For Better Or For Worse is ending...sort of

[thatcrazycajun]

I just found out from my local paper that after this month, there will be no more new strips of For Better Or For Worse, Lynn Johnston's oft-groundbreaking newspaper daily comic. The cartoonist who gave the comics page its first normally-aging characters since Gasoline Alley and its first gay teenager has decided to go into semi-retirement and only rerun old strips (with a few tweaks, similar to what George Lucas did with the first Star Wars trilogy) from Sept. 1 forward. The new storylines will end with the wedding of Elly and John Patterson's eldest daughter Elizabeth; more information is available here.

Lynn is one of the tiny handful of practitioners of this uniquely American art form I would be willing to class in the same rank with the late, great and dearly missed Charles M. Schulz (whom she knew in life and was mentored by), Walt Kelly, Garry Trudeau and Berke Breathed, and certainly the best to come out of Canada that I know of. Reading her exquisitely drawn chronicles of the Patterson family and their friends has been as essential a part of my day as breakfast and a shower for more years than I care to think about. And in a year when The Simpsons has been renewed enough times for eternally-ten-years-old Bart to have either done a stint in Iraq or ended up in jail and his younger sis Lisa to be in college, having this strip relegated forever to suspended animation along with Peanuts is doubly a loss.

Now we'll never get to see April graduate high school! Or Mike and his new wife raise their baby! Or Lawrence go into GLBTQ politics! But the saddest part of all is that the papers choosing to replace the strip rather than run the old ones again will probably not pick anything nearly as good to take its slot. I don't think I could put it any better than poor ol' Charlie Brown would have: "Rats!"

Comments

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

One teensy tiny correction to your tribute - Lynn Johnson is most definitely Canadian. Like William Shantner.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I'll have to second that. I claim For Better or For Worse in the name of Canada.

*plants flag*

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I know quite well Ms. Johnston is Canadian, which does not in any way alter the historical fact that comic strips as an artistic medium originated right here in the good old U. S. of A. Phhbt.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

You said it was "Uniquely American" not wanting to split hairs or anything, butI saw newspaper comic sprips way before I was liviing in NA

[poltr1]

I knew she was retiring; I just wasn't sure *when* until you mentioned it.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

ermmm, this is old news. She's cut back in the last year, many of her strips have been features from the past. She's looking forward to retirement.

Don't forget BTW that FBoFW is Canadian (G)

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

You made at least one critically important omission in your list: Bill Watterson. (I'm assuming you deliberately omitted Gary Larson because his style didn't include multipanel strips with continuing characters and story arcs; if you're simply listing important innovators and awesome writers, he's in.)

I'll note that these days, almost all the best comics are on the Web. But that's a whole other post.