The Mysterious Calendar of Lynn Johnston
Today’s For Better or For Worse Sunday strip is a reprint from July 12, 1981. Lynn said in her Coffee Talk Blog last week:
The Sunday strips continue to be new additions because I used so many retro Sundays during 2007. The new Sundays will cease in August and the retros will begin with new coloring and sometimes improved imagery. Thanks for asking! LJ
As you know from last week's blog entry, I interpreted that to mean July 18 and 25 would be new strips and the Sundays in August would be reprints. Now that I see today's strip is a reprint, I am going to have to read Lynn’s message a little more carefully. Lynn does not say that the Sunday strips “will continue” to be new additions. She says that that the Sunday strips “continue” to be new additions. This is an explanation as to why she has not taken the Sunday strips to straight reprints as the dailies were taken to straight reprints. It is not a promise of things to happen in the future.
I also note that although Lynn does say that the Sunday strips “will cease” in August, she does not specify when in August they will cease. Based on this, it is safe to say that in order for something to cease in August, there must be at least one new addition which occurs sometime before then. So, we could get a new strip on July 25. Or we could get new strips from July 25 all the way to the second-to-last Sunday in August.
Another possibility is that last Sunday’s comic strip was our last new one and Lynn Johnston is simply lying. Certainly her recent response in Elly’s Coffee Talk would indicate that Lynn finds it very difficult to tell the truth.
Another possibility is that Lynn really doesn’t remember or know when the final strip is, because she did them so long ago.
I suspect what Lynn really means is that in August, the 2010 Sunday strips will start to be reprinted with dates that will be chronologically synchronized with the strips from 1981, as the dailies are done now. Technically, this Sunday’s reprint strip, even though it comes from July 12, 1981, is not synchronized by date. In other words, it is not the Sunday strip from July 19, 1981. Up until the time that the strips are chronologically synchronized, the strips could be reprints or new material. I guess we will have to see what shows up next week or any week up until the time when the dates between 1981 and 2010 match on Sundays.
The Sunday strips continue to be new additions because I used so many retro Sundays during 2007. The new Sundays will cease in August and the retros will begin with new coloring and sometimes improved imagery. Thanks for asking! LJ
As you know from last week's blog entry, I interpreted that to mean July 18 and 25 would be new strips and the Sundays in August would be reprints. Now that I see today's strip is a reprint, I am going to have to read Lynn’s message a little more carefully. Lynn does not say that the Sunday strips “will continue” to be new additions. She says that that the Sunday strips “continue” to be new additions. This is an explanation as to why she has not taken the Sunday strips to straight reprints as the dailies were taken to straight reprints. It is not a promise of things to happen in the future.
I also note that although Lynn does say that the Sunday strips “will cease” in August, she does not specify when in August they will cease. Based on this, it is safe to say that in order for something to cease in August, there must be at least one new addition which occurs sometime before then. So, we could get a new strip on July 25. Or we could get new strips from July 25 all the way to the second-to-last Sunday in August.
Another possibility is that last Sunday’s comic strip was our last new one and Lynn Johnston is simply lying. Certainly her recent response in Elly’s Coffee Talk would indicate that Lynn finds it very difficult to tell the truth.
Another possibility is that Lynn really doesn’t remember or know when the final strip is, because she did them so long ago.
I suspect what Lynn really means is that in August, the 2010 Sunday strips will start to be reprinted with dates that will be chronologically synchronized with the strips from 1981, as the dailies are done now. Technically, this Sunday’s reprint strip, even though it comes from July 12, 1981, is not synchronized by date. In other words, it is not the Sunday strip from July 19, 1981. Up until the time that the strips are chronologically synchronized, the strips could be reprints or new material. I guess we will have to see what shows up next week or any week up until the time when the dates between 1981 and 2010 match on Sundays.
posted by howard at 12:12 AM
11 Comments:
That we will; Lynn's inability to be honest and her refusal to give a proper answer to a question or speak coherently requires our constant vigilance. As for the strip itself, it's just another example of Elly reacting to her inability to pay attention to what her kids get up to.
Another example and really the first in a theme she will return to again and again over the years -- kids misusing scissors on someone's hair.
I thought this one was a new strip, because it showed Michael as being particularly retarded. I noticed that she's a lot meaner to John, Michael, Phil, really, any male in the refried strips.
Jonas,
One of the nice thing about seeing the reprints together with the new material from Lynn is you can see that as far as male-bashing goes, she started and ended in the same place, i.e. mad at Rod Johnston. This anger was directed at men in the strip during its earliest and final years. In the beginning Rod Johnston was the guy who dragged her up to live in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, a place she hated with a passion. In the end, he had an affair which led to their divorce. Thematically, the 2 periods in the comic strip go together nicely.
In the interim, Rod agreed to leave his home town of Lynn Lake and move with Lynn to Corbeil, Ontario. This improved her mood considerably, and demonstratively changed her attitude towards men in the comic strip. It is this time most people remember fondly.
I would add that the two periods seem to have a common theme in Lynn feeling put upon not just by men but by "life", "fate"; at first trapped in a podunk town with two filthy kids and no malls, at the end trapped in a burned-out professional life with two kids who seem to, at best, tolerate her.
Lynn seems to prefer cursing the darkness.
FDChief,
I have never been really clear what Lynn's current relationship is with her son. It's obvious she gets along with her daughter to the point where she is willing to travel to Oaxaca, Mexico with her and then to Thailand with her and her new husband. In the post-divorce period of time, Lynn has almost never mentioned her son, which has led many of us to believe that he either ended up on Team Rod or is more simply on Team not Lynn.
As for cursing the darkness (as opposed to lighting a candle), Lynn did actively work to alleviate her situation in Lynn Lake. If the old CBC interview with her in 1980 is any indication, she had no problem spouting off to Rod in front of the camera how much she wanted to move from Lynn Lake. I can only imagine how much complaining she did in private. Eventually he relented, and they moved. Rod ended up moving his mother, father and brother with him, having to start his practice over, and giving up his dream of being the flying dentist; in order to make Lynn happy.
The proverb is better for Lynn's current situation with her career. She has said many times that she was tired of doing the comic strip and had originally planned to retire in 2004. 6 years later and she is still at it.
In "cursing the darkness" I was specifically thinking about her present situation; I really don't know much about her history with Rod, other than the whole business about hating the Great White North.
I've always wondered about Lynn and Kate, tho. Her accounts of her travels always seem to feature some sort of embarassing incident, like Lynn's Ugly Canadianisms, or the infamous unwashed-carrot's-revenge, or so little about what Kate actually says and does that I wonder if her daughter is really an adult friend, or one of those kids who have a sort of uneasy dependence/distaste for their parent(s)...
FDChief,
...so little about what Kate actually says and does that I wonder if her daughter is really an adult friend, or one of those kids who have a sort of uneasy dependence/distaste for their parent(s)...
Kate spent years working as a ski instructor. I have been told before that this profession is traditionally the hallmark of a person who is dependent on someone else.
If Lynn Johnston had retired in 2004....
Elly Paterson still running Liliput's,
John still working,
Michael still having a job,
No fire at the Kelpfroth's,
Elizabeth finishing her degree and moving north to teach,
No "Mr. Wright,"
Candace still sharp-tongued and level-headed,
Warren and Rudy not depicted as jerks,
No attempted rape,
Anthony Caine married to a termagant,
No risky hanky-panky between Gerald and April when they are both obviously too young to handle it,
Becky still Becky, not "Rebecca,"
Jim still healthy,
Iris not a martyr.
I could have lived with that.
Howard -- I did not know the history of Lynn & Rod's early days and how unhappy she was. It seems like she's been very unhappy most of her life. That's sad.
Of course, using her strip as therapy and subjecting the rest of us to her tortured past is not fun. The first go-around, I never noticed how hateful she was to men in general. Of course, now, given the "too much information" she's shared, it's impossible not to see the anger under the surface in everything.
Anonymous -- I always thought the strip should have ended with Michael & Deanna's wedding. Pretty much every storyline after that was just awful, but none so egregious as the massacre of Elizabeth's career in Lake Mitizigaynor so she could come home and marry the high school boyfriend who stalked her for years. (Well, maybe the canonization of Michael as a "brilliant" writer when every excerpt was such godawful, purple, turgid prose that even Barbara Cartland would be ashamed of.)
Anonymous and Jonas,
The things you are pointing out are the reasons I started watching this comic strip more carefully. Many people consider Michael and Deanna's wedding to be the turning point in the strip. It wasn't like the latter years of other strips, where it was clear the creators had run out of original ideas, buy still liked their characters. Lynn Johnston took her characters from being sympathetic to being self-righteous and judgmental. The persons with whom they were having conflicts turned from understandable people to two-dimensional villains. I didn't know the source of it until a personal letter Lynn Johnston wrote to Phyllis Diller showed up for sale on-line. In that letter, Lynn revealed that she had lost interest in doing the comic strip after Charles Schulz died in 2000, which was, right around the time of Michael and Deanna's courtship leading up to the wedding. For me the most egregious storyline was the Howard Bunt storyline, which ended with Anthony Caine's infamous "I have no home!" line. That was the reason this blog is the Howard Bunt blog.
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