Hybrid Scheming
It is becoming more and more obvious the method by which Lynn Johnston is picking which strips to use for the For Better or For Worse hybrid. She has the whole run of strips from 1980 she is using under the premise that since the strip was out in less than 200 papers in 1980, these strips will be new to most people. That is probably true.
The complaints about the hybrid have to do with:
a. The narrators of the strips have little-to-nothing to do with the strips, nor could they have remembered the events of them, much less cared about them.
b. A theme is introduced for the narration, and the strips do not match the theme more than the first couple of strips in the reprints.
c. The story doesn’t make sense with the inserted reprints.
These are unimportant points to Lynn Johnston. What appears to be important to her is:
a. The theme, if there is one, is used to introduce the first strip only and after that, then the strips chosen run in sequence as they originally did regardless of the story presented, except not every strip may be used in order to make room to set up the narration.
b. The narrators chosen are chosen not because they can remember those things happening, but because the chosen ones are given exposure. We have had Michael and Merrie, Michael and Deanna, Connie and Elly and Iris, April and Liz. That is cast coverage, not counting the evil John Patterson.
c. These are reprints to give Lynn time off, and the narration strips were never intended to tell a coherent story outside of introducing the reprints.
If we can get our minds around what is important to Lynn Johnston in the hybrids, then we can realize little details about the hybrid making sense are an unrealistic expectation.
The complaints about the hybrid have to do with:
a. The narrators of the strips have little-to-nothing to do with the strips, nor could they have remembered the events of them, much less cared about them.
b. A theme is introduced for the narration, and the strips do not match the theme more than the first couple of strips in the reprints.
c. The story doesn’t make sense with the inserted reprints.
These are unimportant points to Lynn Johnston. What appears to be important to her is:
a. The theme, if there is one, is used to introduce the first strip only and after that, then the strips chosen run in sequence as they originally did regardless of the story presented, except not every strip may be used in order to make room to set up the narration.
b. The narrators chosen are chosen not because they can remember those things happening, but because the chosen ones are given exposure. We have had Michael and Merrie, Michael and Deanna, Connie and Elly and Iris, April and Liz. That is cast coverage, not counting the evil John Patterson.
c. These are reprints to give Lynn time off, and the narration strips were never intended to tell a coherent story outside of introducing the reprints.
If we can get our minds around what is important to Lynn Johnston in the hybrids, then we can realize little details about the hybrid making sense are an unrealistic expectation.
posted by howard at 10:33 PM
12 Comments:
That dovetails nicely with John getting scalded in today's strip. She might say there are no hard feelings but I can see another purpose to this: making Rod's fictional avatar look bad. Since Rod's primary complaint was, not to put too fine a point on it, that John was such a dick back then, that shouldn't be to hard. All Lynn has to do is let John run his damn mouth and tolerate the presence of his Leisure Suit Larry best friend.
Weirdly, though, Lynn's sequencing of these old strips is haphazard. Today's strip comes right after the "Why did I hafta get born first" strip in the I've Got the One More Washload Blues. Thirteen pages later, the Liz-hits-Mike-in-the-eye-with-the-rattle strip appears. Fifteen pages after that, Mike dangles the bottle from a string.
Back when it first ran, I had a problem with John jumping out of the shower with a towel in place to cover his willy. I still do. Why did he have a towel in the shower with him, and assuming he did (shelf of towels at end of long bath) would he really have bothered to grab one in the midst of being scalded? Just drow him for the waist up. A small niggling point, but so nice (thanks Howard) to have a forum in which to voice my irritation!
Whoa, a Freudian slip. That was to have been 'draw him' not 'drow him' which seems pretty close to 'drown him'!
"If we can get our minds around what is important to Lynn Johnston in the hybrids, then we can realize little details about the hybrid making sense are an unrealistic expectation."
But this attitude of Lynn's is also what makes the hybrid...well, almost embarassing. To have this running in national papers, looking so disjointed, primitively drawn, and no narrative sense to the regular comic readers is too amateurish. It's like watching someone walking around with their underwear showing and oblivious to all the whispers and stares.
DJ
dreadedcandiru2,
You’re right that if Lynn Johnston wanted to bear John Patterson any malice through her selection of hybrid strips today would be a good one. He fit the bill as the classic “male chauvinist pig” a lot in the early strips, so it would not be hard to run a “best of John” sequence, if that’s what she wanted to do.
aprilp_katje,
Thanks for pointing out the jumping around. I got the impression the prior hybrid selections were sequential storylines, so what we have today for this sequence is actually the first strip which followed a prior one chronologically. I wonder if tomorrow’s will be the one after today’s.
Anonymous,
You are welcome for the forum. As for John and the towel, I did look at the final panel and masked off John from the waist up to see if the joke would still be carried off and it looks to me like it would. You still have the shower head and the steam and his scary face.
However, instead of a towel, Lynn Johnston could have blocked the view of that part of his body with something more realistic, like Michael’s head standing in front of the shower to observe the effect of his experiment, with his hand still on the toilet handle.
DJ.
To have this running in national papers, looking so disjointed, primitively drawn, and no narrative sense to the regular comic readers is too amateurish.
I am not going to disagree with you there, and certainly some of the comments I have heard in the interviews over the last 2 months with Lynn Johnston have brought that up. They point out that the readers are confused about what is going on. After all, when Greg Evans wants to take a little vacation and show some Luann reprints, he puts a Luann head on the reprints and has her say that Greg is on vacation and here is some of his favourite old Luanns. In that situation, the reader knows what is going on. If the syndicate keeps getting comments about it, then I am sure the message will eventually sink in with Lynn that she needs her hybrids to make more sense. I hope.
Lynn may not plan to age the characters or kill them off before the time freeze but that doesn't mean that John and Elly's marriage needs to stay intact. She promised nothing about that that I could see. If she does plan on doing that, she has a lot of examples of John acting like a douche the bolster her case.
dreadedcandiru2,
In one of those interviews, she flat out said she was not going to write John and Elly getting divorced. I think slandering his character with strips will be all we will see.
I admit to skimming through her interviews so I missed that part. As you've said, she has plenty of material that would present John in the least favorable light possible which should be more than enough for her.
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