Lynn Johnston is the cartoonist who created For Better or For Worse. There were a number of family cartoons in the Sunday funnies before she showed up: Blondie, Peanuts, The Family Circus to name a few. But Johnston's syndicated strips, first appearing in the late 1970s, boasted a realistic mother character and was by a woman cartoonist. This was new territory. Many cartoons that followed adapted Johnston's pioneering style, and built upon it.
For Better or For Worse has been brave, funny, and genuine for over forty years. Like with the other entertaining and familiar stalwarts of North American cartoons, the network of people it has reached must be enormous. Ms. Johnston has faithfully brought these newspaper neighbors to us, rain or shine, some 16,000 times! There's something touching and wondrous about that.
She is reshowing the whole thing from the beginning on the web with "down to earth" extended comments on that day's strip.
ReplyDeleteMore fun than it was in Sunday comics.
yeah - I found that link the night I wrote this post. I have to say, though, it's more of a quirky joy when I come upon the sunday comics at a coffee shop - the bright colors on paper, the smell of the ink - than when I come upon a comic strip online. Perhaps not as eco-friendly, but more viscerally pleasurable -
ReplyDeleteMs. Johnston's comments would never have been allowed in the Sunday Papers.
ReplyDeleteI also follow Sluggy Freelance week days (have since about 2003) and cannot imagine it any other way.
I think of the Sunday Comics now as I do a general category of "also ran". I'm happy to acknowledge them, pleased when I come across them, but not something I will go (way) out of my way for.
When the Austin American deigns to include them with our Sunday paper they are read. They have missed 3 times in the last 6 months.