Not a Redo. Oopsie!
Much to my surprise, I find that today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse was not actually redone yesterday. Lynn Johnston even left in the “visit with family” part, even though she has been getting rid of all mentions of Connie Poirier’s cousin. I guess those must be “cousin” only deletions.
The oddest part is that there seems to be no effort on her part to reconcile the difference in perspective of Connie Poirier in yesterday’s new-run and today’s reprint. They don’t have the same focus. Putting yesterday’s strip and today’s back-to-back means:
1. Even though Connie told Lawrence she was coming home soon, she is immediately thinking of this not as a promise, but as good advice, which she may or may not follow.
2. Even though Connie believed Phil broke her heart from living with someone, now she starts thinking he may be living with someone. For some reason not shown to us she is less certain.
3. Even though Connie referred to her situation as “crazy”, now her plan of what to do includes taking the time to visit with previously-unmentioned family.
Connie doesn’t seem to be able to keep her mind on one thing for more than a short period of time. In other words, putting those 2 strips back-to-back makes Connie appear to be mentally ill. On the plus side, once again, by trying to make a character look better, Lynn Johnston has managed to make her look worse. Congratulations Lynn! I knew you could do it!
The oddest part is that there seems to be no effort on her part to reconcile the difference in perspective of Connie Poirier in yesterday’s new-run and today’s reprint. They don’t have the same focus. Putting yesterday’s strip and today’s back-to-back means:
1. Even though Connie told Lawrence she was coming home soon, she is immediately thinking of this not as a promise, but as good advice, which she may or may not follow.
2. Even though Connie believed Phil broke her heart from living with someone, now she starts thinking he may be living with someone. For some reason not shown to us she is less certain.
3. Even though Connie referred to her situation as “crazy”, now her plan of what to do includes taking the time to visit with previously-unmentioned family.
Connie doesn’t seem to be able to keep her mind on one thing for more than a short period of time. In other words, putting those 2 strips back-to-back makes Connie appear to be mentally ill. On the plus side, once again, by trying to make a character look better, Lynn Johnston has managed to make her look worse. Congratulations Lynn! I knew you could do it!
posted by howard at 10:55 PM
4 Comments:
Connie doesn’t seem to be able to keep her mind on one thing for more than a short period of time. In other words, putting those 2 strips back-to-back makes Connie appear to be mentally ill. On the plus side, once again, by trying to make a character look better, Lynn Johnston has managed to make her look worse. Congratulations Lynn! I knew you could do it!
On the flip side, her attempt to make Phil look worse will end up making him look better; get ready for the trumpet-playing strawman with a point 'cause she's about to turn Phil into a hipper version of John!
I will be very curious to see how Lynn handles Phil in whatever new-runs are added to this story. In its original telling, Phil casually blows off Connie, whom he considers as a woman with whom he had a single date a month ago. He has been set up as a man who has been physically intimate with Connie and is leading her on, by continuing to correspond with her over a year. It will difficult to reconcile his reaction using only the originally-printed material.
What fascinates me is that Lynn not only wanted to reprint it but appears to have spent some time fiddling with it. As you pointed out yesterday, this is perhaps the single most loathesome episode in the comic. Nobody comes out of it looking intelligent or sensible. It's just a mire of sentimental idiocy, selfishness and gormless vacuity.
It's like chosing to revisit the time in high school when you ditched your best friend to chase some hairbag, ended up getting dumped and looked the fool in front of everyone.
Lynn doesn't seem to have that level of embarrassment anymore. Even strips like the recently-reprinted, and understandably not PC, "Lawrence and Michael smoke a pipe" sequence which were excised from the reprint collections books made the cut for these new reprints.
In the first year of her new-run /reprints, there was some selectivity being shown. She did not reprint the strip where John spanked Michael's bare butt outdoors, for example. Now she is in her second year of it, everything is fair game for reprinting.
Post a Comment
<< Home