Straight Reprints: It's Official
One of the options I suggested Lynn Johnston might be taking For Better or For Worse, when I wrote last week was this:
Since July 19, 1981 was reprinted way back on July 19, 2009; Lynn will start reprinting from July 26, 1981 next week and then continue that way with the strips off in date continuity between 1981 and 2010 by 2 weeks.
With today's reprint in For Better of For Worse, this is exactly what has happened. July 26, 1981 has reappeared. I had thought Lynn Johnston might synchronize the publication of the Sunday strips between the dates in 2010 with those of the original publication dates in 1981 as she has done with the daily strips, but that doesn't seem to be the case. As of this point in her reprinting, Lynn Johnston has no more strips in 1981 originally published after July 26, which she has already reprinted in the last 2 years of doing the new-runs. In other words, we have entered the land of straight reprints. The only place the 2-week separation will cause her trouble is around the holiday seasons. I doubt that she is thinking that far in advance.
As for today's comic strip, it goes along with one of Lynn Johnston's running jokes for the strip, i.e. husbands don't know how to dress themselves. Eventually this ends up being a little ironic in the later years of the strip when Elly Patterson hits her 50s and starts dressing like she is in her 80s. Unlike many other strips of this sort, John Patterson is actually allowed to make a case for his love of this particular jacket which sounds reasonable for a man who forgets to do up his belt and tuck in his shirt and who needs to scratch underneath his sports jacket while out in public. The humour works pretty well here, because Elly does not go into a giant fit over John's logic. She lets him sink himself. The clever reader will quickly understand that, given John's explanation, a wife might prefer him to cover up those activities.
Let's not think too hard about why John might be out in public with his shirt untucked and his belt undone. Probably he is talking about when he leaves the bathroom without remembering to do those things and not moments where he is leaving another woman's house in a rush.
What this strip does show in the final panel is what I refer to as the George Burns moment, where the character stops the action and makes a joke directly to the reader. Lynn Johnston must have gone through a phase in July of 1981, because she did the same thing last week and the week before. Eventually she stops doing this, and lets her characters say the punch line to another character, who will be shown laughing hilariously in reaction to it. I prefer the method she uses today.
Since July 19, 1981 was reprinted way back on July 19, 2009; Lynn will start reprinting from July 26, 1981 next week and then continue that way with the strips off in date continuity between 1981 and 2010 by 2 weeks.
With today's reprint in For Better of For Worse, this is exactly what has happened. July 26, 1981 has reappeared. I had thought Lynn Johnston might synchronize the publication of the Sunday strips between the dates in 2010 with those of the original publication dates in 1981 as she has done with the daily strips, but that doesn't seem to be the case. As of this point in her reprinting, Lynn Johnston has no more strips in 1981 originally published after July 26, which she has already reprinted in the last 2 years of doing the new-runs. In other words, we have entered the land of straight reprints. The only place the 2-week separation will cause her trouble is around the holiday seasons. I doubt that she is thinking that far in advance.
As for today's comic strip, it goes along with one of Lynn Johnston's running jokes for the strip, i.e. husbands don't know how to dress themselves. Eventually this ends up being a little ironic in the later years of the strip when Elly Patterson hits her 50s and starts dressing like she is in her 80s. Unlike many other strips of this sort, John Patterson is actually allowed to make a case for his love of this particular jacket which sounds reasonable for a man who forgets to do up his belt and tuck in his shirt and who needs to scratch underneath his sports jacket while out in public. The humour works pretty well here, because Elly does not go into a giant fit over John's logic. She lets him sink himself. The clever reader will quickly understand that, given John's explanation, a wife might prefer him to cover up those activities.
Let's not think too hard about why John might be out in public with his shirt untucked and his belt undone. Probably he is talking about when he leaves the bathroom without remembering to do those things and not moments where he is leaving another woman's house in a rush.
What this strip does show in the final panel is what I refer to as the George Burns moment, where the character stops the action and makes a joke directly to the reader. Lynn Johnston must have gone through a phase in July of 1981, because she did the same thing last week and the week before. Eventually she stops doing this, and lets her characters say the punch line to another character, who will be shown laughing hilariously in reaction to it. I prefer the method she uses today.
posted by howard at 1:58 PM
6 Comments:
So this, then, is...The End.
It's been an interesting time, watching the process of creativity (such as it was) become sterility and eventually self-parody. Thanks for helping make the process more entertaining!
FDChief,
So this, then, is...The End.
I guess technically the Sunday strip 3 weeks ago with John Patterson oiling everything was the last original strip from Lynn Johnston. I was a little surprised she didn't do a final strip with a little more fanfare to it; but I suppose she doesn't want to call attention to the "no new strips" status, since that may lead to a flurry of newspapers dropping the strip, as it did when she had her grand finale of the modern characters back in 2008.
Thanks for helping make the process more entertaining!
You are quite welcome. I have certainly enjoyed blogging about it, and your comments were a big part of that.
As of this point in her reprinting, Lynn Johnston has no more strips in 1981 originally published after July 26, which she has already reprinted in the last 2 years of doing the new-runs. In other words, we have entered the land of straight reprints. The only place the 2-week separation will cause her trouble is around the holiday seasons. I doubt that she is thinking that far in advance.
I doubt it myself; it's going to be odd seeing an obvious Christmas strip in January but that's not something she's going to be worried about. Besides, whoever's left in Kool-Aid Nation will decide that Elly is talking about that funny thing her kids did over the holidays.
As for this being the end of the new-run era, it has been sort of fun watching Lynn's self-destruction. How odd it is that the last strip that she created for public consumption was a slam against Rod for seeking youth; typical but odd.
The only question now is - will the reprinted strips outpace the Newspaper reprints? If the Omnibus collections are going to be produced once a year, they'll easily go past what's currently available. With Lynn going into straight reprints and not producing any more strips, my post seems to be even more relevant:
http://sundaycomicsdebt.blogspot.com/2010/07/foob-redundancy.html
Feel free to show it on the FOOB livejournal - there's even less reason for me to join up now. I might post a follow-up article on Posy Simmonds's Wedding if anybody expreses any interest.
Apart from picking apart the previous strips' history and their duboius storylines, there doesn't seem to be much reason to continue micro-analyzing FBOFW. Only DreadedCandiru seems willing to keep up the slack, and even he seems to be running into the ground by only speaking to the select few still standing around listening to him.
If you want to read a strip that's more depressing than FBOFW & Peanuts, I highly recommend Quino's Mafalda, which was talked about here. I plan to do a post about the man's adult works very soon.
http://www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian/2010/07/dwyck-the-dreams-of-children/
DreadedCandiru2,
I doubt it myself; it's going to be odd seeing an obvious Christmas strip in January but that's not something she's going to be worried about. Besides, whoever's left in Kool-Aid Nation will decide that Elly is talking about that funny thing her kids did over the holidays.
That’s true. Certainly the recent Sunday offering with the 1981 dollar bill no longer available in Canada showed that Lynn has dropped off what little attention she had been giving the strip before. I doubt she cares if the holiday strips won't match the holidays. Of course, to fix that only means shifting a few strips around, so it's not much effort. She sends out a month of strips at a time, and she can specify different publication dates for the same set of strips to make it all match.
As for this being the end of the new-run era, it has been sort of fun watching Lynn's self-destruction. How odd it is that the last strip that she created for public consumption was a slam against Rod for seeking youth; typical but odd.
John and the oil can. Or as they say, “Not with a bang, but with a squeak.”
DeBT,
The only question now is - will the reprinted strips outpace the Newspaper reprints? If the Omnibus collections are going to be produced once a year, they'll easily go past what's currently available.
Fantagraphics published The Complete Peanuts at 2 books per year to cover 50 years in 12.5 years; but I don’t know if Andrews McMeel Publishing will do it the same way.
Apart from picking apart the previous strips' history and their duboius storylines, there doesn't seem to be much reason to continue micro-analyzing FBOFW. Only DreadedCandiru seems willing to keep up the slack, and even he seems to be running into the ground by only speaking to the select few still standing around listening to him.
Dreadedcandiru2 is indefatigable and has certainly shown more stamina than cookie77 who started up the Foobiverse’s Journal. It’s a pretty impressive feat in my opinion. I certainly have no plans to continue micro-analyzing the comic strip, but I could easily see throwing the occasional odd comment in over there. The folks over there are usually pretty nice to each other and I have had a writing relationship with them for over 5 years now.
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