A Perfect World
Wow! Today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse is about as bad as it gets for Lynn Johnston. The artwork shows almost the least amount of effort Lynn Johnston can put into a comic strip. The entire thing consists of panel after panel of a badly-drawn John Patterson expounding on the weather. The punch line is one Lynn Johnston has used many times, and which makes no sense, unless you consider the news to be always bad.
Do you listen to the news today? No, why? Canada got another gold medal in the Winter Olympics. Well, I’m glad all I have to worry about is the weather.
To put things in perspective here and here and here are other strips Lynn Johnston did on the virtually the same theme, all of which are an order of magnitude better than the slapped-together mess she did for today. In a perfect world, Lynn Johnston would never do a strip this bad again.
Do you listen to the news today? No, why? Canada got another gold medal in the Winter Olympics. Well, I’m glad all I have to worry about is the weather.
To put things in perspective here and here and here are other strips Lynn Johnston did on the virtually the same theme, all of which are an order of magnitude better than the slapped-together mess she did for today. In a perfect world, Lynn Johnston would never do a strip this bad again.
posted by howard at 9:48 PM
10 Comments:
Well, the good thing is that the World is going to get that much closer to perfection soon; once Lynn goes to straight reprints, we won't have to worry about poor quality Frankenstrips like this again.
Today's strip was definitely a step in the direction of making me wish for the straight reprints.
I'm going to have to disagree: I think that first strip you link is about 20 orders of magnitude worse than today's. That right there is a wonderful example of a Magical Negro. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro) Oh thank goodness for those poor dark people who have gone through tragedy so that they may teach privileged white folks a lesson. And of course every Ethiopian is just SO GRATEFUL to be in glorious wonderful white Canada, even when he has a crappy job and has to drive through sleet and snow. And even though this Ethiopian has not seen his wife for 3 years, he is still a good and grateful immigrant, properly humble and thankful to the rich white North American.
As for the other two strips, I call bs. I grew up in Michigan. I always saw snow as fun and beautiful until I had to drive in it. I never got sick of snow at Mike's or Liz's ages, and I don't remember any of my friends doing so either. So those strips ring completely false to me, but not as bad as the first one, which has me as nauseated as the "I quit being a mother!" and "I have no home!" strips.
Regarding the "Michael and Christopher" strip - that designation was changed by Steph after I told her it couldn't be "Michael and Elizabeth" because one of the characters was called "Chris".
However, isn't Christopher Elizabeth's age, not Michael's? It should be "Elizabeth and Christopher", shouldn't it? Particularly as that looks like a girly bonnet-hood on the Patterson child...
Anonymous
You're right: it should be Christopher and Elizabeth. Christopher's first appearance shows both he and Lizzie are the same age. Also, Lizzie's hair was longer and would blow around in the wind like that. Mike might have had long-ish bangs, but certainly wouldn't have had long enough sides to curl around his hood.
Leah was born in summer 1986, so would be the baby referred to by Christopher in the first panel. Richard was born in 1982 (It Must Be Nice to Be Little, which covers that sequence in full, isn't on the search-by-collection screen and "Richard" brings up far too many hits because the search-by-keyword option is far too broad.)
I can appreciate the confusion, seeing as, more recently, Annie was shown to have two children, one already walking and the other an infant, roughly around the time Elizabeth started learning to walk. The older one is apparently named Christopher and appears to be roughly the same height as Michael. Two months later, the older child is named Richard and appears to be Mike's peer if not even slightly older, to judge from his size.
Perhaps I'm just being a picky-face, though. Little details like characters' names, ages and birth order must be so easily forgotten by the person who came up with them in the first place, and only overly-critical people get bothered by such insignificant mistakes. Just think: in a few months we'll be able to see Richard being born! Whether this is the same Richard who was Mike's age, Richard who was Lizzie's age or a Richard who was a couple of years younger than Lizzie remains to be seen, but it sure does appear from the constantly changing number of kids in her household that Annie is even worse at looking after her kids than Elly.
Clio,
I'm going to have to disagree: I think that first strip you link is about 20 orders of magnitude worse than today's. That right there is a wonderful example of a Magical Negro.
What I have linked then, I preferred because Lynn Johnston obviously spent more time and effort drawing the strip and writing the dialogue. On the other hand, you don’t like the strips because Lynn Johnston spent more time writing the dialogue and she wrote something offensive and something that rings false to you. I will go with you on that one. It’s more believable that John Patterson would rant about the snow than Liz or Mike. Actually, John is usually shown liking and playing in the snow. The character who usually rants about the snow is Elly; but she can’t be shown making the sage announcement about the awful news if she is also the one ranting about the snow. It's still out-of-character, although not as out-of-character as Liz or Michael doing it. The linked strips still have much better art than today’s.
forworse,
Just think: in a few months we'll be able to see Richard being born! Whether this is the same Richard who was Mike's age, Richard who was Lizzie's age or a Richard who was a couple of years younger than Lizzie remains to be seen, but it sure does appear from the constantly changing number of kids in her household that Annie is even worse at looking after her kids than Elly.
The last appearance of the older, close to Mike in age, boy was this strip, where you noted the boy is called Richard and not Christopher. I think that after this altercation with Michael, the Pattersons hired someone to take him out in revenge for hitting Mike, and then everyone covered up his disappearance. In a few months, the new Richard will be born and he will be named in homage to his poor dead older brother.
We're also back to that Lynn leitmotif that no one is allowed to complain about anything when there are any worse problems that someone can cite to you. Like Eva smacking down April for complaining about the TTH when she could "live in a war zone" or Luis smacking her down for comparing herself to being a refugee.
Except for Elly. If Elly has any kind of problem whatsoever, she is free to complain about it to her heart's content.
If Elly has any kind of problem whatsoever, she is free to complain about it to her heart's content.
Right--and time after time, Elly does a final-panel gobsmack over trivial things, and readers are expected to sympathize with her.
OTOH, she was, occasionally, on the other end of one of these "putting the problems into perspective" statements. I recall one where Elly corrects the way John loads the dishwasher and her makes some comment about how fortunate they are to be arguing over something so trivial. But strips like that were in the minority, for sure.
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