Girls are Territorial; Boys are Beaten

Territory jokes for Lynn Johnston are a rare breed. Here are the 5 references to territory that AMU reprints found for me. As you can see, they are all fall into the same basic category: Animals mark their territory and some humans are like them, usually not as a compliment.

The most unusual parts of the strip are Michael’s politeness and Lizzie’s intentional violence. In the past, little Lizzie’s violence was more accidental than intentional. In the past, Michael was rarely polite to his younger sister. The last panel “joke” if you can call it that, is pretty normal in For Better or For Worse. By pretty normal, I mean that Michael behaves in a manner not like any 5-year-old boy I know that just got CLONKed on the head by his sister, in order to stop and make a final panel statement. For one thing, he refers to his sister as a “girl”. For another thing, he makes a statement about girls in general that would normally come from a boy much older than he is. For another thing, he didn’t grab that bucket out of Lizzie’s hand and CLONK her back.

Thematically, this week has been a week of “No” from women for Michael. “No, you can’t play in the sprinkler.” “No, you can’t play in the sandbox.” It’s also been a week of asking permission. A few more of these negative responses, and I think Michael would be fully justified to stop asking permission and return back to his old reprint ways of random violence.

As for me, today begins my summer vacation period. I will be spending a few days with my father and son in Winston-Salem, NC. Then we are off to Greece for a week. Then we are off to Garden City, SC for a week. I will try to check in and post as well as I can, but it will probably be sporadic at best.