Nivabeff of the Spit
The Sunday strip on November 30, 2003 was a great strip. On May 4 this week, Lynn Johnston repeated the “No!!” part of it. In today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston repeated the part of it where the mom is trying to get the child to show off her language skills to her dad, and then failing. Instead of a “No!!” we get a raspberry. The net effect is still the same. You can lead a child to daddy, but you can’t get them to say their name.
The problem with substituting a raspberry for “No!!” is that we have been shown on more than one occasion that Elizabeth knows a raspberry is used for taunting an enemy, usually Michael. In fact, we have not been shown Elizabeth making a raspberry just to hear the sound of it. When Elizabeth does a raspberry at John instead of saying, “Nivabeff” as she did yesterday; how are we supposed to interpret this? Is Elizabeth just making noises? Or is she saying, “I hold you in contempt, father. You will hear no ‘Nivabeff’ from me.”? Or is she saying, “Oh, mother. Yesterday you pointed at things and asked me to name them. If I follow the same course, then what I should be saying is ‘Da-da’ or ‘Father’ or ‘Pater’ or something like that, not ‘Nivabeff’.”
The real question is what will Lynn Johnston be able to stretch out of that November 30, 2003 strip for the rest of the week.
The problem with substituting a raspberry for “No!!” is that we have been shown on more than one occasion that Elizabeth knows a raspberry is used for taunting an enemy, usually Michael. In fact, we have not been shown Elizabeth making a raspberry just to hear the sound of it. When Elizabeth does a raspberry at John instead of saying, “Nivabeff” as she did yesterday; how are we supposed to interpret this? Is Elizabeth just making noises? Or is she saying, “I hold you in contempt, father. You will hear no ‘Nivabeff’ from me.”? Or is she saying, “Oh, mother. Yesterday you pointed at things and asked me to name them. If I follow the same course, then what I should be saying is ‘Da-da’ or ‘Father’ or ‘Pater’ or something like that, not ‘Nivabeff’.”
The real question is what will Lynn Johnston be able to stretch out of that November 30, 2003 strip for the rest of the week.
posted by howard at 9:43 PM
4 Comments:
There might be a third line of reasoning: "Oh, mother! I will only say my name when I look at myself in the mirror! That's because I want to make your life miserable because I am a child in the comic strip 'For Better or For Worse'. That means that I exist for the sole purpose of inconveniencing my parents so much, they must own my horses to get their own back."
The mirror might be the key also. It's odd that Elly thinks Elizabeth will repeat the exact same behaviour in a different situation. At least in the Meredith strip, there was a constant of seeing snow as a stimulus. On the other hand, Elly did get a "Nivabeff" out of her, which is clearly Elizabeth saying her name. When Meredith did "No!", Deanna was interpreting pretty hard to think that she meant to say "Snow" instead.
This is a strip where you have to suspend your disbelief in the story logic just to have chance at finding the strip to be amusing.
Lynn Johnston obviously has no interest in thinking up any new storylines or jokes. Like the creator of the once-trendy-and-original "Garfield", she will recycle parts of her previously published repertoire ad nauseum, even if the "new-run" drawn context no longer makes much sense.
She simply doesn't give a damn anymore, she's going through the motions to make a buck (or loonie). And it shows.
The difference between Lynn Johnston and Jim Davis over at Garfield is Jim Davis has publicly admitted he handed his strip over to assistants years ago, when he got tired of doing it. It used to be a point of pride with Charles Schulz and Lynn Johnston that they did not do that.
If it weren't for Schulz's influence on Lynn Johnston, we probably would have seen this creative and artistic laziness from her some years ago. It may also be this influence which prevents Lynn from using assistants to keep the quality of the work up. On the other hand, I am sure the syndicate would love it if Lynn handed her strip off to someone else, instead of abusing it the way she has.
However, the new event on the horizon is that Lynn's daughter Kate is finally graduating from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. If Lynn were to hand the strip off to anyone, it would be Kate, in my opinion.
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