The First Reprint of the Second Year of New-Runs
And now, finally, the reprint that aprilp_katje in her excellent FOOBar thought was going to come on Wednesday. You will note that in the reprint, young Michael Patterson is operating without any sign of a button nose.
This has been a banner week of new-runs. It has been awhile since I have seen so many fixes to the continuity occurring in such a short time. Shall we review? I think I shall.
Saturday, August 29 Fixes to Continuity
1. Lawrence and Michael are going to ride the bus with the big kids. That fixes this strip where Lawrence and Michael ride the bus with big kids on their way to preschool.
2. Lawrence and Michael are going to be gone all day. That fixes this strip where John is going to pick up Michael from preschool at 4 pm.
Tuesday, September 1 Fixes to Continuity
1. The school looks and smells the same as when Elly went to school. In other words, the strip is not set in modern times. This will fix any reprints upcoming where the teachers use antiquated equipment, like blackboards.
Wednesday, September 2 Fixes to Continuity
1. Reinforcing that Elly has not seen Michael ride the bus to school before.
Thursday, September 3 Fixes to Continuity
1. Deanna Sobinski returns. That fixes the whole storyline back in January where Deanna left for Burlington 4 years too early for the reprints.
2. Michael continues to be obsessed with Deanna. That fixes this strip from 11/13/1996, where Michael confesses his extreme feelings for Deanna from his time in Grade 4, which had never been seen before in the strip.
Friday, September 4 Fixes to Continuity
1. Michael Patterson is a trouble-maker. This sets up stories between Michael and Miss Campbell, where Michael is portrayed as the worst kid in her class.
Oh, it’s been a good week, watching Lynn Johnston pay the price for her own negligence in researching the story that she originally did 30 years ago.
This has been a banner week of new-runs. It has been awhile since I have seen so many fixes to the continuity occurring in such a short time. Shall we review? I think I shall.
Saturday, August 29 Fixes to Continuity
1. Lawrence and Michael are going to ride the bus with the big kids. That fixes this strip where Lawrence and Michael ride the bus with big kids on their way to preschool.
2. Lawrence and Michael are going to be gone all day. That fixes this strip where John is going to pick up Michael from preschool at 4 pm.
Tuesday, September 1 Fixes to Continuity
1. The school looks and smells the same as when Elly went to school. In other words, the strip is not set in modern times. This will fix any reprints upcoming where the teachers use antiquated equipment, like blackboards.
Wednesday, September 2 Fixes to Continuity
1. Reinforcing that Elly has not seen Michael ride the bus to school before.
Thursday, September 3 Fixes to Continuity
1. Deanna Sobinski returns. That fixes the whole storyline back in January where Deanna left for Burlington 4 years too early for the reprints.
2. Michael continues to be obsessed with Deanna. That fixes this strip from 11/13/1996, where Michael confesses his extreme feelings for Deanna from his time in Grade 4, which had never been seen before in the strip.
Friday, September 4 Fixes to Continuity
1. Michael Patterson is a trouble-maker. This sets up stories between Michael and Miss Campbell, where Michael is portrayed as the worst kid in her class.
Oh, it’s been a good week, watching Lynn Johnston pay the price for her own negligence in researching the story that she originally did 30 years ago.
posted by howard at 10:03 PM
14 Comments:
As for the first two items: the "fix" doesn't work when it's trying a "continuity fix" for strips that have now already occurred in the timeline as "last school year", it only works for those which have yet to (re)occur. Those "new-run" strips printed earlier will have to be shuffled in later than the currently-being-published strips if being reprinted in a collection.
This will lead into another fix in continuity: the Sobinskis will be said to have moved to Burlington Street on the posh side of town because Mira is a social climber. That'll occur later, though; right now, Lynn will insert a bunch of reprints to the part-time job arc that make John look even more foolish, ignorant, selfish, mean-spirited and chauvinistic than he originally was. After all, Rod isn't going to tarnish his public persona on his own; Lynn has to do that herself, all the while grmbling about how he made more work for her.
Anonymous,
As for the first two items: the "fix" doesn't work when it's trying a "continuity fix" for strips that have now already occurred in the timeline as "last school year", it only works for those which have yet to (re)occur.
That is clearly where Lynn is thinking and I think her only motivation for the continuity fixes for the material she has done over the last year. If it weren’t for those reprints popping up which would fly in the face of that material, I doubt she would feel the need to do any retcon-type of strips.
Those "new-run" strips printed earlier will have to be shuffled in later than the currently-being-published strips if being reprinted in a collection.
Except that Lynn is planning to reprint the new-runs as a part of a treasury book, covering 30 years of her strip; so she can use the new-runs as strips being pulled from different timelines. That way the continuity errors are less obvious.
DreadedCandiru2,
This will lead into another fix in continuity: the Sobinskis will be said to have moved to Burlington Street on the posh side of town because Mira is a social climber.
Lynn has raised the question in the strip as to why the Sobinskis moved back. However, I am not sure she is going to answer the question. The natural time to do it would have been this week; but she opted to run today’s reprint and establish Mike as a “trouble-maker” in his classroom instead. The why is only important to the readers, after all.
Oh, it’s been a good week, watching Lynn Johnston pay the price for her own negligence in researching the story that she originally did 30 years ago.
Heh--yes it's been fun watching the wheel-spinning. It will be interesting to see which impulse wins out for Lynn: her desire to muck with her original stories by adding in new-ruins, or her desire to go to all reprints and spend all her time traveling. I guess there is also the desire to keep charging the syndicate for "new" material, which would tend to encourage the former.
howtheduck, I thought you might be interested to know when the button noses first began to show up in the original run of the strip. Consulting the second collection, I see that Michael first sprouted a button nose the day before the ill-fated wrong-cabin trip, the summer after he completed grade one. So she's nearly a year premature.
aprilp_katje,
It will be interesting to see which impulse wins out for Lynn:
her desire to muck with her original stories by adding in new-ruins, or
her desire to go to all reprints and spend all her time traveling, or
her desire to keep charging the syndicate for "new" material, or…
her desire to be able to use the new-runs in a reprint collection.
The Treasury edition covering the 30th anniversary makes it possible for Lynn use those new-runs, despite their excessive continuity problems. But you can’t do a treasury edition every year. Lynn has been doing them every 5 years. That might cause her to think about going to all reprints, since she won’t be able to use any new-runs she does after this year for another 5 years.
She specifically said in the Coffee Talk she was going to straight reprints "soon" and not the usual "when the story is strong enough" business.
Consulting the second collection, I see that Michael first sprouted a button nose the day before the ill-fated wrong-cabin trip, the summer after he completed grade one. So she's nearly a year premature.
Thanks for the research. It answers a question and yet raises another one. Is Lynn Johnston adding button noses prematurely because:
a. Once again, she has not researched exactly when it is she started adding button noses to her art, and she is just remembering that she did it around this time, or
b. She plans to pull material from Year 3 to fill in the spots she has already reprinted in Year 2, especially the Christmas section?
I think (b) could well be the case. There has to have been something which caused Lynn to look at her art with button noses in it. Her new-run art as of last January was pretty much the same as her modern art, showing that she had stopped paying attention to her old art style from Year 1. My guess is that Year 3 is full of button noses, is that correct?
My guess is that Year 3 is full of button noses, is that correct?
::takes detour into "It Must Be Nice to Be Little"::
You are correct. And notably, the cover features both Mike and Liz with button noses.
One curious characteristic about button noses is that they generally appear in full-face. They do not appear in profile, and only occasionally in 3/4 view.
Of course, while looking for button noses, I got all distracted by storylines! The collection begins in January of 1982, with John and Elly's first no-kid vacation (to Bermuda). Will and Carrie stay at the Pattermanse to watch the kids.
During the vacation, Elly yells at John for wanting to lie in a beach chair and read instead of exploring the island and (wait for it...) shopping.
At the end of the trip, Elly asks him if he wants to bring anything else home with them, and he ogles a Farrah-hair-having woman. Elly is, understandably, not amused.
In September, Anne gives birth to Richard. Connie flits back and forth between Phil and Ted. Lawrence also is seen with a button nose.
Elly gets her "Library Corner" column with the Valley Voice and puts Liz in "play care" (which at times she calls daycare).
John makes some condescending comments about Elly making her mark and Jean calls him on it, since she herself is a working woman.
BTW, the second collection includes two Christmas sequences--Christmas 1980 (featuring Phil) and Christmas 1981 (featuring Will and Carrie). Of course, if she grafts in Christmas of 1981 strips to fill the void she created by already having used her Christmas of 1980 strips, she'll really delay being able to go to straight reprints. Plus, Will and Carrie being there for the 1981 holiday leads intwo the January of 1982 no-kids vacation. So LJ would really be making a mess of things. Not that this is necessarily much of a deterrent!
Something else I forgot to mention. Remember all the grief from Elly about never having had a honeymoon? That's a retcon! During this Bermuda vacation, John suggests that they recreate their honeymoon. Elly has just gotten sunburned and doesn't want to be touched (of course!), but she doesn't say they never had one.
aprilp_katje,
Of course, if she grafts in Christmas of 1981 strips to fill the void she created by already having used her Christmas of 1980 strips, she'll really delay being able to go to straight reprints.
This leans me more towards the idea that Lynn is just doing button noses because she knows she started them in her second collection. I don’t know what she is going to do then. Having the collections as you do, and knowing what Lynn has not reprinted (not counting the hybrid year), what would you do to fill in the Farley adoption and Christmas 1980 strips which have already been reprinted in order to go to straight reprints with the rest of Year 2? Were there Christmas 1979 strips she didn’t use?
Elly has just gotten sunburned and doesn't want to be touched (of course!), but she doesn't say they never had one.
Interesting. The strip where Elly brought up not having a honeymoon was this one from January 19, 2002, when Elly and John were comparing their married life to Deanna and Mike’s life. The wording of the strip is a little odd, because Elly insists on using the phrase “real honeymoon”, which could be taken to mean that she does not consider whatever she and John did to be a real honeymoon.
Were there Christmas 1979 strips she didn’t use?
There are just two 1979 strips with a Christmas theme. The first has John and Elly under the tree as Elly opens John's gift to her, which turns out to be a frilly negligee. She'd wanted "a practical, good-looking nightgown." He replies that he could find one that was both, so he sacrificed "practical." The other is a single panel featuring Mike and Liz surrounded by Christmas toys as Liz eats candy and Mike complains that he's bored.
BTW, there were other strips that Lynn sort of randomly transferred over from year two. The most recent I can think of were reprinted in July--where Anne tells Elly that with her beautiful, well equipped kitchen, she could make a different gourmet meal every night, and John rebuffs the idea in favor of "simple foods." She might be doing new-runs longer than she'd wanted to.
Elly insists on using the phrase “real honeymoon”, which could be taken to mean that she does not consider whatever she and John did to be a real honeymoon.
In Lives Behind the Lines, LJ wrote that John and Elly's honeymoon consisted of their driving back from Winnipeg to Toronto, since they couldn't afford anything else.
(The word verification is speaking French to me: "allions"! Oh, Morticia! ;) )
aprilp_katje,
Well then. I wouldn't consider that to be a real honeymoon either.
Well then. I wouldn't consider that to be a real honeymoon either.
Me, neither--but this is something she wrote in 1999. I have a feeling that this hadn't entered her mind back when she had John suggesting they recreate their honeymoon. I suspect that, at the time, she was imagining their having had a more traditional "spend a week somewhere nice" kind of honeymoon. I think the Lives Behind the Lines version was a retcon, probably meant to make us feel bad for poor, honeymoon-deprived Elly. And her 2002 strip would have been premised upon that retcon.
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