Long Live King Richard
Today’s For Better or For Worse left me extremely confused. The Nichols boys, are Christopher and Richard. Richard was born in year 3 of the original strip continuity so he was 2-3 years younger than Elizabeth, but back in the September, 2008 new-runs he was established to be slightly younger than Elizabeth, while Christopher appeared to be slight younger than Mike.
Now, in today’s For Better or For Worse, Richard appears to be the same age as Michael and Christopher is nowhere to be seen. If 2 boys of similar age to back how they appeared in September appeared, I would say that Lynn just got the names mixed up. She is starting to get bad with that, when back in August she replaced Gary and Vivian Crane with the Crows.
However, the appearance of only one boy makes me wonder if it really is a simple mix-up of names. Lynn’s already played fast and loose with the Nichols boys’ ages, so there is no reason she could not have done that again. OR the other possibility is that Christopher is now gone and Lynn plans to write Anne Nichols as a mother with only one child from here on out.
The other thought that goes through my head is that Richard may have killed Christopher to take his place, and Michael is very lucky the violence did not have a chance to escalate much further, or Mike may have also been replaced by Richard.
To further confuse matters, we see Wow Komix and Komix Keen. There was a Wow Comics back in the 1940s and another comic book called Keene Detective is as close as I can find to Komix Keen. I seriously doubt that Lynn plans to set the storyline back in the 1940s, however, if it were set in the modern day, then these comics with their titles would be collectors items and not comics to leave for children to play with.
Now, in today’s For Better or For Worse, Richard appears to be the same age as Michael and Christopher is nowhere to be seen. If 2 boys of similar age to back how they appeared in September appeared, I would say that Lynn just got the names mixed up. She is starting to get bad with that, when back in August she replaced Gary and Vivian Crane with the Crows.
However, the appearance of only one boy makes me wonder if it really is a simple mix-up of names. Lynn’s already played fast and loose with the Nichols boys’ ages, so there is no reason she could not have done that again. OR the other possibility is that Christopher is now gone and Lynn plans to write Anne Nichols as a mother with only one child from here on out.
The other thought that goes through my head is that Richard may have killed Christopher to take his place, and Michael is very lucky the violence did not have a chance to escalate much further, or Mike may have also been replaced by Richard.
To further confuse matters, we see Wow Komix and Komix Keen. There was a Wow Comics back in the 1940s and another comic book called Keene Detective is as close as I can find to Komix Keen. I seriously doubt that Lynn plans to set the storyline back in the 1940s, however, if it were set in the modern day, then these comics with their titles would be collectors items and not comics to leave for children to play with.
posted by howard at 11:14 PM
10 Comments:
howard,
If 2 boys of similar age to back how they appeared in September appeared, I would say that Lynn just got the names mixed up. She is starting to get bad with that, when back in August she replaced Gary and Vivian Crane with the Crows.
And if you were ask her about this on CT, you'd get a self-justifying, snotty sounding and unsatisfying answer. If she is going senile, she's doing so in a way that preserves her arrogant and tetchy personality.
Yes. More senility. She obviously confused the names. What a mess this strip is turning into since she fired her staff. It's obvious that someone must have been trying to help Lynn with continuity because she's fallen to pieces on that score ever since they were let go.
dreadedcandiru2,
And if you were ask her about this on CT, you'd get a self-justifying, snotty sounding and unsatisfying answer.
Actually I already did that back when Richard first appeared and she gave me an answer that said she was taking continuity only from her books in print. It wasn’t self-justifying or snotty sounding; but it was ultimately unsatisfying. I went on a tangent based on the idea; because collection Books 1 and 3 are not in print and those are the books where we see Anne Nichols before Richard is born and the book where Richard is born. So, there was some kind of bizarre logic to it. As usual it was just me on a tangent. Lynn showed me her answer was not really the case because, up until Farley reappeared, her reprints were all from Book 1, which is not in print.
qnjones,
What a mess this strip is turning into since she fired her staff. It's obvious that someone must have been trying to help Lynn with continuity because she's fallen to pieces on that score ever since they were let go.
True enough. This would explain things like (a) Cranes become Crows, (b) Grandma Marian’s ghost that looks nothing like Grandma Marian, (c) Grandma Marian’s 1980s-style wedding dress, and (d) the repetitive appearances of Edgar without Dixie. I know there were enough continuity glitches in the past for me to wonder if there was a staff helping her with this. In retrospect, I can see that little things like not remembering where the furniture was in a scene, which I used to harp on with my snark, may have simply been smaller points over which her staff did not want to fight her. There is no telling how many much larger errors were reversed over the years, so I would be left only with those minor glitches. If that is the case, then Lynn owes her staff a lot of gratitude for keeping her strip continuity together as well as it has been over the years.
"Richard": spot-the-retcon - CHECK
"it was a medium pat. maybe a strong medium... etc": connect-the-strip - CHECK
This was done much better with the "stare of truth" strip about tossing mud at each other (Mike and, IIRC, Lawrence)
TWO games to play today! :-)
qnjones,
She may have forgotten a little thing called continuity but she didn't lose sight of what really mattered: Mike's not wanting to admit that his funny book got pinched. He'd rather be tagged as a thug with a hair trigger than be revealed as being unable to defend his property.
InsertMonikerHere,
This was done much better with the "stare of truth" strip about tossing mud at each other (Mike and, IIRC, Lawrence)
Good catch! I had forgotten that strip, and I suppose Lynn is counting on most people having forgotten it.
dreadedcandiru2,
He'd rather be tagged as a thug with a hair trigger than be revealed as being unable to defend his property.
Is there some other point where Mike does this again? I seem to remember him being pushed around by almost everyone, and usually running passively away from tense situations
Is there some other point where Mike does this again? I seem to remember him being pushed around by almost everyone, and usually running passively away from tense situations
Mike remained a coward, e.g., writing an article rather than confronting the Kelpfroths, and the only kid he really picked on was his sister. He was bullied by Brad Luggsworth, intimidated by Mr Warren, his phys ed teacher, resigned from the magazine rather than face tough decisions. It's just easy to pick on Richard here because he hasn't been born yet.
Someone should write in this whole age problem to Coffee Talk. Not that the letter would get printed.
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