this joke came. I think this is the reason the Peanuts reprints do not come from the earliest of Charles Schulz’s work. Lynn Johnston’s idea is that since these For Better or For Worse hybrid strips were in a limited number of papers, the lack of exposure will cause people will think of it as new material. The problem is that they may also think of it as poorly done, amateurish, and not very funny material.
In the comic strip pages, this is especially difficult, because there is a tendency to rely on topical humour. The truly great artists can write material which is enjoyable reading for years to come, however it is a lot easier with drama than with humour. When I think of the great old strips, my memory of quality tends to run to the adventure strips. Unfortunately for Lynn Johnston, what is becoming readily more and more apparent as she runs through the strips from the first year or so of For Better or For Worse, is that she was quite an inexperienced writer and artist when she first started. She did not hit her stride until some years later. The artwork in today’s strip is so bad, it is hard to get past it to the humour of the strip. I am distracted the car drawn so poorly, my kids could have done a better job drawing one from memory. I am distracted by the memory from where this joke came. I think this is the reason the Peanuts reprints do not come from the earliest of Charles Schulz’s work. Lynn Johnston’s idea is that since these For Better or For Worse hybrid strips were in a limited number of papers, the lack of exposure will cause people will think of it as new material. The problem is that they may also think of it as poorly done, amateurish, and not very funny material.
posted by howard at 1:18 AM
6 Comments:
The first years of anything popular and lasting are almost always painful to look at. I can't, for instance, really watch the first season of M*A*S*H without wincing. As you say, Lynn would be a lot better off if she pretended the strip really started in 1982 or so, when she started hitting her stride.
I'm also distracted by the not-belted-in Michael in the back seat of that car!
dreadedcandiru2,
Sometimes the first parts of things are only really tolerable to completists. I agree with you about the first season of M*A*S*H. 1982 might be a better time for Lynn to start, or at least a time when her art style had developed enough so that the characters did not look so radically different than they do today. Old Connie looks almost nothing like new Connie, and sex-obsessed 1980 Elly is like a complete stranger to 2007 Elly.
aprilp_katje,
Not-belted-in Michael was odd. Maybe things were different in Canada, but I have clear recollections in the United States that, although not wearing a seat belt was not against the law, there were a number of public service advertising campaigns emphasizing its importance by 1980.
Howard:
That was about when they started the really blood-soaked PSAs here, too. I remeber a doozy showing a belted-in family surviving while the people who hit them (wearing body armor, of all things) got turned to mush. Also, the Cancer Society ads used to end with an air-raid siren, like they were Lisa Moore at Congress reminding you 'Cancer Is Bad'.
Speaking of Young Mike not being buckled in, I was actually wondering if Lynn was going to add seatbelts to the old strips like Jeff/Bil Keane did to the old FC strips back in August, but it looks like that won't be the case if she didn't do it with that strip.
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