Saturday, March 29, 2008

Who is That?

As predicted, the whole sequence of this week in For Better or For Worse is set up for no other purpose than to get Grandpa Jim to think back on the day of his marriage to Grandma Marian and draw comparisons between her and Elizabeth. However, I never would have predicted that the artist for this strip, when drawing Panel 5, would be unable to copy the dress design from Panels 1 or 2 into the panel with Grandma Marian depicted on her wedding day. Without that duplication, the whole dress sequence falls completely apart to anyone with the ability to look from Panel 1 and 2 to Panel 5. Now you have the questions of:

1. Is the dress Liz wearing really Grandma Marian’s?
2. Where are Grandma Marian’s glasses?
3. Who is this woman with Grandpa Jim?

Actually, the real question to be answered is, “How low does your personal artistic integrity have to go, before you are too lazy to copy a picture of the dress that is in the same strip, when the whole storyline depends on it?” I would say pretty darn low.

8 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Well, the plotline has been phoned in for a while so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened to the artwork. Lynn just doesn't care any more.

3:31 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

Gramps doesn't have the same suit as in the Family Business memory either. He had on a dark suit when dancing with prim, glasses-wearing bridal Marian. In his retconned memory he's wearing a light suit. And suddenly we are also supposed to think young Marian looked like present-day Liz. Instead of the scary, grim, nearly sexless woman she was.

5:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I personally think the faces on both Jim and Marian in the wedding memory make them look at least 50 years old. And the Yahoo! colorist made Marian's hair gray, which increases the effect. I found it jarring.

I feel really bad for Iris. It seems like this family continually ignores her, yet Iris continues to be devoted to Jim. I can't help feeling it is sad for her to waste her last able-bodied years caring for a husband who doesn't really seem to love or value her anymore. I kind of wish Iris would at least be shown taking a long vacation with her children someplace exciting.

6:39 AM  
Blogger howard said...

dreadedcandiru2,

Well, the plotline has been phoned in for a while so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened to the artwork. Lynn just doesn't care any more.

I definitely agree. It is supposed to be a majour plot point that this is the same dress Grandma Marian wore, and Lynn doesn't even care enough to try and put that across with the art.

6:45 AM  
Blogger howard said...

aprilp_katje,

And suddenly we are also supposed to think young Marian looked like present-day Liz. Instead of the scary, grim, nearly sexless woman she was.

True enough. Whenever Jim has thought back to young Marian before in this strip, she looked like a young Marian and had her glasses. This is a significant departure.

6:46 AM  
Blogger howard said...

qnjones,

I personally think the faces on both Jim and Marian in the wedding memory make them look at least 50 years old. And the Yahoo! colorist made Marian's hair gray, which increases the effect. I found it jarring.

True enough. Even in the black-and-white version, they look old.

I feel really bad for Iris. It seems like this family continually ignores her, yet Iris continues to be devoted to Jim.

Jim's line about how he used to be happy and he's thinking about Marian, really hammered that home for me.

6:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

qnjones:

I feel really bad for Iris. It seems like this family continually ignores her, yet Iris continues to be devoted to Jim. I can't help feeling it is sad for her to waste her last able-bodied years caring for a husband who doesn't really seem to love or value her anymore.

I doubt that the Pattersons will have much use for her after Jim dies and may try to make her shoulder all the blame for his death. It matters little that she shouldn't have been made to be primary caregiver, she 'promised' them she'd look after things and they intend holding her to it.

7:13 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

As I mentioned at Foobiverse, I did not read the faces in the final panel as "old" when I gave the strip my initial read-through (in B/W). I had to look at the Yahoo version to see what people were talking about. Afterwards, I looked at the B/W version again and only then did I notice the smile lines on Jim and so-called Marian's faces. I have a theory that the colorized grey hair put a zap on people's brains!

8:36 AM  

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