Continuity Schmontinuity
What an odd comic strip is today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse ! There are a number of strange things about it. I will list them:
1. It appears in from the design of the door behind Connie Poirier and Elly Patterson, that they are sitting on the front stoop of Elly’s house. And yet, the lawn area in which Lawrence and Michael are playing is enormous. We see them running with a squirt gun and climbing a tree at great distances from Connie and Elly. This is a lawn more like the size I am accustomed to seeing.
2. Lawrence and Michael are engaging in all-out battle, while Connie and Elly look on lackadaisically. When we have seen battles like this before, they were much more serious.
3. Elly and Connie talk about how Lawrence is looking to getting on the bus with the big kids.
This was one of the strips from last year which showed both and Lawrence and Michael getting on a bus, and you can see there are bigger kids on it than Lawrence and Michael. It appears that Lynn has forgotten she put that into her new-runs.
1. It appears in from the design of the door behind Connie Poirier and Elly Patterson, that they are sitting on the front stoop of Elly’s house. And yet, the lawn area in which Lawrence and Michael are playing is enormous. We see them running with a squirt gun and climbing a tree at great distances from Connie and Elly. This is a lawn more like the size I am accustomed to seeing.
2. Lawrence and Michael are engaging in all-out battle, while Connie and Elly look on lackadaisically. When we have seen battles like this before, they were much more serious.
3. Elly and Connie talk about how Lawrence is looking to getting on the bus with the big kids.
This was one of the strips from last year which showed both and Lawrence and Michael getting on a bus, and you can see there are bigger kids on it than Lawrence and Michael. It appears that Lynn has forgotten she put that into her new-runs.
posted by howard at 11:12 PM
7 Comments:
Man, oh man. R. Crumb could only -dream- of women like Connie and Elly.
Lynn would prefer we not think about such things owing to her dislike of having to admit ignorance and error. That's what makes her trule horrible as an artist: she screws up constantly but won't admit it.
This was one of the strips from last year which showed both and Lawrence and Michael getting on a bus, and you can see there are bigger kids on it than Lawrence and Michael. It appears that Lynn has forgotten she put that into her new-runs.
Either that, or someone pointed out to Lynn the strips that expressly had Michael walking to school while he was in kindergarten, and she decided to simply pretend she never made the "bus" error--sort of like her approach to the Nichols-kids botches.
"That's what makes her trule horrible as an artist: she screws up constantly but won't admit it."
Just as an artist?
aprilp_katje,
Either that, or someone pointed out to Lynn the strips that expressly had Michael walking to school while he was in kindergarten, and she decided to simply pretend she never made the "bus" error--sort of like her approach to the Nichols-kids botches.
The new-run year has been a weird one when it comes to Michael and his school.
In this strip, we see the kids leaving from the final day of school obviously walking, or with Lawrence sitting on top of Michael.
In this strip Michael complains about going to kindergarten, and Elly tells him he is going to Grade 1 in September. This is the first mention of kindergarten in the new-run year and naturally, it is a reprint.
In this new-run strip, we have our first mention of preschool. However, just to make sure it’s not a mistake, it is mentioned again in this new-run strip.
Looking back at these preschool strips, it seems obvious to me now that the school bus element was used as a device to show how Michael discovers that Deanna has moved away while he was sick. When he is first on the school bus, he sees Deanna, and Lawrence makes a comment about how he looks funny around her. The next time we have Lawrence and Michael on the bus, Michael realizes Deanna is gone because she doesn’t get on the bus. Considering that in the reprints Elly is so nervous about Michael that she follows him walking down to Lawrence’s house across the street, it seems unlikely that she would just let him run over and take a school bus without monitoring. Lynn apparently got it into her head that in her strip Michael was in preschool when her strip started and would find out Deanna left by her not getting on the school bus. It seems very much like a Nichols kid botch, which will be even more obvious when Lynn goes to straight reprints and Deanna reappears in Grades 1 – 4.
Anonymous,
Man, oh man. R. Crumb could only -dream- of women like Connie and Elly.
Lynn Johnston and R. Crumb both like their big-bottomed women. Panel 3 is a classic big-bottom moment.
"That's what makes her trule horrible as an artist: she screws up constantly but won't admit it."
Just as an artist?
I would say not just as an artist. As near as I can tell from comments that have been written about her at the Howard Bunt Blog, Lynn burned some bridges with former members of her staff. There was a point there when it seemed clear that a business was being set up to promote other businesses than For Better or For Worse, so that when Lynn did decide to retire, the ladies who worked for her could continue to make a living. I remember thinking that this was such a classy thing to do, so that her staff would not be out-of-work, just because she retired. Unfortunately, it did not end classy.
Lynn apparently got it into her head that in her strip Michael was in preschool when her strip started and would find out Deanna left by her not getting on the school bus.
I agree. Also, Lynn strikes me as being a peculiarly vague and fuzzy thinker. I wouldn't be surprised if she somehow decided that preschool and kindergarten were "the same thing." After all, when Aaron was "around that age" (4-6), he went to half-day (preschool/pre-K/kindergarten). She did a decent job of keeping all that straight in the original run of the strip, but because it's been such a long time since she's had a child in the early grades, she's gotten more vague and fuzzier about the whole thing. And she doesn't care enough to consult with others about this--or even consult her own strip.
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