Two Years = One Treasury
Today's Sunday strip of For Better or For Worse was originally printed on June 28, 1981. Again, we do not have new material on the Sunday and since the next Sunday is in August, the only remaining thing to do is to check and see if the Sunday comic strip chosen next week is the one corresponding in time to the first Sunday in August, 1981. If it is, then we will be officially in straight reprints for Sundays and dailies. There is good reason for this to happen.
I suspect the actual last new work for Lynn Johnston will be the cover on the book Something Old, Something New: For Better or For Worse 1st Treasury. The description on the page indicates that what we are going to see in the Treasury is not like the chronological reprinting of the Complete Peanuts, but the new-run and reprint material that Lynn has printed since going to the new-runs in 2008.
The page length is close to the same as that of the Complete Peanuts series, which usually covers 2 years. Thus, we have an explanation to why the new-runs continued for 2 years -- Lynn Johnston wanted material to cover this new-run edition. If she continues on, then every 2 years there would be another treasury covering the reprinted (and occasionally slightly redrawn and recolored) strips. We also have an explanation to why the new-run Sunday strips stop in August -- to allow enough time for the publisher to put together the material for a November 9 publication date. Given that Lynn has to have her Sunday strips 8 weeks in advance, then that give the publisher at least 5 months and possibly more, if Lynn worked in advance.
The disappointment is that Lynn is not doing a treasury edition like the critically acclaimed Complete Peanuts, which published everything in exact chronological order and with a great deal of attention placed on a high quality presentation, as if it were the collection of a great historical document. This is a little bit of a surprise, because Lynn considers Charles Schulz so highly. You would think she would want to imitate the Complete Peanuts more exactly. You would think she would want to toss the awful new-runs of the last 2 years, because they were so full of errors.
Moreover, there were a number of good strips, she either did not reprint or she did reprint in the hybrid year of 2007-08. Without them, the For Better or For Worse first treasury is going to be a severely incomplete history of the early years of the strip.
I suspect the actual last new work for Lynn Johnston will be the cover on the book Something Old, Something New: For Better or For Worse 1st Treasury. The description on the page indicates that what we are going to see in the Treasury is not like the chronological reprinting of the Complete Peanuts, but the new-run and reprint material that Lynn has printed since going to the new-runs in 2008.
The page length is close to the same as that of the Complete Peanuts series, which usually covers 2 years. Thus, we have an explanation to why the new-runs continued for 2 years -- Lynn Johnston wanted material to cover this new-run edition. If she continues on, then every 2 years there would be another treasury covering the reprinted (and occasionally slightly redrawn and recolored) strips. We also have an explanation to why the new-run Sunday strips stop in August -- to allow enough time for the publisher to put together the material for a November 9 publication date. Given that Lynn has to have her Sunday strips 8 weeks in advance, then that give the publisher at least 5 months and possibly more, if Lynn worked in advance.
The disappointment is that Lynn is not doing a treasury edition like the critically acclaimed Complete Peanuts, which published everything in exact chronological order and with a great deal of attention placed on a high quality presentation, as if it were the collection of a great historical document. This is a little bit of a surprise, because Lynn considers Charles Schulz so highly. You would think she would want to imitate the Complete Peanuts more exactly. You would think she would want to toss the awful new-runs of the last 2 years, because they were so full of errors.
Moreover, there were a number of good strips, she either did not reprint or she did reprint in the hybrid year of 2007-08. Without them, the For Better or For Worse first treasury is going to be a severely incomplete history of the early years of the strip.
posted by howard at 11:57 PM
5 Comments:
The disappointment is that Lynn is not doing a treasury edition like the critically acclaimed Complete Peanuts, which published everything in exact chronological order and with a great deal of attention placed on a high quality presentation, as if it were the collection of a great historical document.
Instead, one will end up with a hardcover version of one of her lesser collections. You are not alone in finding this to be a great disappointment; I had hoped that the new-ruins would have been disavowed instead of being treated as the lead-in to what might as well be called "Ultimate Foob."
So Sunday's strip was a repeat? And yet, it manages to convey Lynn's...sorry, Elly's mistreatment at the hands of her unthinking, unfeeling, inconsiderate family.
Instead of saying she needs help cleaning the pig-sty that is the home of the family Patterson, she chases everybody out so she -- and only she! -- can clean everything to her satisfaction.
But once the job is done, her unthinking, unfeeling, inconsiderate family returns home, leaving Lynn...Elly to lament that it took all day to clean up, but only three seconds to make it a mess again.
Poor, poor martyr Lynn...Elly.
DreadedCandiru2,
You are not alone in finding this to be a great disappointment; I had hoped that the new-ruins would have been disavowed instead of being treated as the lead-in to what might as well be called "Ultimate Foob."
I suppose she feels the need to have all of her work collected. However, by treating the new-runs in this fashion, then persons who decide to collect all the treasuries may confuse it for a Peanuts-like collection. The difference between Lynn’s work and Charles Schulz’ work is that Schulz’ collections were not already done in chronological order. My old Peanuts books often covered strips under a particular theme from different publication times. When the first Peanuts treasury came out, the big plug was that many of the strips had never been reprinted. For Lynn, the treasury is just another in her series of collections of her recent work.
Jonas,
So Sunday's strip was a repeat? And yet, it manages to convey Lynn's...sorry, Elly's mistreatment at the hands of her unthinking, unfeeling, inconsiderate family.
That is the plot behind ½ of Lynn’s strips, even from the very beginning. However there is a subtheme at work there also. The family is enjoying itself and its time together, all except Elly. She is unhappy they are making a mess and she does not join in the fun. There may be many housewives out there who don’t like the messes their family makes, but how many housewives out there never enjoy any time with their family? Probably quite a few, since so many housewives seems to relate to this comic strip.
I was doing some calculating about how much history was going to be published in these omnibuses, which led to this blog entry, which expanded on the bleak future of the FOOBjournal, the strip that influenced FBOFW, and other comics that were inspired by FBOFW.
http://sundaycomicsdebt.blogspot.com/2010/07/foob-redundancy.html
There's plenty of images and links at that site if you're interested. If you're not intimidated, you could also check out my post on Posy Simmonds, whose weekly strip predated FBOFW:
http://sundaycomicsdebt.blogspot.com/2010/07/posy-simmonds.html
This might be the last post on FBOFW I'll ever make, so I wanted to go out with a bang. Hopefully, you'll think of doing the same.
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