Early Spring: A Definition
Lynn Johnston announced she plans to do straight reprints in Early Spring. What does Early Spring mean? Thanks to the new Comic Strip Catalog, is possible to map the reprint strips to their original publication dates. Assuming Lynn plans to synchronize the reprint strips in time with the current calendar, then her ability to do that depends on which strips she has chosen to reprint from 1981.
Lynn has already reprinted strips from 1/1/1981 to 1/8/1981. These are the strips which Lynn reprinted in January 2009, which show Uncle Phil leaving to go back home and Connie Poirier’s reaction to it. Lynn is in the process of rewriting the Phil / Connie storyline and so this will probably be all new, even though it may very well still end up with Connie Poirier going to Montreal to chase after Phil, which was not reprinted.
Starting from 1/11/1981, Lynn has reprinted every Sunday strip through 3/29/1981 except for the one on 2/15/1981. The date pretty much tells you why that one didn’t make the cut with post-divorce Lynn. What this tells me is that we are going to be seeing a lot of new Sunday strips, even after the dailies have gone to reprint.
Lynn reprinted the Farley training sequence from 3/16/1981 to 3/21/1981 and she reprinted the Elly wants to cook gourmet sequence from 3/25/1981 to 3/30/1981. So there are 2 weeks which will require new dailies. This is probably the time Lynn meant for her Early Spring straight reprints to start.
After this it gets trickier, because Lynn did not restrain herself to reprinting strips prior to Early Spring, 1981. She also reprinted the Sunday strips from 4/12/1981, 5/3/1981, 5/10/1981, 5/17/1981, 6/7/1981, 6/14/1981, 6/21/1981, and 7/19/1981. Yes folks, this means that once again, thanks to her extraordinary disorganizational skills, Lynn Johnston has screwed herself over. She cannot go to straight reprints in Early Spring, unless she is planning to replace all these strips with Sunday strips she did not reprint from 1979 and 1980. That could very well be the case. However, I have the feeling that Lynn Johnston has not realized this yet. I am already amused imagining the conversation when that moment comes.
Lynn Johnston : Well, it’s Early Spring. Time to retire.
Stephanie: But Lynn, what about all these 8 Sunday strips that you already reprinted?
Lynn Johnston : What do you mean “these 8 Sunday strips that you already reprinted”?
Stephanie: Last year you reprinted 8 Sunday strips that were originally published from April to July, 1981.
Lynn Johnston : Will this nonsense never end? Well, reprint them again. I have already announced we are doing straight reprints and I am a woman of my word. I never change my retirement date.
Stephanie: More like you never stick by your retirement date.
Lynn Johnston : Those other times don’t count. I am like the Barbara Streisand or Cher final tour of the comic strip world.
Stephanie: But Lynn, the syndicate complained the last time you re-reprinted something within a year of the last time you re-reprinted it.
Lynn Johnston : That was because of those picky-face nitpickers who ratted me out. Don’t worry. Once the straight reprints start, they’ll stop sending in comments like that. I’ve already got Beth to turn Coffee Talk into nothing but purile, generic compliments to drive them away. They won’t have a way to tell me. They’ll be gone and what we will have left are my true fans who will adore me simply because I am willing to have my work reprinted. Besides, I won’t care. I will be on a steaming hot Mexican beach with Tim Oliphant.
Stephanie: Right.
Lynn has already reprinted strips from 1/1/1981 to 1/8/1981. These are the strips which Lynn reprinted in January 2009, which show Uncle Phil leaving to go back home and Connie Poirier’s reaction to it. Lynn is in the process of rewriting the Phil / Connie storyline and so this will probably be all new, even though it may very well still end up with Connie Poirier going to Montreal to chase after Phil, which was not reprinted.
Starting from 1/11/1981, Lynn has reprinted every Sunday strip through 3/29/1981 except for the one on 2/15/1981. The date pretty much tells you why that one didn’t make the cut with post-divorce Lynn. What this tells me is that we are going to be seeing a lot of new Sunday strips, even after the dailies have gone to reprint.
Lynn reprinted the Farley training sequence from 3/16/1981 to 3/21/1981 and she reprinted the Elly wants to cook gourmet sequence from 3/25/1981 to 3/30/1981. So there are 2 weeks which will require new dailies. This is probably the time Lynn meant for her Early Spring straight reprints to start.
After this it gets trickier, because Lynn did not restrain herself to reprinting strips prior to Early Spring, 1981. She also reprinted the Sunday strips from 4/12/1981, 5/3/1981, 5/10/1981, 5/17/1981, 6/7/1981, 6/14/1981, 6/21/1981, and 7/19/1981. Yes folks, this means that once again, thanks to her extraordinary disorganizational skills, Lynn Johnston has screwed herself over. She cannot go to straight reprints in Early Spring, unless she is planning to replace all these strips with Sunday strips she did not reprint from 1979 and 1980. That could very well be the case. However, I have the feeling that Lynn Johnston has not realized this yet. I am already amused imagining the conversation when that moment comes.
Lynn Johnston : Well, it’s Early Spring. Time to retire.
Stephanie: But Lynn, what about all these 8 Sunday strips that you already reprinted?
Lynn Johnston : What do you mean “these 8 Sunday strips that you already reprinted”?
Stephanie: Last year you reprinted 8 Sunday strips that were originally published from April to July, 1981.
Lynn Johnston : Will this nonsense never end? Well, reprint them again. I have already announced we are doing straight reprints and I am a woman of my word. I never change my retirement date.
Stephanie: More like you never stick by your retirement date.
Lynn Johnston : Those other times don’t count. I am like the Barbara Streisand or Cher final tour of the comic strip world.
Stephanie: But Lynn, the syndicate complained the last time you re-reprinted something within a year of the last time you re-reprinted it.
Lynn Johnston : That was because of those picky-face nitpickers who ratted me out. Don’t worry. Once the straight reprints start, they’ll stop sending in comments like that. I’ve already got Beth to turn Coffee Talk into nothing but purile, generic compliments to drive them away. They won’t have a way to tell me. They’ll be gone and what we will have left are my true fans who will adore me simply because I am willing to have my work reprinted. Besides, I won’t care. I will be on a steaming hot Mexican beach with Tim Oliphant.
Stephanie: Right.
posted by howard at 12:39 PM
4 Comments:
Yes folks, this means that once again, thanks to her extraordinary disorganizational skills, Lynn Johnston has screwed herself over. She cannot go to straight reprints in Early Spring, unless she is planning to replace all these strips with Sunday strips she did not reprint from 1979 and 1980. That could very well be the case. However, I have the feeling that Lynn Johnston has not realized this yet.
Which makes her decision to fire her staff all the more idiotic and misguided; not, of course, that she'll learn the right lesson from this. As you said, she'll blame her critics, her syndicate and her ex before she pins the blame on her own dimwitted self.
The easy solution is to reprint one of the many Sunday strips from 1980, she has not already reprinted. It would require a little effort to figure out which ones those are, so I suspect she may leave that up to Stephanie. Even though the Comic Strip Catalog is very nice, it should have the side effect of allowing Stephanie to format and send off each week's set of reprint strips to the syndicate. I suspect the little section which shows when the strip was reprinted was specifically put there with this kind of task in mind.
The Connie-goes-to-Montreal-to-pursue-Phil arc was originally printed in February 1981. Between Lawrence's broken leg and Connie's dilemma, hervisit to the jazz club and reunion with Phil, the sequence ran almost the entire month before Connie got back to Milborough.
There's also some scope for John and Elly musing about their relationship, which also happened in before the end of the Connie pursues Phil arc.
There. If I've formatted that correctly, Lynn won't have much work to do in February, unless she can find a way to mess up this continuity. I have faith that she can.
Based on what she has not reprinted, Lynn should be able to do solid reprints of the dailies from the mid January to mid March, 1981 strips. During that time, she will have to do new Sunday strips every Sunday through March.
Then in mid-March, she would need to do 2 weeks of new-run dailies to cover the material she has already reprinted to the end of the month. Early spring.
After March, she has only the 8 Sunday strips she has already reprinted, which keep her from going to straight reprints in everything.
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