Squeak, Squeak. The Comic Strip is So Old, It Needs Lube
Today I am with my family in Garden City, South Carolina enjoying a vacation at the beach. It's the end of the day and taking a look at Lynn's latest work, it looks like she may have drawn this comic strip while she had a spare moment at the beach. Today's new-run of For Better or For Worse is, according to the Lynn Johnston in her Coffee Talk 3 strips away from being her last new work. She said:
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
That means we have today, July 11, and then July 18 and 25 left.
Today's strip follows the same pattern as many of her Sunday strips of late. She recycles and combines ideas from old strips and then add lots of onomatopoiea. The squeaky tricycle strip is here. Here and here are 2 strips featuring Pattersons with creaking bones used for humour.
Artistically, Lynn continues her tendency to think in 4 panel sequences. John is in silhouette observing a squeaking kids' play thing in Panels 1 and 5, separated by 4 panels. Aside from that, Lynn's art suffers from her usual issues. The proportions are off in quite a few of the panels. In Panel 5, Michael and Lizzie are tiny compared to that enormous swing. In Panel 7, Michael's wagon is tiny in comparison to his body and the wagon doesn't look much like a wagon with its broken front axle. In Panels 1 and 4, Lizzie appears to be riding her tricycle without the benefit of a left leg. It's also pretty obvious in Panels 5 and 6, Lynn Johnston did not look at an actual swing set before she drew a picture of it. That's not how swings are attached to the swing set in the swing set in my backyard.
It will be interesting to see if Lynn plans to close her final new work with any kind of notice that it is her last new work; but the way she is going, I doubt she would want to . We have 2 more Sundays to see how it will all end. I expect more repeated old jokes from old strips and more onomatopoeia.
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
That means we have today, July 11, and then July 18 and 25 left.
Today's strip follows the same pattern as many of her Sunday strips of late. She recycles and combines ideas from old strips and then add lots of onomatopoiea. The squeaky tricycle strip is here. Here and here are 2 strips featuring Pattersons with creaking bones used for humour.
Artistically, Lynn continues her tendency to think in 4 panel sequences. John is in silhouette observing a squeaking kids' play thing in Panels 1 and 5, separated by 4 panels. Aside from that, Lynn's art suffers from her usual issues. The proportions are off in quite a few of the panels. In Panel 5, Michael and Lizzie are tiny compared to that enormous swing. In Panel 7, Michael's wagon is tiny in comparison to his body and the wagon doesn't look much like a wagon with its broken front axle. In Panels 1 and 4, Lizzie appears to be riding her tricycle without the benefit of a left leg. It's also pretty obvious in Panels 5 and 6, Lynn Johnston did not look at an actual swing set before she drew a picture of it. That's not how swings are attached to the swing set in the swing set in my backyard.
It will be interesting to see if Lynn plans to close her final new work with any kind of notice that it is her last new work; but the way she is going, I doubt she would want to . We have 2 more Sundays to see how it will all end. I expect more repeated old jokes from old strips and more onomatopoeia.
posted by howard at 8:29 PM
9 Comments:
Once again, I'm struck by
1) the uselessness of much of the sound effects and how most of these would be about as useful or useless as "silent films",
2) the apparent inability of the poor woman to now draw beyond four panels. This would have been almost identical as a four-panel strip; show the hover-trike, show John wincing, show the glupp-glorpp-glubbping, show John suddenly becoming his own grandfather.
Extra credit for the hover-trike; I can get how the car moves fast enough to completely leave the ground, but the tricycle..?
Not only will they be rehashes of old material, they will be easily collapsible into a four-panel strip.
FDChief,
I agree with you about the hover trike. In the strip of "April on the tricycle" I linked, April seems to be earthbound. By the same token, an earthbound squeaky tricycle makes a little more sense.
As for the 4 panels, this is Lynn Johnston's constant problem. I know some artists would use the Sunday format to tell more story or to tell more jokes, but Lynn Johnston thinks of her work in terms of one punch line and the set up to that punch line. It's amazing the woman considers Charles Schulz to be her mentor, because he was great at doing long and involved humorous stories for his Sunday strips.
Hell, even Bill Keane could do more with little Billy wandering around through ten panels of a Sunday strip.
FDChief,
Since you pointed it out, I did a little experiment and can confirm that a lot of the Sunday strips make just as much sense compressed.
FDChief,
The example with Bill Keane having little Billy wander around is a good one. That was a clear demonstration of how to use the space you get with a Sunday comic strip and not limit yourself to doing the sequential panel sequence.
dreadedcandiru2,
Your experiment is not only an excellent example, but I think the shortened strips are better than the ones which were printed. Of course, with only 2 strips to go, it's doubtful that Lynn Johnston will learn this lesson.
I don't think that it's very likely myself; what makes this last month bearable is thinking about how KAN will react when they see real Sunday strips.
I suspect the KAN will not even know the difference and may even be happy that the quality of the Sunday strips has gone up from the dreck Lynn has been dishing out in her Sunday strips.
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