. . .timewarp. . .


Is starting a comic strip over better or worse?

. . .But then the cartoonist pulled the rug completely out from under us Sunday with a plot twist that made even the heartbreaking death of the Patterson family dog Farley (as he saved little April from drowning) seem pale in comparison. Even the comic strip that outraged readers by the thousands in 1993 when Lawrence acknowledged he was gay couldn't top this.

There it was in full color in the big Sunday strip: As Elizabeth's parents are dancing at her wedding (to Anthony, thank God) Johnston herself enters the strip in cartoon form and tells us that starting the next day ''For Better or For Worse'' will rocket back almost 30 years in time to soon after it began. . .


as SHOCKING as that episode of 'Dallas' with Bobby in the. . .

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Not a spoiler- we've already seen it. Lynn did a good job of summing up and closing out the story. The syndicate at least gave us a taste of this strip to come this summer, with what we *thought* was 'summer vacation filler' apparently taken from early in Lynn's strip.

I think the transition has been handled abruptly, but tastefully. Her return to a more relaxed and formulaic gag focus instead of a serialized family drama will annoy many people who became engaged in the drama over the years. But we'll get over it.

She recently divorced her husband, so it seemed like it was time to wrap it is what I read.

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I heard the opposite - before the husband wanted the divorce, she had planned to retire.

Now, with the divorce, she's continuing to work.

I think she just wants to go back to what it was a bit. Nostalgia? Maybe it's also a kind of self-established return to freedom. In one view, she had really painted herself into a corner by setting up the "everything in real time" storyline. Whether or not she should have returned to the Patterson family, or started with a new family name, perhaps, remains to be seen.

But, much like any person's creation, it's hers to do with as she pleases. If her bosses say it's okay, and she still sells strips and books, then so be it.

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It takes guts to flip the script when so many are watching.

Lengthy feature in today's Chicago Tribune:

[www.chicagotribune.com]

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timg
I heard the opposite - before the husband wanted the divorce, she had planned to retire.

Now, with the divorce, she's continuing to work.

That's the right sequence of events. Her husband left her for an ex-employee somewhere back in April of last year, I believe.

This is really not anything shocking. It's been in the planning stages for months, could be as much as a year, and she's done a couple of newspaper interviews talking about the whole thing. Some papers are planning to continue running the strip, but other papers, some major, are dropping if for other strips.

Always sad when a beloved comic strip comes to an end. I've enjoyed this one for many years, even back when I was too young to relate to the parental aspect.

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It is what it is.

I would definitely say that strip is "for worse".

This is a weak attempt to keep a revenue stream flowing. She is going to update and redraw the strip from the beginning.

Boooo. Come up with something new or move on.

It is the George Lucas halo effect with the following.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2008 06:17PM by weapon.

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weapon
It is the George Lucas halo effect with the following.

That would be true only if she somehow managed to take possession of ALL existing versions of her previous work, destroyed them, and insisted that the new work was the way it should have been all along.

Not the same at all.

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It is what it is.

hey I have the originals taken from laserdisc on dvd.

So they are not gone nor forgotten.

I don't read the strip. But I read Comics Curmudgeon every day, and he keeps me up on the Foobiverse.

I can understand "starting over" if the strip paralleled her life.
Everyone deals with losses thier own way.

However, I thought she was starting the strip over figuratively (with new characters) to parallel her new life. (or not have to reach back into the old one)
I'll have to catch a written interview somewhere, sometime.