Redo Reprinted
If today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse seems familiar, it’s because Lynn Johnston reworked this same strip back on October 7, just 12 days ago. While there are those who may look at this moment as an indication of Lynn’s mental instability and inattention to detail, I look at it from the perspective of a man in awe of Lynn Johnston’s talent in taking her once-mighty For Better or For Worse to geniuinely new lows that other comic strips have only dreamed about.
There are those who think the worst comic strip ever is Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy. Others think it is the Family Circus. My personal choice for years has been The Quigmans, a strip notorious for repeating its material. According to this website, the strip has repeated its material 144 times in the year 2009. That’s impressive, but Lynn Johnston beats that number of repeats in 2009. Even Buddy Hickerson, the author of The Quigmans, has to bow down to Lynn Johnston. Buddy has the good sense to put significant time between duplicate strips being printed. With today’s reprint, the time from redo to reprint is 12 days. 12 days! Beat that, Buddy!
Not only that, but the redo/reprint combination is something brand-new. Buddy Hickerson is just old-fashioned lazy. He reprints the same strip or keeps the art and sometimes reworks the words. Boring! Everyone does that. Lynn Johnston is breaking new ground and is lazy in fresh and original ways. This has been the fascination of this strip for the last several years and I have to congratulate Lynn for finding yet another way to destroy her strip that's never been done before.
I think there are possibilities for future destruction, and if I may, I have a few suggestions for the next generation. For example, Lynn could take this same strip and redo it again, but with a twist. For example, the Scooby-Doo version:
Shaggy: What’s this – a night school program?
Scooby: Right, Raggy. I want to learn.
Shaggy: Zoinks! You want to take Creative Writing, Scooby?
Scooby: Ruh, Roh!
Shaggy: What’s wrong, Scoob?
Scooby: I rought it was a class for cooking Scooby Snacks.
Or the Bugs Bunny version:
Bugs Bunny: What’s up, doc?
Elmer Fudd: It’s wabbit-hunting season. See my license?
Bugs Bunny: No, doc. That paper is for a class in creative writing.
Elmer Fudd: Wabbit-hunting season!
Bugs Bunny: Creative writing class!
Elmer Fudd: Wabbit-hunting season!!
Bugs Bunny: Creative writing class!!
Elmer Fudd: Wabbit-hunting season!!!
Bugs Bunny: Wabbit-hunting season!
Elmer Fudd: Creative writing class! Oh fooey, it isn’t offered until next semester.
Those are my humble suggestions. If I know Lynn Johnston, before she takes her comic strip to straight reprints in Early Spring, there will be yet another new low, even lower than the one she reached today. I can hardly wait to see it.
There are those who think the worst comic strip ever is Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy. Others think it is the Family Circus. My personal choice for years has been The Quigmans, a strip notorious for repeating its material. According to this website, the strip has repeated its material 144 times in the year 2009. That’s impressive, but Lynn Johnston beats that number of repeats in 2009. Even Buddy Hickerson, the author of The Quigmans, has to bow down to Lynn Johnston. Buddy has the good sense to put significant time between duplicate strips being printed. With today’s reprint, the time from redo to reprint is 12 days. 12 days! Beat that, Buddy!
Not only that, but the redo/reprint combination is something brand-new. Buddy Hickerson is just old-fashioned lazy. He reprints the same strip or keeps the art and sometimes reworks the words. Boring! Everyone does that. Lynn Johnston is breaking new ground and is lazy in fresh and original ways. This has been the fascination of this strip for the last several years and I have to congratulate Lynn for finding yet another way to destroy her strip that's never been done before.
I think there are possibilities for future destruction, and if I may, I have a few suggestions for the next generation. For example, Lynn could take this same strip and redo it again, but with a twist. For example, the Scooby-Doo version:
Shaggy: What’s this – a night school program?
Scooby: Right, Raggy. I want to learn.
Shaggy: Zoinks! You want to take Creative Writing, Scooby?
Scooby: Ruh, Roh!
Shaggy: What’s wrong, Scoob?
Scooby: I rought it was a class for cooking Scooby Snacks.
Or the Bugs Bunny version:
Bugs Bunny: What’s up, doc?
Elmer Fudd: It’s wabbit-hunting season. See my license?
Bugs Bunny: No, doc. That paper is for a class in creative writing.
Elmer Fudd: Wabbit-hunting season!
Bugs Bunny: Creative writing class!
Elmer Fudd: Wabbit-hunting season!!
Bugs Bunny: Creative writing class!!
Elmer Fudd: Wabbit-hunting season!!!
Bugs Bunny: Wabbit-hunting season!
Elmer Fudd: Creative writing class! Oh fooey, it isn’t offered until next semester.
Those are my humble suggestions. If I know Lynn Johnston, before she takes her comic strip to straight reprints in Early Spring, there will be yet another new low, even lower than the one she reached today. I can hardly wait to see it.
posted by howard at 10:54 PM
14 Comments:
I wonder which form that new low will take; after all, it's hard to see how she could make John more churlish, Elly more victimized, Mike more bratty and Lizzie more clingy.
Maybe she'll reprint the original version of Connie doing her personal ad--even though it's pretty much the same dialogue as the redraw, except with a typewriter.
And she'll probably forget/ignore that she wrapped up the Connie/Phil not-romance and have Connie chase after Phil in Montreal, even without his having spent Christmas with the Pattersons this time around
Ouch. This is painful to watch. Obviously, Lynn's staff held the strip together (somewhat) during the last year; the fact that it's just Lynn (mostly) is really showing how lazy and sloppy she is toward the strip.
I just found out from April_Patterson that the official story is that Lynn made a boo-boo; "today's" strip is the one that appears on the website with the date 10-20 on it.
DreadedCandiru2,
I just found out from April_Patterson that the official story is that Lynn made a boo-boo; "today's" strip is the one that appears on the website with the date 10-20 on it.
That looks more like a Stephanie webmaster boo-boo than a Lynn Johnston boo-boo. Stephanie must not have put the right strip under the 19th.
Stephanie must not have put the right strip under the 19th.
That's what I thought at first, but Steph told me otherwise.
I just hope we don't end up seeing the one that appeared in the papers today in tomorrow's strip fix; that would be as lovely to behold as a collection of Mike's retcons.
The Quigmans have lost the race for "fastest reprint" to FBOFW but it stills holds the record for sloth as several of the strips have been re-used at least five times.
mike,
I agree the The Quigmans still hold the record for most times strips have been reprinted. There's nothing particularly inspirational about running strips as many as 5 times. If your audience is stupid enough to accept it once, then what does 4 more times mean, especially with 3-4 years between printings?
With Lynn Johnston, it isn't just "fastest reprint", but "fastest time from redo of a strip to reprint of a strip." She thinks that her audience is not smart enough to recognize a strip which is essentially the same but with different drawings and a few different words, and would be in their short term memory. I would rate this lowered expectation of an audience to be lower than that expected of The Quigmans' audience.
I'm not sure Lynn really thinks about her audience at all, at least when it comes to things like their intelligence level or lack thereof. She has always struck me as too self-absorbed to bother considering what her audience might like. She seems to be the type of person who thinks that anyone halfway decent would applaud her for anything she does, while only nitpicking whiners could possibly have any problems with her. And any mistake she does make will somehow be someone else's fault.
I've never seen that Quigman's strip before, and now I wish I could unsee it. It's totally hideous, far worse visually than any other comic I've ever seen.
clio,
She has always struck me as too self-absorbed to bother considering what her audience might like.
That is not entirely true. Back in the final days of the modern strip, when it became apparent that there was a significant segment of her audience which disliked Anthony Caine intensely and wished Elizabeth Patterson would marry anyone else; Lynn started trying to convince her audience that Anthony was great. She had other characters in the strip talk about how wonderful he was, she wrote a letter to her Coffee Talk audience describing why Anthony was good marriage material, and at the point just before the wedding she even had Beth Cruikshank do his biography to try to explain why Anthony was not as horrible as he appeared.
It was not the sort of thing a person would do who did not care what their audience thought.
Of course the funny part was that the more Lynn tried to make Anthony Caine look good, the more she made him look bad.
In the time since then, over the last year, it is clear that Lynn cares less and less about her audience's opinion, just as it is obvious that she cares less and less about her comic strip. These days, she is much more likely to fit your description.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Howard, I hate to tell you this, but Buddy Hickerson just broke Lynn Johnston's record for quickest turn-around.
Go here:
http://www.quigmans.com/catharsis/2009/october/10-09.html
and compare the cartoons from the 12th of October and the 20th of October. It's the same stupid "owning one's feelings" premise applied to one's ability to buy.
What a silly bunt.
Mike,
Buddy Hickerson is incredible. He and Lynn Johnston should get together and swap stories. Of course one of the other big differences is that Lynn's staff has been working overtime to cover up this "mistake". The Quigmans may hold onto the top spot, until Lynn comes up with a new and original way to stink up her own strip.
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