The Snow Fort Strip Returns for the First Time
Today’s For Better or For Worse falls in the category of a strip where the situation and the joke and even the style (silent) of doing the strip are the same. In this link, we point to strips from January 22, 1989 and February 20, 2000. I guess Lynn feels it's OK to repeat this strip every 10 years or so.
The January 22, 1989 strip features Elizabeth at a time when she would have been about 8 or 9 years old. The differences between this version and the one today is that Elizabeth actively solicits John’s help to build a snow fort, and Elizabeth’s friends are not characters I know. In the final panel, Elizabeth and friends end up in front of the fire place. The layout for a number of panels in this strip seem to be duplicated in today's new-run to the point where it seems likely Lynn Johnston was using this1989 strip as a model. The point where John loses the kids is exactly the same as in today’s strip -- while he is crawling through the snow fort tunnel.
The February 20, 2000 strip features a similar situation with April Patterson getting unsolicited help from John and Grandpa Jim. April has no friends with her except for Edgar the dog and starts out making a snow fort for an action figure or possibly a Ned Tanner doll. Grandpa Jim and John make a snow fort so sophisticated it actually has windows on it and a roof. After they finish, they see April inside with Edgar, looking at them through the window. Prior to this point we saw April sullenly staring at John and Jim taking over all the labor from April. I guess she figured if she wasn't going to get to do anything, she might as well watch from where it is warm. This is a different sort of situation than the prior strip or today’s strip. The point is to be a moral lesson that adults don't need to take over the fun work from the kids, as opposed to the "kids' attention span is not that long, so they abandon the adult." However, it is similar to today’s strip in that the help is unsolicited.
The unique elements of today’s new-run vs. those other strips are:
1. The kids end up in front of the television (evil TV) when they come back in the house.
2. That cute little picture of Elizabeth eating the snow in the foreground of panel 3.
As for me and my family, it doesn't snow much in Tucson. We were in Dallas, Texas in December and it snowed there. My kids and I went outside and we each made 3 balls of snow for a snowman, which the kids decorated. My wife came outside briefly to take a picture. I don't really have the same issue as John in this situation. It's more fun to play with the kids in the snow than to take over.
The January 22, 1989 strip features Elizabeth at a time when she would have been about 8 or 9 years old. The differences between this version and the one today is that Elizabeth actively solicits John’s help to build a snow fort, and Elizabeth’s friends are not characters I know. In the final panel, Elizabeth and friends end up in front of the fire place. The layout for a number of panels in this strip seem to be duplicated in today's new-run to the point where it seems likely Lynn Johnston was using this1989 strip as a model. The point where John loses the kids is exactly the same as in today’s strip -- while he is crawling through the snow fort tunnel.
The February 20, 2000 strip features a similar situation with April Patterson getting unsolicited help from John and Grandpa Jim. April has no friends with her except for Edgar the dog and starts out making a snow fort for an action figure or possibly a Ned Tanner doll. Grandpa Jim and John make a snow fort so sophisticated it actually has windows on it and a roof. After they finish, they see April inside with Edgar, looking at them through the window. Prior to this point we saw April sullenly staring at John and Jim taking over all the labor from April. I guess she figured if she wasn't going to get to do anything, she might as well watch from where it is warm. This is a different sort of situation than the prior strip or today’s strip. The point is to be a moral lesson that adults don't need to take over the fun work from the kids, as opposed to the "kids' attention span is not that long, so they abandon the adult." However, it is similar to today’s strip in that the help is unsolicited.
The unique elements of today’s new-run vs. those other strips are:
1. The kids end up in front of the television (evil TV) when they come back in the house.
2. That cute little picture of Elizabeth eating the snow in the foreground of panel 3.
As for me and my family, it doesn't snow much in Tucson. We were in Dallas, Texas in December and it snowed there. My kids and I went outside and we each made 3 balls of snow for a snowman, which the kids decorated. My wife came outside briefly to take a picture. I don't really have the same issue as John in this situation. It's more fun to play with the kids in the snow than to take over.
posted by howard at 9:56 PM
4 Comments:
This is a different sort of situation than the prior strip or today’s strip. The point is to be a moral lesson that adults don't need to take over the fun work from the kids, as opposed to the "kids' attention span is not that long, so they abandon the adult."
This one, like the 'Can Doctor Patterson come out and play' strip, came from the era in which Lynn actually cared about what she was doing. That's why it delivers a message without being heavy-handed or somehow backfiring.
That's true. Both those strips were done during a time when Charles Schulz was still alive. His death was marked by Lynn Johnston herself in her letter to Phyllis Diller as the point when she lost interest in doing her comic strip. There is nothing that shows this lack of creativity more than the fact that she recycled the idea and images from those 2 strips for this one today.
Wow, you're not kidding about how closely Lynn appears to have modeled this strip on the earlier one with Liz and her friends. The last two panels in particular could almost have come from a template.
The last two panels in particular could almost have come from a template.
This is why the catalogue, though great fun and a fantastic resource, was a terrible idea from an artistic point of view if she is going to re-use old strips and hope to pass them off as brand-new material.
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