'For Better or For Worse' redux

This Sunday's cartoon is an adieu of sorts to readers, but not a final farewell. She announced this month that she would retell her strip's narrative, beginning Monday, by taking her continually aging characters back to 1979, but creating new artwork and some dialogue. Her syndicate says it's the first time a mainstream cartoonist has set out to tell the same story twice.

Oh plz let Elly be a lesbian this time around.

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/8746/hoooozo2.gif

some things just aren't worth dying for

Ugh, this idea sounds craptastic.

CABOOSE!!@#$@#$%%^$%#!$

Oh Hoooo, how we've missed you

maybe the arkansas democrat-gazette will pick it up again and run it up until the gay character makes an appearance (was it a friend of michael's?) and then cancel the strip in protest all over again!!!

lynn looks fantastic for a 60-year-old!

Out to kill Farley ALL OVER AGAIN

also for a cartoonist xpost

farley, haha

I wonder if she ever got over Charles Schulz's disapproval of her offing the dog

A related story of interest:

You can feel the comic-strip family saga known as "For Better or for Worse" (known to some as "FBOFW," and to others simply as "Foob") coming to a close, in a cataract haze of soft focus.

Foobsters everywhere, weep. Creator Lynn Johnston is semi-retiring, repurposing her archives beginning with next week's strips. A comic strip that unfolded in real time -- year by year, in which characters aged and changed and sometimes even died -- will now only look backward, with enhanced reruns. As a farewell, Johnston seems to have made an extra effort to drench this week's wedding of characters Elizabeth Patterson and Anthony Caine (if you read it, this is bigger than Luke and Laura) in even more sentimental goo than faithful readers have come to expect.

And so, on that note, let us now honor a particular kind of "For Better or for Worse" devotee: the haters.

These are the many millions who live to despise every last thing about the comic strip, and, as such, have never missed a day. For them, Foob has never been worse -- worse puns, worse sap, even worse life choices. (Which, in a sick way, means "For Better or for Worse" has never been better!)

lynn looks fantastic for a 60-year-old!

-- get bent

let me tell u sister its allllllllllll lighting & airbrushing

can we guess what sort of panel the strip will end on?

actually, when i first looked at the thread title and article link, i kept thinking why in the world would you start it all over again from the beginning with the family circus?! oh. still, why?

I think maybe there will be baby farley involved

Their son Michael hit it big with a best-selling novel (About what? We never learned) and he and his wife, Deanna, bought the old Patterson family home, somewhere in the suburbs of Toronto. Little sister April Patterson's band, the Archies-esque 4-Evah, broke up, then got a new singer, making them 4Evah & Eva. Elizabeth (a.k.a. Lizardbreath) gave up her new life teaching native people in the Canadian hinterlands to move home and marry Anthony, her boring high school boyfriend.

You know, I'm kind of glad I didn't know about any of this until now.

i kept thinking why in the world would you start it all over again from the beginning with the family circus?!

Haha, if The Family Circus completely threw in the towel and went Dysfunctional Family Circus on us, I would be so happy.

Actually maybe that's Lynn's secret with the strip -- it'll all look the same from the get-go but the dialogue will all be from The Lockhorns or something.

what would you have done with the knowledge? xp

"repurposing her archives"

this is totally the spin she used to sell the idea to her publisher. be a part of history! it's the first time ever! etc.

cmon, ned. fess up. you've totally been closely following "the intricate world of her characters" openly for years now

I *did* follow the strip for a long while, no lie -- I pretty much remember when it started. Farley dying was the last thing I remember paying attention to, though. That and the fact that Michael was a Barenaked Ladies fan in college, which seemed only apt.

"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.

what would you have done with the knowledge? xp

Wonder what the hell Michael's supposedly brilliant novel was about. I am betting he becomes the Canadian Sidney Sheldon.

So anyway, series reboot a la Battlestar Galactica, and it's already set in Canada, even more convenient. Elizabeth will be the first known Cylon...

or a canadian dean koontz, only with more overt lesbian subtexts

Tried to find a recent pic of 58-yo Cathy Guisewite for comparison and failed.

http://www.cagle.com/hogan/reubens/reubens2006/jeannie_cathy.jpg

(cathy on the right, circa 2006)

ack

Ned I don't know why any of this makes you sad?!?!?!!!! HOW would you ever get to hear April's song about turning 16, Foot on the Floor? (That's an MP3.) Or her band's song Everybody's Different? (Another MP3.)

HOW, NED???? u r missink out.

BOX the fucking CAR, you paranoid cranks

I really like For Better or For Worse, even though it makes less sense now & is less charming. That's okay, right?

Not as good as the end days of Peanuts (which are dear to me, no matter how many Rerun or 'Snoopy asks for Cookies' criticisms you throw at it). But at least she has some IDEAS and is willing to try new things. Even if they're...old things? I wouldn't mind seeing Michael get his first summer camp smooch on again, but from a new perspective.

MORBS OTM
THX TO THIS COMIC I CANNAE NOW LIVE SAND @!&BOXCAR!@*&!!

I love Lynn's explanation that one of the factors for redoing the old comic/reverting to her early style is that "over the years, the mom's nose has grown to look like a giant potato." (paraphrase)

lynn and husband have divorced?? i am so disillusioned.

For Worse and Worser

This'll be a good stopping place for me. Sounds like she's miserable enough after her husband leaving her that she's literally going to live in the past for the rest of her days, but I'm not interested in indulging her.

Why can't it be like when they do sitcom spinoffs and she can have a new strip just called Elly!

She should have started a new version of "Mary Worth" where a totally new character named Elly Patterson sends deadbeat dads and other worthless men to their just rewards, over a cliff.
(xpost!)

btw, when i looked at mary worth last week it seemed like a storyline on internet credit card fraud was brewing. way to get with the times!

I hope Berke Breathed's ears aren't perking up.

"Oliver could be on the internet now!"

from comics curmudgeon:

>Phishing, everybody! Phishing! That’s what the build-up is all about. Mary Worth is going to advise its perhaps not-so-tech-savvy audience (median age: 68) about the dangers that lurk in fake spam emails from online merchants; so as not to anger the oldsters, it’s Charterstone’s resident thirtysomething trophy wife who will be defrauded and humiliated for the edification of others.

i can't help it. i love mary worth.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff28/beatonna/fbofw.jpg

awesome

Very great.

"Oliver could be on the internet now!"

He already was! That was the whole point!

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/4148/11oz9.jpg

"Oliver could be on the World Wide Web now and have his own TWITTER."

Happy now?

Beyond words.

In all honesty, if only Charles Schulz had thought of this in 1975.

That Kate Beaton one = classic! Also...

http://www.tcampbell.net/2007/06/foobetter-r-foowurse.html

Though I don't know what they're getting at with that Christopher Robin / Peter Davies (who?) panel... clue me in?

Haha the blinking eyes – the weirdest thing Lynn has ever done to FBOFW.

Seriously, the more I've thought about this, the more fucked up it seems.

SHE'S GOING TO GO BACK TO HER FIRST STRIP AND REDRAW THE ENTIRE SERIES?

YOU KNow what would be great? If like Jim Davis went back to beginning of Garfield, and just redrew everything except with Garfield being just a cat with no thoughts. Shift the focus on Arbuckle.

Where's that Outland strip of Oliver getting rich and lodging monitors into his eyes?

This is about as appealing as Billy Joel reforming Attila today.

I have been giggling at "I burn for you like a lukewarm drink" all day.

Uh...whuh...uh...:

A: Gee whiz, we can’t even show a butt crack. I mean now I think you can show cleavage, but not at the other end. In fact, I hid a naked character in the strip for four years and not one editor found it.

Q: Is that the little ....

A: Ned. It was funny. Because I showed Elly sitting on a bed flapping her nightgown and I showed just a hint of the other cleavage and there was hell to pay over that. They wanted to cancel that one daily and replace it and I said just use whatever technique you like to get rid of it. So in some papers she had panties on and in others they made a wrinkle in the sheet and covered her over. Others they just use white-out. I just thought that was so darned funny I created Ned to see if they would find this little mosquito-sized man who sometimes was quite large on the window. But as long as the main characters were not exposed, this little guy never raised an eyebrow.

lynn and husband have divorced?? i am so disillusioned.

Her husband was my husband's dentist in North Bay, Ontario. The scuttlebutt in North Bay reports that he had an affair.

I met her at a brunch buffet on xmas eve this past year. She was very nice. There's a great interview with her on Slate from a few years back.

Gee whiz, we can’t even show a butt crack

at least I can repeat this to myself to delay the inevitable nervous breakdown

As one of For Better or foR Worses's biggest fans, I'm divided by this idea. But Lynn Johnston always knows what she's doing, so I trust her.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

FOR CYBER OR WORSE

LYNN JOHNSTON'S PROJECTED POST-MILLENIAL RECREATION OF THE NORTHERN HEARTLAND'S GREATEST SYNDICATED FAMILY PORTRAYAL IS ONLY GOING TO BECOME BETTER!

FOR CYBER OR WORSE WILL SOON BE AVAILABLE IN AC3D FILE FORMAT!

TAKE A LOOK AT THE PATTERSONS IN WAYS YOU'VE NEVER IMAGINED.

LAUNCH YOURSELF INTO A VIRTUAL JOURNEY OF THE HOMES, THE EXPERIENCES, AND THOSE UNFORGETTABLE POIGNANT VIGNETTES.

ZOOM JUST MILLIMETERS AWAY FROM A PROFESSIONAL 3-D MODEL OF ELIZABETH PATTERSON!

FOR A SMALL NOMINAL FEE, DOWNLOAD *OUTTAKES* FROM THE LIVES OF THE PATTERSONS -- YOU LIVED DECADES WITH "FOR BETTER OR WORSE". AND NOW, YOU CAN HAVE AN ANSWER TO "WHAT IF?"

man if only the bambi 2002 thing were on YouTube

Whoa, I never knew about this naked Ned.

http://www.nedtanner.com/images/strip_one.gif

Man, I sure had a crush on Weed back in junior high. Grubby beatnik-looking bro whose name hinted at drug-doing, BUT he was a cheery, highly-motivated self-starter. He has a ponytail now, though, so fuck that. What happened to you, my love?

I know you've got exhibits in Canadian museums and are doing very well, but...but...the ponytail...*sigh*

It's gonna be awkward when patterson dies and she's only up to 1996.

Well, she barely draws it now anyway, so the existing artists and/or an estate could just keep it going for decades and decades. Thanks, ridiculous copyright extension acts!

As comic strips go, it's somewhat better than average (average being pretty dreadful). But, really, I can't say I give a damn about its fate.

@-@
^U^
- O-

April in her underwears???