Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Sizes May Vary

The joke of today’s For Better or For Worse is supposed to be that young Farley the dog chews on everything, except the thing he is supposed to chew on. However, the thing that really got me to laugh were the pictures of Elly in each panel. Oftentimes Lynn Johnston can’t draw the same character from panel-to-panel, and it’s little differences like the jawline is not the same shape or the nose is slightly different. In today’s For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston is going full up 4 different characters whose only similarity is their clothes and their hair colour:

Panel 1 has what looks to me to something like Olive Oyl from Popeye jogging toward Farley. Her clothes appear to be giant, bagging around her skinny frame and her features are tight, pressed and compact.

Panel 2 has an Elly who look like a man with a wig askew on his head peering around the wall.

Panel 3 has an almost muscular Elly with tight clothes, a giant head and a huge manga-sized mouth and eyes.

Panel 4 has Elly with an eye on her forehead and a jaw with such a severe underbite she looks almost like a muppet.

Panel 5 is silhouette Elly and is probably the best drawn of the bunch.

These Elly’s are so different from each other, my first impression was that we are viewing some kind of artist jam comic where a different artist draws each panel.

As for the content of the strip itself, it appears young Farley the dog has the complete run of the house and that little indoor fence has been completely forgotten. I suppose if I wanted some fun I could compare Farley sizes.

Panel 1 – Farley is about the same size as that shoe so about 25 cm long.

Panel 2– Farley is about the same size as that throw pillow so about 50 cm long.

Panel 3– Farley is about the same size as that stuffed animal so about 25 cm long.

Panel 4 –Impossible to tell.

Panel 5 – Farley is about halfway down that table so about 60 cm long.

That was not as much fun as looking at all the different Elly’s.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I did my first look at this strip not starting with the first panel, but by looking at the strip as a whole. And my first reaction was, "Gawd, the drawing in this strip is a big ol' mess."

Where the hell are the kids? Why can't they entertain the puppy? More to the point, I would expect kids as young as Liz and Mike to be obsessed with the puppy. Especially in a time before video games (if in fact we are still in the early 1980s).

11:29 PM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Watch Elly have made sure that they can't play with the dog so as to not interfere with her training him. That sounds like the kind of stupid thing she'd do. As for the artwork, I stopped expecting consistency from Lynn ages ago. She doesn't like drawing living things so we're going to get an ungodly mess when we see anything that isn't a blocky shape.

12:38 AM  
Blogger howard said...

qnjones

Where the hell are the kids? Why can't they entertain the puppy?

There is a tendency with Lynn’s writing to only want to include a limited set of characters to make things easier for her in the drawing department. The biggest recent example of this was in storyline from early 2007 when the entire Patterson family is all living in the same house, and Lynn managed to avoid any strips showing the whole family together. I expect we are going to see a lot of Elly alone with young Farley the dog; because she wants to emphasize the trials and travails taking care of the dog is having on her and her alone.

5:50 AM  
Blogger howard said...

DreadedCandiru2,

Watch Elly have made sure that they can't play with the dog so as to not interfere with her training him. That sounds like the kind of stupid thing she'd do.

It does, but I doubt we will ever be given any kind of reason why Elly is alone with Farley so much.

As for the artwork, I stopped expecting consistency from Lynn ages ago.

Me too, but what I was talking about was the level of inconsistency. I think it is increasing.

5:51 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

howard,

That it is. It may be that her staff helped keep her eccentricities in check so that when they were let go, the last thing keeping her from arbitrary changes in style was gone.

7:19 AM  
Blogger howard said...

dreadedcandiru2,

I can see that. A simple question like, "Elly just has dots for eyes here. Should I colour them like she had sclera and pupils or just pupils?" would probably lead to a more standardized art style, if for no other reason than to avoid those kinds of questions.

9:40 AM  

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