As you know, Lynn Johnston is closing up shop (sorta) this week, putting an end to the Patterson saga in her daily strip For Better or For Worse, though she will be going back in time to redraw older strips and occasionally add new dialogue and such. The Washington Post has an interview with her about her semi-retirement:
What the reflective Johnston, 60, realized was that after decades of her identity and creativity and livelihood being linked to a comic strip, she wasn’t ready to give it up.
“It’s in your blood — it’s part of your life. I don’t want to quit being a cartoonist,” Johnston says by phone from her Toronto studio. “It’s tough to put it down — you still think of gags. And at the same time, I knew I’d be looking at material that I’d want to improve.”
Lest you think it’s all kisses and hugs, the Washington Post also ran this editorial, entitled “Something for Everyone to Hate:”
True Foobsters loved to underscore their particular peeves: The way the characters ate (“smork, chomp, chew, smack”) or laughed with their mouths open and tongues out. Some loved to hate Elly’s obsession with housework, or Deanna’s blankly pretty face and lips. Little things can cause a Foobster to hurl the newspaper to the floor — especially the bad puns in the fourth panel, with those little Fooby bon mots about life. Lynn Johnston may think she has fans, but does she know she has such devoted anti-fans?
“I save up all my vitriol for this piece of . . . art,” says a woman named “Lia,” seen on a YouTube video posted last week, in which she critiques Elizabeth’s nuptial moment and wistfully ponders the end of a very long era.
“I predict [Elizabeth] will become a binge drinker, get a raging case of herpes and will eventually have to leave Anthony,” Lia says, with that special blend of devotion and cynicism unique to Foob analysis.
The strip does seem to spark a certain vitrol that Cathy, say, simply does not. I wonder why that is?
As an added bonus, here’s a Flickr set of Johnston at the recent Doug Wright Awards.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:44 am
For me, it’s because the strip used to be genuinely funny and the characters more fully fleshed out. And now it’s deteriorated into this sappy saccharine sweet feeble imitation — something that I think people who were sick of Blondie and Hi And Lois were glad to avoid. It’s kind of like George Lucas or something…
August 28th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I think a lot of 30-ish people grew up reading it and identify strongly with Michael or Liz, so the elimination of anything difficult, controversial or even interesting from the strip in favour of making everyone marry their childhood sweetheart is both disturbing and disappointing. BTW, this strip was the first place I read anything positive about a gay person. Rural Australia was not a great place to be a baby!lesbian.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:51 am
When I was a teenager we had one of the FBorFW Sunday strips pinned up on our fridge. It was the one where Michael and two parents were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast:
DAD (eating cereal): GRUNCH GRUNCH GRUNCH
MICHAEL (glances up from the newspaper at Dad)
MOM (drinking coffee): SLURRRPPP GULP AAAAHHHH
MICHAEL (glances up from the newspaper at Mom)
(repeat once or twice)
MICHAEL: AAAAAAAAHHH! (storms off to the living room, where he puts his Walkman on and continues reading the paper)
MOM (looks at Dad, confused)
DAD: Kids these days. Can’t handle a little silence.
–
My brother kind of identified with Michael.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
For one thing, nobody gives a damn about Cathy.
Nobody much paid attention to this strip until Farley the dog died saving baby April. That kinda turned some heads! It’s been downhill ever since.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Unfortunately whenever she did something unusal for a newspaper strip, and controversial, she was slammed. When people got upset because Farley died (after saving a child’s life) that seemed like people taking this a bit too seriously. But she received hate mail and actual death threats after revealing that Michael’s childhood friend was Gay, so much so that she backed away from doing anything truly controversial (and thought proviking) ever again because who needs that in their life?
August 29th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Wow, James, I never knew about the hate mail and threats. I always liked the strip, in part BECAUSE Lynn was brave enough to do controversial material and do it in a thoughful way. The strip has definitely seemed watered down of late. Someone even descrivbed it as “saccharine” now, and that seems about right. Unfortunately.
I’m guessing Lynn’s marital problems didn’t help anything either. That was really sad to hear about.
Anyhow, I hope Lynn has found some happiness in her life and is able to live as she pleases in her semi-retirement.