Wednesday, September 02, 2009

The Return of Preschool

With today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, I think we can safely bring back all the preschool strips of November 24-29, 2008; and January 12 – 17, 20, 29 – 31, 2009 into the canon. Button-nose Michael says, “Deanna’s here, Lawrence. She’s back.” Normal –nose Lawrence whispers, “Yeah. I wonder why.” I imagine there are a host of loyal For Better or For Worse fans, who are unfamiliar with the events of the first 4 years of the strip, who are asking the exact same question. I imagine there are folks who fully expected that when September, 2009 came around, Lynn Johnston would roll into straight reprints. I imagine that one of those persons is Lynn Johnston herself. I can just hear the conversation now:

Lynn Johnston: OK. September, 2009 is finally here. I can start doing straight reprints.

Webmaster Stephanie: No you can’t.

Lynn Johnston: What is it this time? I fixed the business with Anne Nichols 2 boys, didn’t I? There's only one now.

Webmaster Stephanie: Yes, but you wrote a story where Deanna moved away from Milborough, last January.

Lynn Johnston: I loved telling that story. The tragedy of Michael not getting to see her leave because he was sick. Deanna just disappeared the first time, and this time we have closure. I almost cried when I wrote that story. It was so touching. It was almost like I had a camera in my own house.

Webmaster Stephanie: You do have a camera in your own house. But Deanna didn’t leave until Grade 4.

Lynn Johnston: And?

Webmaster Stephanie: We can’t reprint the stories with her in them.

Lynn Johnston: Because?

Webmaster Stephanie:
People will get confused when she leaves because she already left.

Lynn Johnston: My fans won’t question it. They love everything I do. I’m thinking about publishing a treasury edition featuring pictures of old handkerchiefs I have sneezed in. Do you think it will sell?

Webmaster Stephanie: It would be make more sense than a treasury edition featuring your new-runs.

Lynn Johnston: Wait! Something just occurred to me. If I bring back Deanna, then I could write an even more tragic departure the second time she leaves. What do you think of this? Deanna has to decide if she is going to leave or stay, but then Farley dies rescuing her, while Elly is running down the street in her housecoat carrying garbage bags and a stampede of kids' legs with hot dogs coming out of the buns that Elly holds. After Farley has a heart attack from seeing that, then Deanna realizes that she has to leave.

Webmaster Stephanie: What kind of drugs are you on? You can’t write a strip about Farley dying. He dies much later on saving April from drowning.

Lynn Johnston: If my fans will let me bring back Deanna, then they will let me bring back Farley. They love the story of Farley dying and they will love it twice as much if he dies 2 times.

Webmaster Stephanie: Sheesh! We are never going to get around to doing straight reprints.

20 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

The sad thing is how plausible this all sounds; owing to Lynn's either being demented or the least organized thinker to ever grace the comics page, we are never, EVER going to get to the straight reprints. Thanks to her failure as an artist, we'll be snarking this for years.

10:56 PM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

What do you think of this? Deanna has to decide if she is going to leave or stay, but then Farley dies rescuing her, while Elly is running down the street in her housecoat carrying garbage bags and a stampede of kids' legs with hot dogs coming out of the buns that Elly holds. After Farley has a heart attack from seeing that, then Deanna realizes that she has to leave.

Hee. Thanks for the laugh, howtheduck. The first thing I thought after reading today's new-ruin was that I couldn't wait to see what you had to say about it. No, Michael, she didn't move back because she missed you; she moved back because someone got her creator to realize the move happened too early and would muck up reprint continuity.

4:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You don't know how close to truth this story is. Except that *no one* would disagree with Lynn. If you do, you get fired.

6:32 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

Anonymous, you've piqued my curiosity. Can you share a bit more on this subject? If not, I understand completely.

howtheduck, I also meant to say--as for the "preschool" and "bus" new-ruins, I suspect we're just supposed to pretend that they occurred in kindergarten and while walking to kindergarten. Half-day kindergarten. ;)

6:43 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Anonymous,

Like aprilp_katje, I would be interested in hearing any details you are willing to give on the subject. I am curious about who it is that actually approaches Lynn on subjects like this -- Lynn's editor from the syndicate, Beth Cruikshank, webmaster Stephanie, Lynn's daughter, or someone else?

7:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congratulations Howard, you win the internet today. That was funny!

7:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, it used to be the staffers that are no longer there. I'm not sure who would approach her now (and I doubt anyone left there would). From the looks of things it's a good guess that no one wants to disobey. It should be an editor but if Lynn says this is the way it is, then that's it. There's no arguing with her.

8:40 AM  
Blogger Muzition said...

"they will love it twice as much if he dies 2 times."

LOL!

8:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

*Standing ovation*!

Howard, you must have a camera in Lynn's studio--!

9:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The return of Deanna brings up a question for me, hopefully someone here can help me out.

Last week I was reading "The Lives Between the Lines"...in it, the Sobinski's are given a brief biographical sketch as being third generation descendants of Polish immigrants...and as being a pleasant, kind, strong family.

A few years later the Sobinski's have become evil, evil, evil...and the collection of the Mike & Dee fake wedding strips suddenly has a brand new history for the Sobinski's: Mira and Wilf immigrated to Canada from a very late 1890s/early 1900s-esque version of Eastern Europe. Mira was illiterate and didn't even know her husband, she just married him because she heard the streets of the New World he was headed to were paved with gold. Or something like that.

I know the personalities were changed because Lynn wanted to make Elly seem like a saintly, perfect paragon and demonizing Mira was the only way she knew how...but why were their life histories so radically changed?

11:37 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Anonymous,

I know the personalities were changed because Lynn wanted to make Elly seem like a saintly, perfect paragon and demonizing Mira was the only way she knew how...but why were their life histories so radically changed?

Because Lynn just didn't care that she was contradicting herself; as howard said, her fans will swallow any crap she feeds them so each and every one of her characters has the same sort of multiple-choice past the Joker does.

11:45 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Anonymous,

Well, it used to be the staffers that are no longer there. I'm not sure who would approach her now (and I doubt anyone left there would).

I think the only staffer left in the studio is Liuba Liamzini, who manages the finances. I suspect Beth Cruikshank, who has had more than a passing interest in trying to create continuity in Lynn's work through the Who's Who entries, is the probable source of correction.

11:50 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

Anonymous:

...but why were their life histories so radically changed?

Actually, it's even worse than the two competing backgrounds you've cited. There was a third: In this strip, the backstory is that Mira's parents came to Canada in the 1940s, as... (wait for it...) REFUGEES.

12:35 PM  
Blogger howard said...

Anonymous,

I know the personalities were changed because Lynn wanted to make Elly seem like a saintly, perfect paragon and demonizing Mira was the only way she knew how...but why were their life histories so radically changed?

In the first appearance of the Sobinskis, we have a reference to Wilf telling Michael the “when my father got off the boat” story. Clearly, in the beginning, the Sobinskis were intended to be 2nd generation. The big difference in that series was that Deanna’s mother looked somewhat like Deanna and she went by the name “Eva”.

The next time we saw the Sobinskis was when Deanna came back from Honduras. Her mother looked like Mira does today, but she seemed to be very pleasant. Later on in 2002 Mira has a conversation with Lovey, where both women say their parents came to Canada from Poland in the 1940s. Despite what is in “Lives Between the Lines”, the Sobinski’s history in the strip has been consistent, even if the mother has not.

As for Mira’s personality change, that has a different origin. Lynn expressed some years back (I forget the interview) that she got along much better with her mother-in-law than she did with her mother. At some point, Lynn decided that she would use the Mike and Deanna storyline to reflect that same situation, with Elly representing the mother-in-law. I think the catalyst for this change in personality was the wedding.

There is another aspect of the story-telling for which I do not know the origin. Lynn has some peculiar thoughts about weddings which have come out in the strip several times. In Mike and Deanna’s wedding and in Shawna-Marie Verano’s wedding, the mother of the bride in both cases was portrayed as an ogre trying to control everything. In contrast, with Elizabeth and Anthony’s wedding, you got to see Lynn’s ideal in Elly Patterson, on how a mother should handle herself during a wedding. Given Mira and the Verano wedding, I had expected that it would be more of a situation where the mother of the bride would let the bride have the wedding she wanted and would help her achieve that. Oddly enough, Lynn portrayed Elly as being almost completely uninvolved in her daughter’s wedding. Elly spent the wedding day wandering around with Connie Poirier, instead of being with her daughter.

That attitude appeared before Elizabeth and Anthony’s wedding though, in the way Mira and Elly each approached their grandchildren. Mira was shown to be over at Michael and Deanna’s Toronto apartment all the time, buying gifts for the children, taking them on trips to the beach, and willing to give them gifts of money when Michael temporarily lost his job. In contrast, Elly only came to the Toronto apartment when Mike specifically asked for her in times of need. She was never shown giving the kids gifts, taking them on trips, and any money she gave to Michael and Deanna was specifically shown as a loan to be paid back. However, the point the strip often makes is that Mira tries to control her kids’ lives, while Elly does not.

If I translate this attitude back to Lynn and her mother and mother-in-law, then I would expect Lynn’s mother tried to be involved in or control her life and Lynn’s mother-in-law could care less what Lynn did.

12:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmmm. So, did Lynn not remember her own strips when the "Mira and Wilf were the immigrants, illiterate Mira married Wilf only because he could get her out of Poland" story was added to the Mike & Dee fake wedding strip collection?

Or was that story written by a staffer?

12:50 PM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

howtheduck, I'd forgotten how different Eva/Mira looked when she was first introduced.

There is another aspect of the story-telling for which I do not know the origin. Lynn has some peculiar thoughts about weddings which have come out in the strip several times.

I remember Lynn saying that the designer of Dee's wedding gown had shared with her many momzilla horror stories, and that the stories informed her "Mira" depiction WRT the wedding-planning arcs. Naturally, she wasn't about to have Elly become what she considered to be a momzilla once it was her turn to be mother of the bride.

12:59 PM  
Blogger howard said...

aprilp_katje,

Of course. How could I forget the momzilla storyline?

9:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, one of her staffers did not write the Wilf and Mira stories - Lynn just didn't remember, as with other storylines. Lynn contradicts herself on a regular basis and to point it out doesn't change anything. She does what she wants when she wants.

I also doubt Beth or Liuba would be correcting Lynn at this point. Beth lives in a different province and probably isn't paying daily attention to the strips.

9:07 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

Lynn just didn't remember, as with other storylines. Lynn contradicts herself on a regular basis and to point it out doesn't change anything. She does what she wants when she wants.

This definitely matches the impression I have of her: namely that she forgets things and doesn't care about the fact that she forgets. Then, when she contradicts herself, I sense that she has nothing but contempt for anyone who cares about such contradictions.

This also reminds me of when a religion professor contacted her and asked her about the character Lovey Saltzman. LJ on the spot invented a history that contradicted what the strip had presented, telling him the Lovey had been a Christian who'd converted to Judaism in order to marry a Jew, and then switched back to Christianity after he "passed." Only, in the strip, Morrie Saltzman was alive and well (albeit off-panel) and Lovey presented as being Jewish. 0_o

1:17 PM  
Blogger howard said...

aprilp_katje,

What you have then is not only an inconsistency, but also Lynn's tendency just to make up things. We have seen that tendency often enough when she is talking about her own history, so it shouldn't be any problem for her to do the same to the history of her characters.

10:25 AM  

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