How to Wash a Kid When You Have no Shower Soap
I bought my first washer and dryer when I moved into my first house in 1988. I was delighted to see that Elly’s washer from 1979 looked a lot like mine, except the lid for mine goes up and back instead of up and to the left. Now I am trying to think if I have ever seen a clothes washer lid go up and to the left, I am so used to mine. Well, Elly’s does. Her dryer looks a lot like mine used to, before it went belly up 2 years ago. I still have the 1988 washer though. It is one of the last vestiges of my single life in my house and still works great.
Another interesting detail to me is the peeling wallpaper on the wall just above Elly’s head. In more recent years, the Patterson house has shown no signs of deterioration, but this one does. No offense to Laura Piché, background artist, but this strip has a much better background than most of hers, because it is hand drawn and the artist did not use a ruler to make everything perfect. When you do this, you lose the details which make backgrounds part of the story instead of a decoration. Looking at today’s For Better or For Worse strip in particular, I feel a sense of loss that Lynn Johnston decided not to do her own backgrounds any more and hired Piché; because those details are as much a part of the story as John Patterson making a joke about how to wash little Lizzie.
As for me, I will be going to a Boy Scout Camporee Friday night through Sunday afternoon, so the Howard Bunt Blog will be on hiatus until then. Saturday’s strip will probably be another reprint, so no big loss. However, Sunday will probably be new, since last Sunday’s was new and we know the one on April 20 is new. Maybe I will comment about Sunday when I get back. I hope you all have a good weekend.
Another interesting detail to me is the peeling wallpaper on the wall just above Elly’s head. In more recent years, the Patterson house has shown no signs of deterioration, but this one does. No offense to Laura Piché, background artist, but this strip has a much better background than most of hers, because it is hand drawn and the artist did not use a ruler to make everything perfect. When you do this, you lose the details which make backgrounds part of the story instead of a decoration. Looking at today’s For Better or For Worse strip in particular, I feel a sense of loss that Lynn Johnston decided not to do her own backgrounds any more and hired Piché; because those details are as much a part of the story as John Patterson making a joke about how to wash little Lizzie.
As for me, I will be going to a Boy Scout Camporee Friday night through Sunday afternoon, so the Howard Bunt Blog will be on hiatus until then. Saturday’s strip will probably be another reprint, so no big loss. However, Sunday will probably be new, since last Sunday’s was new and we know the one on April 20 is new. Maybe I will comment about Sunday when I get back. I hope you all have a good weekend.
posted by howard at 10:51 PM
4 Comments:
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Saturday's strip is, of course, another rerun. It's not as if Lynn could wrap these things up by returning us to the present day and give us a stupid moral to her flashbackery. If we were to see Elly tell Connie that she had to run her children's lives to get her own back after years of being treated like a doormat tomorrow instead of last Tuesday, it would be just as silly a notion but it would have flowed more logically. Instead, Lynn puts the cart before the horses Elly has to own.
dreadedcandiru2,
It's not as if Lynn could wrap these things up by returning us to the present day and give us a stupid moral to her flashbackery.
We haven't seen a return from the flashbacks with a moral in awhile. Not only that, but this time in the reprints, moreso than any others, Lynn Johnston has not really made any attempt to show this sequence is a flashback of memories for Elly while talking to Connie. It is almost as if she expects us to understand that, after several times of doing this, when you see Elly together with Connie Poirier, reprints will occur.
howtheduck:
It is almost as if she expects us to understand that, after several times of doing this, when you see Elly together with Connie Poirier, reprints will occur.
Yep. And they don't have to make sense either. Asking her to make things make sense is the one thing that can be guaranteed to get her back up.
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