Blood Cargo
The second in a series of books by Michael Patterson, the first being Stone Season, where the title is a one-syllable word, followed by a two-syllable word. What I really want to know in For Better or For Worse is not whether Michael Patterson can produce another novel, but how much money he made on his first novel. I have suspected that his first novel would jump into some bestseller list and receive exceptional critical acclaim, because the history in the strip shows Michael Patterson with extraordinary luck when it comes to what he wants to do. It is impossible to tell if Mike is any good in his universe if he only receives praise from his friends.
My favourite part of today’s strip is Carleen Stein’s implication that Mike is crazy. This sentence in particular is great for that, “You must go nuts with all this material, all these images, all this dialogue pounding around inside your mind.” If she is serious, then you have to wonder if Mike wrote some kind psychedelic, drug-induced, flight of consciousness, kind of book.
My least favourite part of the strip is the image of Carleen Stein. I know Laura Piché has written in, denying culpability for these jumps in the art style, but the artwork in today’s strip is another in a series that looks like the work of a completely, different artist than Lynn Johnston. If Mike had not said, “Carleen” I would not have known who the character was supposed to be. The Carleen Stein I know has wiry hair, chipmunk cheeks and a flat nose. Also, she doesn’t talk very much.
However, now that it is novel time, my greatest regret is that there are no longer any monthly letters on the For Better or For Worse website, where we can see excerpts of Mike’s novel. The monthly letters describing Stone Season were so bad, it was inspirational. I would love to see how Michael Patterson does with a thriller on the open seas in a windjammer. The possibilities are almost limitless.
My favourite part of today’s strip is Carleen Stein’s implication that Mike is crazy. This sentence in particular is great for that, “You must go nuts with all this material, all these images, all this dialogue pounding around inside your mind.” If she is serious, then you have to wonder if Mike wrote some kind psychedelic, drug-induced, flight of consciousness, kind of book.
My least favourite part of the strip is the image of Carleen Stein. I know Laura Piché has written in, denying culpability for these jumps in the art style, but the artwork in today’s strip is another in a series that looks like the work of a completely, different artist than Lynn Johnston. If Mike had not said, “Carleen” I would not have known who the character was supposed to be. The Carleen Stein I know has wiry hair, chipmunk cheeks and a flat nose. Also, she doesn’t talk very much.
However, now that it is novel time, my greatest regret is that there are no longer any monthly letters on the For Better or For Worse website, where we can see excerpts of Mike’s novel. The monthly letters describing Stone Season were so bad, it was inspirational. I would love to see how Michael Patterson does with a thriller on the open seas in a windjammer. The possibilities are almost limitless.
posted by howard at 11:21 PM
28 Comments:
"the history in the strip shows Michael Patterson with extraordinary luck when it comes to what he wants to do".
I think this can apply to just about all of the Patterson family. They all seem to get what they want a lot of the time. They get jobs easily. Elizabeth wanted Anthony, and got him. John wanted to buy a house for his trains, and he got it.
I know Laura Piché has written in, denying culpability for these jumps in the art style.
Wait--where? When? ::intrigued::
I’m not much of an art maven (expert) but this strip immediately struck me as someone else’s work - it resembles LJ’s style but there is something noticeably different about it. You have opened my eyes to many details that I would not have noticed had I not been reading HBB.
Anon NYC
muzition:
I have noticed that the Pattersons always get what they want with little effort. I've also noticed that they don't seem too thrilled with the result. They seem to take the ordinary precaution of wondering when the other shoe will drop too far.
Muzition
I think this can apply to just about all of the Patterson family. They all seem to get what they want a lot of the time.
I have often suspected this is a reflection of Lynn Johnston’s own personal philosophy. In her last CBC interview, she said something along the lines of how getting rich was easy as long as you worked hard and showed up on time.
aprilp_katje,
I know Laura Piché has written in, denying culpability for these jumps in the art style.
Wait--where? When? ::intrigued::
I am not sure how you link to specific comments in your posts. This is as close I can get. It’s in the comments towards the bottom.
Anon NYC
I’m not much of an art maven (expert) but this strip immediately struck me as someone else’s work - it resembles LJ’s style but there is something noticeably different about it.
I notice this especially if I compare to last week’s daily strips, where Liz’s face and body were occasionally distorted, they were not “cartoony”. In this strip, they are, especially when Mike is thinking about Mike not thinking in the final panel. I have theorized that perhaps Lynn Johnston is trying a cartoony “retro” style out in order to prepare her readers for her planned inserts into the chronological reprints in September, but the styles of the strips are still going back and forth from week-to-week, which implies that either Lynn is not consistent in her experimentation, or there is another artist at work. I have often suspected another artist, because this past year is not the first time I have seen dramatic changes in style. In fact, I have seen back-and-forth style changes in the art on this strip going back to early 2002. On the other hand, there have been many strips in the past where the Pattersons looked relatively normal, and the background characters looked like a mob of deformed mutants, so what we could be seeing is just the difference between careful Lynn and sloppy Lynn.
dreadedcandiru2,
I have noticed that the Pattersons always get what they want with little effort. I've also noticed that they don't seem too thrilled with the result.
This is definitely true. Michael Patterson spent a lot of time questioning or moping about over his writing success, usually for the purpose of having a friend or Deanna praise him. On the other hand, it is with great delight I have noted that John and Elly Patterson have yet to compliment Mike on his writing.
I too am sad that we don't get any samples of the great literary soon-to-be-classic "Blood Cargo".
Is this supposed to be a slave trader ship? That could be real interesting for Lynn's purple prose.
The main character is also supposed to be from Galveston; oh, what I wouldn't give to read Lynn's take on how some 20-something year old boy brought up there would speak and act! (My guess would be like a 60-year old accountant who has lived in his hometown suburb his entire life.)
howard:
On the other hand, it is with great delight I have noted that John and Elly Patterson have yet to compliment Mike on his writing.
That is strange especially when you remember that Jim's source of frustration during that visit Mike made to talk about his book was not that his grandson questioned
his sanity but that he could not give him an attaboy for his good fortune. It seems they're more interested in how much he makes that how he makes it.
Howard, wow, I'd completely missed the message from Laura Piché. ::waves::
FYI, if you go to the permalink for a blog entry (such as the one you linked above), you'll see each comment has a hyperlinked time stamp attached to it. That's the direct link to the comment in question. :)
debjyn
Is this supposed to be a slave trader ship? That could be real interesting for Lynn's purple prose.
The best references to the contents of the book come from:
Mike's Letter, May 2007
It's 1874, I'm 23. Having fought with my father for the last time, I signed on to a windjammer - one of the large cargo sailing vessels that carried goods between South America and the Southern United States. Having no skills other than short order cooks (learned in my parents' dockside restaurant in Galveston), I was put to work in the kitchen of the S.M.S. Princess Aleksandra Janiak, a worn, iron-hulled "maiden" that ferried everything from sugarcane to guano across the Caribbean Seas.
(My guess would be like a 60-year old accountant who has lived in his hometown suburb his entire life.)
My guess would be like a 60-year-old Canadian woman living in Corbeil, Ontario; if the dialogue between April and her friends has been any example of Lynn’s youth-speak these days.
DreadedCandiru2
That is strange especially when you remember that Jim's source of frustration during that visit Mike made to talk about his book was not that his grandson questioned
his sanity but that he could not give him an attaboy for his good fortune.
Grandpa Jim gives praise. During the sequence where April messes up her band performance with a broken G-string, I remember John’s comment was that there were worse bands than hers performing as a comfort. The only one of these hard-hearted Pattersons who went up to heartbroken April’s room to talk to her was Grandpa Jim. And Grandpa Jim was the one who believed April when she told her story about being threatened by Kortney Krelbutz. As he has been portrayed, Grandpa Jim would compliment Mike. John and Elly have only seen fit to compliment Mike when he rakes leaves without asking, or picks them up from the airport, or repays a loan. They can’t give a compliment unless they get something out of it.
aprilp_katje
FYI, if you go to the permalink for a blog entry (such as the one you linked above), you'll see each comment has a hyperlinked time stamp attached to it. That's the direct link to the comment in question. :)
Thanks for the information. Now I am all-powerful linking man.
howard:
John and Elly have only seen fit to compliment Mike when he rakes leaves without asking, or picks them up from the airport, or repays a loan. They can’t give a compliment unless they get something out of it.
I can't help but wonder what soured them on life because, from what I've seen, they have so little to complain about. It's amazing how joyless they are when their lives are so much better than most people's. They didn't start out that way so I'd say that something awful happened off-camera that turned them into the remorseful groaners they've become.
It looks to me like Laura Piche either didn't understand what you meant, or was sneakily changing the subject. Although she uses the term "retro-style," the one and only thing she denies in her comment is retouching the old strips (hence the invitation to check the originals in the old collections for yourself). She does not actually address the new material drawn in an approximation of Lynn's 1979 style.
DreadedCandiru2,
They didn't start out that way so I'd say that something awful happened off-camera that turned them into the remorseful groaners they've become.
I think it was the puns that did it. If you had to make a pun, day-in and day-out, it would probably take the joy out of your life.
Diamond Joe
Although she uses the term "retro-style," the one and only thing she denies in her comment is retouching the old strips (hence the invitation to check the originals in the old collections for yourself).
This is true. By mentioning the collection books, “retro-style” = “reprint” or “touched-up reprint” for me. However, in her post, the other term used aside from “retro-style” is “current day” and about that she says:
I'm still completing the current day backgrounds.
She uses no term for the new material drawn in an approximation of Lynn's 1979 style, so I have made a presumption that she doesn't do that. However, you are right, she did not specifically say that.
I'm not even all that interested in knowing who drew the oldish-style new drawings. There were so few of them, they hardly have an impact on me other than as an oddity. I'm more curious about the varying styles we are seeing in current, present-day strips.
I wasn't sure what to make of Laura's comment about checking the old collections. For some reason I took it to mean "look the style of the current strips isn't all that different from what you'll find in the recent collections." And I found myself thinking that this didn't really address the issues howtheduck had raised.
Mike, no doubt, embodies the kind of wunderkid burst of recognised genius that 'The Globe and Mail' promotes every week.
This post summed it up for me:
http://sonnydrysdalepresents.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-hate-michael-patterson.html
As I mentioned, I believe Lynn Patterson is sublimating her own literary lack of fulfillment into Mike's reach-for-the-stars success. I fully expect the last episode will involve him accepting a Pulitzer, while giving a speech about his dad's model trains.
I could be wrong, but I thought that Laura was claiming only to format the cartoons for the syndicate, and that we can compare the syndicated cartoons to those in the books (which she doesn't format?) to prove that nothing changes in her hands.
I could be wrong about that, because while typing that out it didn't seem to make sense.
Harvey:
Actually, I think Lynn is projecting her own success onto Mike. After all, Lynn receives large checks on a regular basis thanks to her writing activity, regardless of whether it is any good or not. So does Mike, apparently.
aprilp_katje,
I'm not even all that interested in knowing who drew the oldish-style new drawings. There were so few of them, they hardly have an impact on me other than as an oddity. I'm more curious about the varying styles we are seeing in current, present-day strips.
The reason I was interested, is because one of the art styles in the current, present-day strips matches that of the oldish-style new drawings.
Harvey,
Great link. Thanks for sharing.
I fully expect the last episode will involve him accepting a Pulitzer, while giving a speech about his dad's model trains.
I disagree. I maintain that any speech Mike does accepting any award will be a speech about how wonderful Elly Patterson is.
paladin,
I could be wrong, but I thought that Laura was claiming only to format the cartoons for the syndicate, and that we can compare the syndicated cartoons to those in the books (which she doesn't format?) to prove that nothing changes in her hands.
That is definitely part of what she wrote, however she also wrote how she only the backgrounds in the current, modern strip.
Joshua,
After all, Lynn receives large checks on a regular basis thanks to her writing activity, regardless of whether it is any good or not.
This is true. Lynn Johnston has reached that point in her career where people will accept anything she does, much to her detriment.
Elizabeth wanted Anthony, and got him.
I thought it was "Elizabeth wanted a profoundly safe and dull life, just like her mom, and got it."
It is extremely interesting for me to read this post. Thanks for it. I like such themes and anything connected to this matter. BTW, try to add some images :).
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