Heroes Punched Out by the Punch Line
It’s rare to see a Sunday colour strip from Lynn Johnston where it doesn’t appear to be a 3-panel joke stretched throughout 11 panels. In today’s For Better or For Worse, we see one. There is an actual storyline that runs all the panels, without the usual filler.
It runs in 4 basic parts
1. In order to keep Michael and Lawrence from fighting over the right to be Batman (instead of sidekick Robin), Elly suggests that the two of them make something up. Speaking a parent who has kids who are fond of Batman and Robin, I can tell you that Robin (as the leader of the Teen Titans on the very well-done Teen Titans animated program) does not fall into the category of sidekick no one wants to be anymore. I don’t expect Lynn Johnston to know this, because her most recent pop culture reference to Batman and Robin is through the 1960s television show, which my kids know only because I forced them to watch the movie. If the new-runs were operating in 1980, Michael and Lawrence would know the Super-Friends. It is easy to criticize Lynn Johnston’s pop culture references because she is usually terrible at them. But I digress. The interesting part of the sequence is that Elly is aware enough of the dynamic between Michael and Lawrence to know that they will start fighting over who can be Batman. For this strip, this is pretty subtle plotting and an excellent start to the story.
2. In order to keep Michael and Lawrence from making burping and farting noises, Elly steps in again. This time she is not preventing a fight. The boys appear to be having fun with ideas that kids their age find to be hysterically funny. As often as Lynn Johnston resorts to strips whose humour is based on bodily function, you know she thinks they are funny too. Nevertheless, Elly divides the line between good stuff and stupid stuff, where what the kids were doing is stupid. It’s a harsh viewpoint, because it includes the word “stupid.” That may be what Elly thinks but she could have phrased it more delicately than that. Not too bad so far, because we get to see Elly's weakness as a parent.
3. The third sequence has to do with whether or not Burpman and Tootman are funny. To the boys Elly does not laugh, and yet by herself, Elly is laughing hysterically over their antics and they see her doing it. Yes, Michael and Lawrence, that is what you call being a hypocrite. It is mainstay of the modern attitudes of the Pattersons. That begs the question why Elly bothered to stop them from playing as Burpman and Tootman. If they think it is funny and are having a good time, and Elly thinks it is funny; then why can’t Elly admit it is funny? What is the overriding paradigm that prevents her from laughing with the boys instead of laughing in hiding? For example, I remember some years ago when my step-mother-in-law caught her very young niece on top of on an ironing board pretending it was a surfboard. She thought it was very funny, but pretended she did not think it was funny, for fear the niece would repeat the activity and get injured if the ironing board collapsed on her. There’s an instance I could see where safety overrides enjoying the humour. In this case though, I can only imagine that Elly does not want Michael or Lawrence to think burp and fart jokes are funny. It is a poor reason, but it is in character with our old friend, Elly the hypocrite.
So, far the storyline makes sense. Elly prevents a fight between the kids, then starts a fight between herself and the kids, and shows herself to be a hypocrite. Everything flows well until we get to part four.
4. In the fourth part Lawrence equates laughing with saving the world, a mistake no self-respecting crime-fighter familiar with 1960s Batman would ever make. After all, the villains in that old TV series did a lot of laughing. Frank Gorshin’s Riddler laughed maniacally though almost all his scenes. Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was known for his laugh imitating a bird call. And of course, there was the Crown Prince of Laughter, Cesar Romero’s Joker. It was Adam West’s Batman who never laughed, but kept a straight face through all of it. When you get right down to it, this final panel, this Hallmark Card moment, is yet another attempt by Lynn Johnston to say something trite in order to get people to clip the strip out and put it on their refrigerator. Instead of accomplishing that, it pulls Lawrence Poirier out of character and effectively ruins what was one of the better Sunday colour strips in awhile.
It runs in 4 basic parts
1. In order to keep Michael and Lawrence from fighting over the right to be Batman (instead of sidekick Robin), Elly suggests that the two of them make something up. Speaking a parent who has kids who are fond of Batman and Robin, I can tell you that Robin (as the leader of the Teen Titans on the very well-done Teen Titans animated program) does not fall into the category of sidekick no one wants to be anymore. I don’t expect Lynn Johnston to know this, because her most recent pop culture reference to Batman and Robin is through the 1960s television show, which my kids know only because I forced them to watch the movie. If the new-runs were operating in 1980, Michael and Lawrence would know the Super-Friends. It is easy to criticize Lynn Johnston’s pop culture references because she is usually terrible at them. But I digress. The interesting part of the sequence is that Elly is aware enough of the dynamic between Michael and Lawrence to know that they will start fighting over who can be Batman. For this strip, this is pretty subtle plotting and an excellent start to the story.
2. In order to keep Michael and Lawrence from making burping and farting noises, Elly steps in again. This time she is not preventing a fight. The boys appear to be having fun with ideas that kids their age find to be hysterically funny. As often as Lynn Johnston resorts to strips whose humour is based on bodily function, you know she thinks they are funny too. Nevertheless, Elly divides the line between good stuff and stupid stuff, where what the kids were doing is stupid. It’s a harsh viewpoint, because it includes the word “stupid.” That may be what Elly thinks but she could have phrased it more delicately than that. Not too bad so far, because we get to see Elly's weakness as a parent.
3. The third sequence has to do with whether or not Burpman and Tootman are funny. To the boys Elly does not laugh, and yet by herself, Elly is laughing hysterically over their antics and they see her doing it. Yes, Michael and Lawrence, that is what you call being a hypocrite. It is mainstay of the modern attitudes of the Pattersons. That begs the question why Elly bothered to stop them from playing as Burpman and Tootman. If they think it is funny and are having a good time, and Elly thinks it is funny; then why can’t Elly admit it is funny? What is the overriding paradigm that prevents her from laughing with the boys instead of laughing in hiding? For example, I remember some years ago when my step-mother-in-law caught her very young niece on top of on an ironing board pretending it was a surfboard. She thought it was very funny, but pretended she did not think it was funny, for fear the niece would repeat the activity and get injured if the ironing board collapsed on her. There’s an instance I could see where safety overrides enjoying the humour. In this case though, I can only imagine that Elly does not want Michael or Lawrence to think burp and fart jokes are funny. It is a poor reason, but it is in character with our old friend, Elly the hypocrite.
So, far the storyline makes sense. Elly prevents a fight between the kids, then starts a fight between herself and the kids, and shows herself to be a hypocrite. Everything flows well until we get to part four.
4. In the fourth part Lawrence equates laughing with saving the world, a mistake no self-respecting crime-fighter familiar with 1960s Batman would ever make. After all, the villains in that old TV series did a lot of laughing. Frank Gorshin’s Riddler laughed maniacally though almost all his scenes. Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was known for his laugh imitating a bird call. And of course, there was the Crown Prince of Laughter, Cesar Romero’s Joker. It was Adam West’s Batman who never laughed, but kept a straight face through all of it. When you get right down to it, this final panel, this Hallmark Card moment, is yet another attempt by Lynn Johnston to say something trite in order to get people to clip the strip out and put it on their refrigerator. Instead of accomplishing that, it pulls Lawrence Poirier out of character and effectively ruins what was one of the better Sunday colour strips in awhile.
posted by howard at 2:03 PM
3 Comments:
howard,
It seems to me that it isn't just hypocrisy on Elly's part that keep her from telling the children that Burpman and Tootman are hilarious; she has the image of being ultraserious to maintain and she guards it rather jealously. She thinks that if they know she isn't grim and humorless 24/7, her authority goes down the drain.
Instead of losing authority, she has Lawrence Poirier convinced that he can save the world by making Elly laugh. That shows how effective she is at grim and humorless.
Too bad being stony-faced isn't an Olympic sport; Elly could bring home the gold every time.
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