Hallowe’en 2009 Part I
With today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, we are moving into the last original Hallowe’en strips done by Lynn Johnston. While Lynn may have not cared to do any Thanksgiving strips over the years, she has not scrimped on Hallowe’en. In today’s strip Elly Patterson addresses the very, old and tired situation of store bought versus home made for costumes. In my mind, there is no question that the home made costumes are better. My family went to the annual “Trunk or Treat” at our church, with the kids dressed in costumes going from car trunk to car trunk in the church parking lot getting candy. 2 boys came in homemade robot outfits complete with blinking lights. They were the envy of most of the kids, and probably all of the parents. It reminded me of a similar situation with my son years ago, where he wore a homemade robot outfit and got envious looks from every parent he visited.
Elly is pushing the homemade costume in today’s strip, mainly to show that she is a better mom than Connie Poirier, who is going for a store bought for Lawrence. Despite the appearance that Elly favours homemade, history shows that the Pattersons and their friends have used both. Let me run them down for you from the AMU Reprints archive, which goes back to 1996:
10/31/1996 – no costumes at all
1997 – No Hallowe’en strip at all, just an extended storyline involving Elizabeth and a giant zit
11/1/1998 – homemade costume
10/31/1999 – store bought costume
10/29/2000 – homemade costume
10/31/2000 – homemade costume
11/1/2000 – store bought costumer
10/25/2001 – the scariest Halloween strip ever, where you wish there was a costume
10/28/2001 – store bought costume
10/27/2002 - unknown. No visible costumes, although the kids are in a Hallowe'en store.
10/26/2003 – unknown. No visible costume
10/31/2004 – no Halloween for Meredith, so no costume
10/30/2005 – homemade costume
10/29/2006 – third scariest Halloween strip. Homemade costume
10/28/2007 – close second for scariest Halloween strip. Store bought costume.
10/19/2008 – store bought costume
11/02/2008 – unknown, No visible costume
Elly is pushing the homemade costume in today’s strip, mainly to show that she is a better mom than Connie Poirier, who is going for a store bought for Lawrence. Despite the appearance that Elly favours homemade, history shows that the Pattersons and their friends have used both. Let me run them down for you from the AMU Reprints archive, which goes back to 1996:
10/31/1996 – no costumes at all
1997 – No Hallowe’en strip at all, just an extended storyline involving Elizabeth and a giant zit
11/1/1998 – homemade costume
10/31/1999 – store bought costume
10/29/2000 – homemade costume
10/31/2000 – homemade costume
11/1/2000 – store bought costumer
10/25/2001 – the scariest Halloween strip ever, where you wish there was a costume
10/28/2001 – store bought costume
10/27/2002 - unknown. No visible costumes, although the kids are in a Hallowe'en store.
10/26/2003 – unknown. No visible costume
10/31/2004 – no Halloween for Meredith, so no costume
10/30/2005 – homemade costume
10/29/2006 – third scariest Halloween strip. Homemade costume
10/28/2007 – close second for scariest Halloween strip. Store bought costume.
10/19/2008 – store bought costume
11/02/2008 – unknown, No visible costume
posted by howard at 10:46 PM
4 Comments:
AS I said in the letter I posted on Coffee Talk, Mike doesn't want to have to wear whatever it is that poor seamstress Elly can come up with; just as it took years for her to learn how to cook, it took decades to learn how to sew. As for the scariest strip, I agree with your assessment: major Elly-butt!!
dreadedcandiru2,
I hadn't really thought of it that way. Eventually Elly gets to the point where she can make April the whole shepherdess outfit, plus something for Eddy to wear as a sheep. It would be interesting to go year-by-year from 1979 to 1996 to see just how long it was before Elly was able to sew something that complicated.
I should think that as she learned to calm down and realize that not everyone was plotting her downfall, the blind fury with which she approached sewing slowly but surely subsided and she became steadily more competent. That's because she seems to be what the Japanese call a 'tsundere': someone who covers up deep feelings of insecurity with shrieking in rage.
The tsundere really fits Elly Patterson's character. It's interesting you mention insecurity. The open-mouth shrieking was adopted by Lynn Johnston from Charles Schulz, who used to regularly have his characters do open-mouthed bellowing with the other characters flipping over, for comic effect. Lynn Johnston, for whatever reasons, only adopted the practice for Elly (even though Schulz had all of his characters do the bellowing at one point or the other). I think insecurity could well be a factor in both Schulz's and Johnston's motivation for finding the tsundere-like actions to be funny.
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