Tuesday, November 06, 2007

John Smacked Around Part III

When I wrote that For Better or For Worse is using a series of John Patterson strips as a means for Lynn Johnston to vent about her divorce, I didn’t really think it was true. “Surely not,” I said. But here we are 3 days in a row of something exasperating John.

Today’s strip is a little dumbfounding. Something makes a huge “Ka Smash” sound, and I see a dust cloud and debris. What kinds of things can make a loud noise, a dust cloud and debris AND not cause anything to fall? The old joke, years gone by, is about the soufflé which people try to keep from falling, and comedy comes when after a series of door slams and loud accidents which had no effect, it is the tiniest little sound which ruins the soufflé and causes it to fall. That is what I thought of when I saw today’s For Better or For Worse. A slammed door might cause dust to rise, but what about the debris? My thought is little Michael is playing with “My First Chemistry set” and managed to cause an explosion, but I don’t know for sure. There is also the mysterious “puff puff” which indicates he was running from where he was to see if something fell in the house. This implies that whatever caused the “Ka Smash” was outside the house, or a good distance away.

More interesting is the idea that little Michael has that if the “Ka Smash” caused something to fall, then John Patterson would be upset. This implies that Michael has done things in the past, which have caused things to fall. So, in some respects, we should be happy this is a “Ka Smash”, because if Michael had a “Ka Boom” things would fall.

11 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

This means that Mike thinks John should be relieved that he doesn't have to bend down and pick up whatever went KA-BOOM, that he can clean up the mysterious mess standing up. It does make some sense because he may have noticed that Daddy has issues with lower back pain. Also, Elly might have, shall we say, impressed upon him the need not to drop things on the floor. Other than that, it's National Let's Annoy John week.

3:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

..and again, Elly the "stay-at-home" mom who bemoans having to do everything is absent. John is even feeding the baby but Elly is not keeping an eye on Michael. I know they move quickly, but Mike has been flooding the house and causing what seems to be significant destruction.

If Lynn is using these to show John in a bad light, it comes across to me as actually starting to feel sorry for John that Elly has not used any discipline with Mike and he pretty much runs wild all the time.

And again, the framing of this flashback coming from Liz is just so wrong. She's a BABY at the time this happened; but we're supposed to believe she is still relating these stories to April?

Sheesh.

DJ

8:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hummmm, I didn't really 'get' today's and certainly didn't laugh. May I retract my earlier comment about Lynn cringing and wishing everyone would forget? It seems more and more apparent that this woman is on a mission. Whoever Rod's love is (and I don't think it is the person previously mentioned on this site) I hope she has broad shoulders!

8:36 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Anonymous

You may certainly retract your earlier comment. I think we were all hoping that you wouldn’t have to retract it. As for your opinion on whoever Rod’s love is, you have piqued my curiosity. Who do you think it is? Or, why don’t you think it is the person previously mentioned on this site?

9:37 AM  
Blogger howard said...

DJ

We might be expected to believe it is still Elizabeth relating this tales of Michael torturing John, but the last addition commentary lines could have been made by anyone. And you are quite right, young Michael pretty much ran amok in the early strips.

9:38 AM  
Blogger howard said...

DreadedCandiru2

Lower back pain. That makes as much sense as any other reason I have seen for Mike’s concern that nothing fell. We are 50% into National Let's Annoy John week. Tomorrow will be the real proof that Lynn is intentionally putting these similarly-themed strips together, as she goes for > 50% of the week.

9:39 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

I've posted my concerns about that on the Yahoo! group but so far no one seems to have noticed or picked up on it. I expect to have Inman defend his beloved Foobs soon, though.

10:28 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Kindly ignore my earlier comment. Someone just posted about the pregnant possibility that John will get a football in a tender location. As for the back pain I mentioned, I have in my hot little hands one of the collections forom when Lynn was really good. Featured therein is a sequence where John has to see a chiropractor about his back.

10:35 AM  
Blogger howard said...

dreadedcandiru2,

Featured therein is a sequence where John has to see a chiropractor about his back.

Excellent researching. Lower back pain it is.

2:10 PM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Towards the end of the storyline, there was a strip that had Elly shoo the children away from him so he could rest. In the last panel, he was depressed that no one came to see him.

3:55 PM  
Blogger howard said...

dreadedcandiru2,

If only that strip sequence was from 1979-80, then you could be almost guaranteed it would show up in the hybrid.

4:33 PM  

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