retrogression
September 7th, 2008 | Uncategorized
What is UP with For Better or For Worse? First she was gonna retire, right? Then she was gonna run old and new stuff alternately, which she seems to have done for the past year or so. Then there was this big finale last Sunday. Now she announces she’s gonna start over again from the beginning?!
It kinda seems like that fantasy of being able to go back and live your life over again, knowing everything you know now. “It’s like being me again at age thirty,” she even says in this video interview. Here’s a quote from her letter to readers on her website:
…I can concentrate once again on the insular little Patterson household. I have the children all to myself again. I can do spot gags and silly stuff. I can fix what I don’t like about my early work as I add and subtract…redraw and just improve everything.
I dunno, it just strikes me as a little regressive. But then, I’m a fine one to talk. My memoir Fun Home is basically a compulsive re-tracing of my childhood. And the book I’m working on now, Love Life, re-enacts my young adulthood in a similarly self-obsessed way. Still, I like to think that I do these things in order to free myself from the past, not dwell in it.
God, I wouldn’t go back to being thirty again for all the syndication income in the world.
Not, of course, that anyone’s asking me to.
112 Responses to “retrogression”
I think the deal is she wants to retire, but doesn’t want to commit to it. This fear of committment is probably related to her recent divorce.
At Thirty, I was making ever so slightly more money than I needed to live on, had a regular gig playing guitar in a bar, and several smart and beautiful women were vying for my affections. I think I’d go back.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer stoped running For Better For Worse, and I am a little torn. I enjoyed how “big” the comic was getting, yet I appreciate her scaling back the the Patterson nuclear pod family.
I was wondering today which paper has the best comics in the county. I would not vote for the Northeast Ohio papers, and the Free Press that I grew up with has really shrunk it’s collection. I know you can read many online, but then I can’t share them with my kids and that is how I learned to love comics, reading over my mom’s shoulder, and then racing her to get the comics first.
Lynn Johnston’s husband left her about a year ago, so that threw off her retirement–that is, all that she planned to do with him was tossed into disarray.
I’m curious to see how she works with these old strips, as I’ve been pleasingly surprised to find her earlier work funnier and more spontaneous than her recent strips, which were more story and less comic
I’m not sure how much of FBOFW is autobiographical (a lot of the early strips were apparently), so when she says she can “have the children to herself again” I don’t know if she has her human children in mind or her cartoon ones.
If I could be thirty again with the knowledge of my 47-year-old self, I just might do it. Of course, I only earned my current level of knowledge by all the bad choices I made in my 30’s.
Space-time continuum conflicts are so messy.
it’s the “uu” in continuum that messes you-you up
Wow, that does sound a bit odd, but I can see why she’d want to back off from doing so much visual research. I hope she finds a way to make it a breath of fresh air for her, not weirdly regressive.
i thought she was required, by canadian bilingual laws, to re-do the entire run in french…
i am so frustrated with fbofw. i feel like it’s so centered on “find a man! the best option is your ‘first love.'” or maybe i just hate anthony.
I was thinking that maybe while she was married she was restrained with saying what she really thought about certain things. Perhaps as a divorced women she might draw the husband differently; maybe make him more vile or something.
Yeah, I read about what was happening with FBOFW in my local paper. I’m really curious to see how this pans out. Maybe Johnston needs to revert/regress a bit to heal. And there’s nothing like spending time with familiars (note I didn’t necessarily say family) to mend the spirit.
Right now, would I go back to thirty? Hell yeah. (I’m 41 now.) Yes, I was much stupider, but I was also having more fun. Thinner and cuter, too. O.K., O.K., here’s the REAL reason I’d go back (and T.M.I. as well – I apologize in advance): The cancer treatment I recently had has probably left me infertile. I would’ve loved to have had a kid or two or three. I see lesbian couples with kids, and I ache. So yeah, I’d like to do that part of my life over again, for that reason alone. /buzzkill
Maybe Johnston needs to revert/regress a bit to heal
In general, I don’t think that retconning your autobiographical art in light of disappointments in your actual life (both completely legit–husband of a bazillion years announces that he wants a divorce because he’s fallen in love with someone else–and not particularly reasonable–your actual daughter and son aren’t living down the street from you and married to their high school sweethearts) is a particularly good path to healing for most people.
I’m thinking it’s more of a path to denial and/or batshit loonydom a la Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
To me, there was something so searingly painful about seeing all the cartoons in which John tells Elly how he’s going to love her forever, knowing that that isn’t what happened in real life.
Ginjoint, TMI maybe but I’d do the same thing for the same reason. Not fun.
As for Lynn Johnston, I’ve been reading things she’s written about FBOFW over the years, and this (redrawing ‘selected’ episodes of the strip) has been her plan for years, even before the husband hoo-hah: The unholy result of being really, really, REALLY tired of the constant effort of creation while at the same time really, really, REALLY unable to let go. Then the breakup made things go skewriff for a while but now she’s back on track. Not that it ever seemed like a good track–I felt Yoda should have appeared to tell her, “Go On, or Stop. There Is No Redraw.”
Damn. I’d just be happy to get to 30. The 20s suck.
The unholy result of being really, really, REALLY tired of the constant effort of creation while at the same time really, really, REALLY unable to let go.
Very intriguing.
I felt Yoda should have appeared to tell her, “Go On, or Stop. There Is No Redraw.”
Very brilliant.
artsyamy… sorry… I wish you were savoring every minute of your twenties… living passionately, fully… having great fun and storing away bits of money each week (like a cute little squirrel) for your retirement… says Aunt Soozie (Orman) I guess it’s true… youth is wasted on the young.
Ginjoint and BBird… I send you big loving hugs.
It would be tempting to go back, with the knowledge I have now, but I don’t know if I’d do it… so many people I’ve lost since I was 30… would be so nice to see all of them again, but, don’t know if I’d have the stamina to do all of those years over again.
I’d agree with the idea that Johnston should go on or stop, but the present-tense strip was getting so cloying I could barely stand to read it. The only thing keeping me going was my loving to hate Anthony. I am not even clicking onto the “new” repeats. I feel free at last. Instead, I am reading Kate Beaton, a young, brilliant Canadian cartoonist. Go see!
Some aspects of being in your 30s right now suck. The economy is shit. I only recently got a job and it’s pt with no benefits or job security. I don’t make enough to support myself. Which I am supposed to be able to do by this age. Which I try to fake when I am at work. I also stay in the closet since I need the job. My friends only accomplished establishing themselves by marrying men in jobs that aren’t at the top of the shit list. Which I am averse to considering the fact that I am lesbian. And any sensible woman would look at my situation and pass right on by.
Mentally I am much more grounded than I was at 20, but I was making more money 10 years ago. Some type of hybrid between a decent living wage and knowing myself the way I do now would be acceptable.
As far as the comic goes, I think, as in life, that you can never go back.
Coming out of lurkdom to say something totally OT, but Hey! You have a Raven map (on the wall behind you)! *Cool*. We have…. at least 3 at my house. They are so gorgeous.
“I only earned my current level of knowledge by all the bad choices I made in my 30’s.” Hear Hear Ellen.
@Ginjoint – I’m totally with you on the ‘if I was younger maybe I couldda hadda baby’ (I’m now 42. Pregnant bellies seem to mock me everywhere these days….) But the chemo rap, that’s heartbreaking, dear. Hugs.
To today’s topic: Agreed that this was kinda her plan. Try to recreate the early strips in her old style. But didn’t you get a vicarious thrill from Iris’s “soliloquy” given with Elizabeth on the commitment of marriage? -> “It’s a promise that should last a lifetime. It defines you as a person and describes your soul.” Blam – take that, abandoning-hubby Rod whatzizname.
Can I also share that after taking a whole month off my daily FBOFW fix, I got teary-eyed when I buzzed in on Aug. 31st and realized it was THE last one. (But agreed, YAWN on the tying everything up so June Cleaver-ish, happily ever after. But I can understand that, too.)
You’re not going to do that to us, right AB? I mean, never go back to DTWOF?
(ps It’s been fun catching up with all y’all. Yes, I have been reading all the posts & threads from the whole month of August – maybe I’m nuts.) Maggie Jochild, looks like they didn’t pull Palin after all, huh?)
I think this is yet another sign of the truly abysmal state of syndicated comic strips. I consider my childhood years to have been coincident with a syndicated comics renaissance- Bill Waterson, Gary Larson, Berke Breathed, guys who were actually funny and fresh and had quirky, sophisticated drawing styles that synced well with their own sense of humor. Now everyone in the game either can’t draw or isn’t funny (usually a combo of both,) and SO MUCH of it is just regurgitated crap- the creator is long dead but the strip, zombie-like, somehow staggers on (i.e., the brain-murdering Blondie and Family Circus) I want to tell Lynn Johnson to JUST RETIRE, WOMAN.
P.S., everyone should follow Kassie’s advice and go to Kate Beaton’s site, especially because she has a huh-larious parody strip of For Better or for Worse on there. Go now!
I found this from June 08, but is there something new? http://beatonna.livejournal.com/54383.html Can you post the link, DLDL?
I’d be gloriously happy to be 30 again, knowing what I know and without the idiot ex-husband. I think Johnston just wants to draw her characters prettier and less cartoony. (Actually, that was what made me stop reading – half her characters were cartoony and the other half too pretty. It looked stupid.) I don’t think doing a graphic memoir is in the same vein as a big old do-over.
RoseRed – What’s a Raven map, please? And thank you, Kassie for the Kate Beaton info. Also, right on DeLandDeLakes about contempo comics – They’re all really bad takes on Gary Larson and trying to be quirky, punny or off-beat and failing miserably – altho I still like Mutts and Doonesbury’s still around.
speaking of retrogression, I feel like I am spinning downward into an never ending matrix of republican insanity, falling through even the lowest rock bottom that Clarice hit in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and there at the bottom of the vortext is the inauguration of President Sarah Palin screaming back up at me.
I know I’m asking for another column, I know– but please, can’t we really, really (re)instate the virtual reality site? I need Mo to rant for me, Sydney to wax more lyrical than Lakoff, and Lois to leap the RNC in a single bound. Stuart to draw Harding-McCain parallels (Bring on the Ohio Gang!) and Sparrow to stop the cycle of slimeballs. Clarice to be my alter ego and Toni to keep it all real.
Oh My Goddess! I’ve just been accused of having a Saturn return. Visions of Mo and Harriet are dancing in my head!
BDOC1992 – what you said!
I completely agree that doing a memoir is waaaaay different than what LJ seems to be doing with FBOFW — I might feel differently if there was a hint in the strip of the darker side of marriage/breakups etc., but it’s all been abysmal puns, saccharine platitudes and sweet valley high level fantasies about high school sweethearts for at least a couple of years now. Whoever posted about feeling FREED from the habit of reading by this shift echoed me exactly.
The thing is, a memoir like yours, Alison, is about interpreting the past through nuanced layers of what you’ve gained since. What LJ seems to be doing is trying to relive the fantasy that never really happened. IMHO.
(checking out kate beaton’s site now)
get back to work, Alison
the only entity required to produce print in both french and english is the federal government. comics and other publications are not required to publish in french or english. the comic is translated into many languages, french is already among that group.
i’ve been following the patterson family pretty much since the beginning. my son is just a little younger than her character, april. i’m glad to see her being able to go back and reprise her work and do little asides to the main stories. she was one of the only comics to allow her characters to age, so going back and filling things in is kind of like the perpetually unchanging characters of others but with the knowledge of what happens in later times.
How ’bout you revisit DTWOF from the beginning? Which donor did Clarice and Toni choose?
Are you holding up the current Sunday comics page? If so, The Washington Post used a different episode. Weird, huh?
Even weirder, I got the Slow Down message the first time I tried to post. So now I will press the Submit button very, very slowly.
I find the last few years of ‘For Better or For Worse’ completely fascinating, psychologically. And, like the other Nora above, I find the ‘Anthony’ character strangely infuriating.
[…] [Commentary] Lynn Johnston leaves Alison Bechdel puzzled. […]
I wish Lynn Johnston would do a graphic memoir about her relationship with Charles Schulz. And yes, Kate Beaton rocks. I’ve been a fan since her Paul Revere versus Laura Secord comic.
I don’t get it either. While I’m glad that she hasn’t walked away from the strip, why not continue the story or explore other threads and other characters. Or new ones, even.
Her choice, of course, but I agree that it’s an odd one.
A great cartoonist returns to her work? What’s so surprising about that? 🙂 Hey, that IS a geologic map of Pennsylvania and New Jersey on the wall! I KNEW it!!!
-Kate the geologist
This comic-related story in the New York Times:
To prepare the way for Chrome, its new Web browser, Google decided to make a 38-page comic book. To do that, the company hired Scott McCloud, the writer-artist of … the critically acclaimed “Understanding Comics.”
This is akin to hiring Paul McCartney to write a jingle. Mr. McCloud has been deemed “just about the smartest guy in comics” by Frank Miller, who updated Batman and created Sin City.
More at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/media/08chrome.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Okay then, that makes me feel better! When I turn 30 in a few months I’ll know it’ll only get better. 🙂
Ready2Agitate, you linked to the strip I was talking about. As far as I know, Beaton has not yet revisited that mini-universe of Canadian banality, but I hope she will! Kate Beaton is the shzit!
And yes, I agree with the others above (although I sympathize with the terms of Alison’s sabbatical)…it would be really nice to work out some of our pre-election anxieties through the DTWOF crew!
I’ve got to say, I think Lynn Johnston tied up the strip very nicely, despite its limitations. [I, for one, would have loved to see Elizabeth continue to enjoy life as an independent young woman, without such urgent pressure to settle down so quickly.] I’m really confused about what’s going on with the strip now. Is Johnston just rerunning old strips (like Schulz or Watterson), or redrawing them, or creating new strips from Michael and Elizabeth’s childhood? Is she back in the ’70’s? I guess I’d hope she’d put the strip into reruns, rest on her royalties, and try something new. This seems like she’s spinning her wheels.
Speaking of spinning one’s wheels, I’d love to go back to when I was 30 and smack myself in the back of the head, and save myself a world of time and misspent effort.
Alison, even if you don’t get back to the strip, it would be great to check in with your characters every year or two, to see how they are faring in and responding to our changing world.
Ellen quotes the New York Times…
“This is akin to hiring Paul McCartney to write a jingle. ”
(What a stupid line, and contradicted by the rest of the article.) No, it’s not. A 38 page comic book is not a jingle — it’s days and days of labour.
The manual in question is attempting to do something that McCloud has talked about a number of times: using the power of comics to explain some highly technical subjects. It’s a huge, expanded infographic or conceptual introduction, and it did actually give me some idea of what the Chrome browser was trying to do.
It’s work for hire, sure; but it’s like Seth doing a New Yorker cover or any other illustrator/comics person doing paid work. And I don’t think McCloud would’ve done it if it wasn’t interesting to him.
It just shows that the New Yorker can fall flat when it comes to the power of comics. The wide-eyed Archie and Jughead line and the dumb McCartney simile… urgh.
Um, I mean ‘The New York Times’ in the last paragraph above. Not the New Yorker. I beg for forgiveness at the feet of Robert Mankoff.
Did anyone else feel like Lynn Johnston was making a feeble bid for not-a-complete-neanderthal status in her last strip? Elizabeth KEEPS HER JOB! Deanna teaches her SON HOW TO COOK! It was embarassing.
Lynn Johnston, I suspect, had the moment they had at the end of Six Feet Under. (Stop reading, spoiler coming.)
In SFU, the end of the series shows the main characters dying, one after another. Logically, as the characters have aged during the strip, the “unstated” reality is that they will all die, too.
Michael dies during an autoerotic asphyxiation episode at a gay nightclub while his wife is away visiting her lover.
Ellie’s husband the dentist kills himself one morning by hooking up the nitrous oxide and just fading away.
Lizardbreath chokes to death on a peachpit on her 59th birthday.
etc.
Charles Schulz never intended, I suspect, for there to be a strip where Charlie Brown takes Snoopy to the vet to be put down. Or Linus, protesting the war in Iraq, sets himself on fire at the Pentagon, etc.
I think Johnston found a clever way to cheat death for her characters (except the grandfather).
And, after all, it is her strip. How would everyone feel if someone told AB (the Great and Powerful) that Mo needs a bigger bust, like 46 triple Ds.
From what I understood, Johnston is mixing in new strips with older strips, drawn in her old style. This was the old Ellie who had a smaller nose, beautiful long hippie-hair, and was one of the most believable comic strip moms ever. In the 80s, the strip was on refrigerators everywhere. It’s nice to see it again.
I think Johnston just wants to keep on working now. Good for her. I feel badly that her life didn’t turn out the way she’d expected, but it’s nice to see the characters as I remember them most fondly.
Didn’t Fred the Neetch say that if you lived your life right, you’d go back and do it again? Or something like that. I notice, though, that he didn’t rework _his_ stuff much once he had finished it.
Anyway, I wouldn’t mind having the physical strength of being 20 or 30 back for awhile, especially for romantic and artistic purposes, but I sure wouldn’t want to have to go through being crazy and ignorant again, or revisit some of the difficult situations I got myself into. Being an extraterrestrial, it took me a long time to figure out how to live on this planet.
I wish Lynn would sh** or get off the can. I grew up reading that strip, but now it’s over. I wish comics pages would quit rerunning old comics and make space for new cartoonists and new strips. Charles Schultz never let Peanuts rerun while he was alive, and I think it’s somehow insulting that his strip gets rerun now that he’s dead and has no choice. Lynn Johnson has ended her characters’ stories. If she wants to keep working she could start a new strip and let it stand or fall on its own merits. I won’t be reading her re-hashed strip. I’ll be looking for something new. Of course working on a memoir is something different. I can’t wait to find out what is up Alison’s sleeve.
“Charles Schultz never let Peanuts rerun while he was alive, and I think it’s somehow insulting that his strip gets rerun now that he’s dead and has no choice.”
Apparently he had a big discussion with his family years back — before the issue of his death was a serious concern — and it was clearly understood that he wanted the strip to stop with him.
I think it’s nice that they still run it. But Peanuts — like DTWOF — is a strip for books. You dip in and out. Oddly, whereas Bechdel’s strips have a frightening tendency to have new things in them each time I look (Wait? Wait? Was the phone cord always going through Clarice’s hair in this panel? When the hell did Bechdel break into my apartment and change this strip?), Schulz’s dialogue frequently has layers of complexity of a similar stripe.
Hit send too fast. I also meant to mention that if Schulz’s family had the Big Discussion, surely the idea of reruns were brought up, too. And if not, I seriously doubt the family would have sat there, honored the request for the strip to end, and then figure out a way to ass-stab him via reruns.
Not rerunning your own work is one thing. Letting it be rerun after you die … meh? He’s going to care where he is? Drinking root beer with Bill Mauldin in heaven?
Alison, I think the website considers any letter you type in the text box as a “submission” even before you hit send. Could that be why I’m getting all the “hold on cowboy” comments?
“Having the children all to myself” is scarily like what my (divorced) mom says when she gets out her old pictures & put them on the wall “I’ve got my babies back!”
The FBOFW characters all have the middle names of her real family, but none of her real kids have had kids, nor did she actually have April when she wanted to (they’d used surgical birth control so it wasn’t an option.) So yeah, it sounds like her business people are encouraging her to live in the past / fantasy land to me, not healthy.
I found another female-based comic online though. No explicit homoerotica (or on-camera sex at all, for that matter), but on the other hand there are robots…
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php
It takes a long time until the girl shows her genius, but I still like the first book for its black & white art.
Anarcissie — “Fred the Neetch”?
Which reminds me of the question somebody asked me once: “Do the Star Bellied Nietzsches have stars upon thars?”
I thought she still had storylines to develop, and I don’t like the old style of drawing! I feel like she would have been better served doing a spin-off one one of the lesser characters…that way she could have kept the Pattersons but not seemed quite so “regressive.” Either way I will miss the series as it was.
On the other hand, when I was twenty I was renting a room in the home of an evangelical family and working three jobs to put myself through college. School was up a steep hill from the house, and my borrowed bicycle didn’t have the lower gears. In winter, icicles would form in my mustache as I pedaled, freezing into my beard. I couldn’t eat or drink until it melted.
It’s a great source of comfort for me nowadays that whatever the day holds for me, it’s not going to begin with getting up before dawn to pedal up that damn hill in the rain.
*****
I think Johnston wants to keep working, just not quite so hard.
Anarcissie: “Fred the Neetch” made me laugh.
Jaibe: I second the Girl Genius recommendation! Great strip, and the Foglios are nice people.
Finally, Ginjoint: I’ve never had the slightest interest in reproducing, but I sympathize with your regret. It’s wrenching to have one’s options removed.
Of course whether ‘Peanuts’ re-runs now doesn’t matter as far as Schultz himself is concerned, but keeping it going does use up space in the comics pages where something new could be. I think that filling comics pages with safe old favorites is one of the things which has made them become boring and blah lately–even when the ‘safe old favorites’ are “Peanuts” masterpieces. I understand when strips go into re-runs while the artist takes a vacation. But infinite re-runs and syndicated author-free strips = stale pages.
Agreed, Parsley. Bring on the new talent and the new ideas. Please. Garfield has been making my skin crawl for years, and it can’t end too soon for me.
Kate Beaton, to her younger self, is brilliant!
Yes, yes, yes, please get rid of Garfield! Could Lois and some Lesbian Avengers creep over to the Garfield strip one night and jam enough pasta down his throat to choke him? I’d pay good money to see that crossover strip…
spoilsport: I’m in Cleveland (Shaker Heights), too, and I with you in that I wouldn’t vote our papers the best for comics (or much else, really). *sigh*
Happy Birthday Alison. And I can only speak for myself, but enjoy your space. You’ve given SO much.
I was just wondering if that strip was still running last week. Weird.
When I linked to the interview video Alison posted above, I found this funny youtube video beside it critiquing FBOFW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztaebBzytos&feature=related
(she’s actually made 2 of them.) Enjoy. (very tame content). (Plus Lia is hot!)
Cumpleanos Feliz, AB!
Alison, if Lynn Johnston’s retreading of her earlier life were half as good as Fun House, no one would complain abut her doing it. Fun House is an exquisite book.
Johnston’s revisiting but editing her older work reminds me of a comment my father made about a friend of his, who managed to “plan and be at his own wake” (that is, he had an enormous party when he knew he was dying but hadn’t told anyone). It’s like, FBoFW might have re-run in papers without her, but now she gets to watch it and guide it in the way she wants it to go. It’s rather self-indulgent.
Cartoonist Shaenon Garrity has a great, mean rant about FBoFW rage, centered on Anthony:
http://shaenon.livejournal.com/29475.html
It reads in part:
“For years, characters have periodically commented on how much Anthony resembles Liz’s father, with the implication that this makes him perfect for her. By reuniting with him, Liz will accept her destiny as a pale copy of her mother, keeping house right down the street from her watchful parents. The path to adulthood doesn’t lead to independence and a vast horizon of possibility; it leads right back to the childhood doorstep.”
And she wrote this long before Johnston made the choice to take the strip back to childhood for real!
(while we’re all being mean, I have to say that like Lia in the Youtube video, I am not-so-secretly addicted to Johnston’s strip — I don’t keep up with it, but when I’m feeling especially down I’ll go and catch myself up on the past few weeks of web archives.)
Speaking of updates, has anyone heard of this play from the 2004 NY Fringe Festival Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Sees_God:_Confessions_of_a_Teenage_Blockhead
Apparently, it takes all the Peanuts characters and envisions them 10 years later, as dysfunctional teens. It bills itself as an “unauthorized parody,” and UFS and the Schulz estate weren’t amused, but it’s been pretty popular in a bunch of productions, including one that’s now in Saratoga, which I probably won’t see.
I, too, read FBoFW, and I, too, was anti-Anthony. But I sort of came around when I realized how big the operational pressures to pick him would be – and indeed, Johnston actually said somewhere that the main reason they’re together is because it would be too hard to find another new character and add him and his crew into the mix.
Sorry to add this so late, but if I went back to 30, I would do it exactly the same way again. That was the point where I got my current job, decided to get divorced (which actually took longer than I thought it would, but did happen), met my current partner, bought my current house…yep, had some good choices that year 🙂 The year I need to go back and fix is 22/23. When I was graduating from college and still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up…made some bad life choices those two years (including getting married)!!
Lynn Johnston’s been married twice. Each marriage produced one child. Don’t know the detail of the divorce that ended the first one.
The character that bothered me is Anthony’s first wife. Her spiteful nastiness seemed less real than any other character.
RMD – your nod to Medium Large? Damn, that was a funny shout-out to the end of FOOB.
Check out the two videos by “Lia” on YT, in which she gives us a double dose of snark on FBOFW.
Sorry Ready2Agitate-I’m reading back after posting, putting cart before horse. Oooopsie.
I think Alison and Lynn should trade strips for a week. No one will come out of it unscathed.
The thing that bugs me about the retrogression is it has been prominent in her strip for years. She sends Liz, a character in the strip, out on adventures to claim her life as an independent woman, with a career in teaching and a wonderful boyfriend. Then, out of nowhere, Liz moves home, down the street from her parents, and starts dating the guy she dated in high school. It almost came out of nowhere. Mike and his wife, independent in an apartment with two children, have a fire and then move into the house Mike grew up in as a kid. The whole thing worried me – it was like Lynn had lost all sense of adventure and letting her characters run free and had to re-chain them back up at home, seemingly out of nowhere. It was sort of depressing. And then she does this – it’s really no different. Her characters “retire,” but still keep working a few days a week because they enjoy it. She “retires,” but keeps drawing new strips. The lady can’t let go. And unfortunately, she couldn’t let her characters let go either.
I’ve thought about how Lynn has manipulated her characters and plots to bring things back around “full circle,” and it also made me mad. But, in the real world, there are lots of people who take the non-adventurous way out in life. [Not that there’s anything wrong with that!] But it’s especially disappointing with the character Liz, who really had a taste of breaking out. We readers wanted her to soar, but think about the most promising kids in our own high schools–some of them go on to lead interesting lives, true, but some also go into Dad’s drywall business. This dreary view of life wasn’t Lynn’s intention I’m sure, but that’s how I’m reading it…a realistic depiction of a wasted opportunity.
Check out the two videos by “Lia” on YT, in which she gives us a double dose of snark on FBOFW.
OK, this touched a rough spot with me.
Sadly(?) this doesn’t even rise to the level of “snark”. I managed to sit through two of these, but there’s not a single actual criticism of FBOFW in the whole mess. This is just more whine from the oh-so-smug kids sitting in used to sit in the back of the class being oh-so-above-it-all.
In short, the combo of YouTube + cheap cameras at its worst.
If “Lia” wants to genuinely criticize something fine please do so. But this sort of stuff is just… dumb.
Um,what’s wrong with being a teacher and a mother,and one who understands first-hand multi-cultural issues? And Liz had plenty of adventures in university and teaching on the Reserve.
Lindsey,
Yeah, there’s been a real see-saw between “E’s adventures up north” and “Michael’s on his own” and “gotta fit in with the ongoing storyline”.
I wonder if she ever thought of launching spin-offs for Michael and Elizabeth and retiring the rest.
Of course, I’m also reminded of Alison writing that about how her characters are more defined, which kind of hems her in. “Sparrow will never transition to a man, and that’s that.”
I know we were having this discussion like 3 weeks ago but I really have to share that Sue Perkins, one of our seeming legion of lesbian broadcast comedians in the UK just won a conducting competition (don’t ask) on primetime BBC 2 in a sharp suit. This feels important.
And BBC Radio 4 are running a completely ridiculous (but addictive) dyke drama set in the court of Queen Anne in 1704. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00d97q3
What’s happening?
Slightly off-topic, but on cartoonists – Phil Jupitus interviews Gary Trudeau on BBC Radio 4:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7506153.stm
Weird synchronicity – two Radio 4 plugs at once…
Hi Juliet!
Uh-oh, now I’m a cowboy. CowGIRL, if you must.
Hey Alison
I can give you some info in a private email.
Mike Curtis
SHANDA FANTASY ARTS
I am going to be The Unpleasant Kind of Person who Interrupts a Conversation with Something Entirely Unrelated to Everything Else and say that The Daily Distress finally made it here! And it looks absolutely fantastic in print. Thank you, AB and Katie! 🙂
At least Johnston’s still drawing her strip, unlike you dear, who bailed during the most historic election ever.
I used to like FBOFW in high school but I gradually realized how poorly written the dialogue is.It’s like a cross between an sitcom and a Hallmark card. I like how sensitively she did Lawrence’s story but I’m sorry, the woman cannot write well. As a small defense against fans I will point out that I’m Canadian.
during the most historic election ever.
Peanut, that’s what everyone has said about the last two elections. And no one “bailed.” If Johnston was also creating a new book, she’d probably take a break from her strip too.
Step. Off.
mary anne beat me to the day-early first spot, but anyway
have
a
Happy Birthday Alison!
It’s September 10th in Vermont now, so Happy 48th, Alison! It’s going to be another wondrous year for you. Delve deep.
Happy Birthday-Greetings from Germany.
Have a nice and gorgeous day.
Thank you for your commitment to the lesbian concern and art.
And of course for your great comic strips, so we can view the lesbian life with a laughing eye.
You are great.
Thank you for the birthday wishes, Ellen and Any User from Germany!
Happy birthday .. it’s September so you’re probably already snowed in there in Vermont, so have a nice cup of cocoa by the roaring fire and, as a special birthday treat, toss everybody else out and spend all day at the drawing board. (I intend to do that for my own birthday — clear ’em all out for a day and just sit and draw.)
Happy birthday!!!
Feliz Cumpleanos,Alison!
Happy Birthday!
I wish Lynn Johnston would take a page from your book, leave the strip, and work on a memoir–or any book that’s not a collection of FBOFW strips.
I was addicted to FBOFW almost as much as DTWOF–but I can live without a strip fix, and artists deserve the chance to expand. It just seems like LJ isn’t taking it, but maybe the re-do is artistic growth for her.
Happy Birthday to an amazing talented woman! And RIP Kris Kovik.
yeah, Happy Birthday Alison, and super CUTE seeing you on the Powells Website:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781135907983-0
…who knew why you moved to Vermont?
Happy birthday! Mine was yesterday.
And I was reminded of your post about Edward Gorey, Alison, by the Times piece on Maurice Sendak.
I was sad to hear that Mr. Sendak had lost his partner of 50 years (50 years!) and even sadder that I had never heard about what must have been a beautiful love story. 50 years.
Dear Alison,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WOMAN! I am gay and would have said DYKE but I did’nt want to presume. I just gave FUN HOUSE to my gay male friend for his Bday last week. As I write my Graphic Novel class at CCNY is in the computer lab looking up graphic artists and I looked up you and blurted out “It’s her birthday today!” They replied “Happy Birthday!”
My lovers sister, husband and son live in Burlington. Do you adore it up there?
suzanonymous, sorry, but I thought it was birthday eve, the 9th.
Happy Birthday Alison–hope you’re having a wonderful evening…
Belated happy birthday wishes AB! (Well, it’s the 11th already here). Hope you had a good time? I’d no idea when your birthday was, but I should have guessed you were a Virgo!
Happy birthday, Alison… hope it brought you even a smidgeon of what you deserve… (is that a SOWPADS acceptable word, smidgeon?)
Best wishes to you, Alison! I’m so glad you’re here.
Today is very important to we
For it’s the day YOU came to be!
Enjoy the day!
Happy Birthday Alison!!!
Hope you relaxed and enjoyed!!!
A post-birthday change of subject: I confess to this blog that I am impure. Or stuck in eighth grade. Whichever.
From today’s on-line NEW YORK TIMES: ‘Mr. Martin disagreed with Judge Hudson’s description of the complaint. “We don’t know how long the crack is, how big the crack is,” Mr. Martin said. “We don’t know,” he said, if Senator Craig simply glanced at the crack twice “or if it was continuous staring.”’
Happy birthday to us all! 🙂 Mine was September 9th. I know a woman who has her birthday on September 11th. She hopes to get the date back, eventually. 🙁
Hello Marj! and happy belated birthday Alison. Have a great year!
xx
Happy belated Birthday, Alison, and other virgos out there. I turn 58 in 3 hours . Here are some lovely Happy Birthday variations by Victor Borge on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZaLo0JfT6E&feature=related
I have been reading FBoFW since the early days, Lynn J says she wants to do it over but with her more refined style. I was a little disappointed,but eh,whatever makes her happy. I have enjoyed watching her 2D family grow as well as DTWoF family develop. Doonesbury too, Watching the aging process is kind of cool as we go through it ourselves. I actually complained when Paul Wright turned out not to be Mr. Right. I thought it was handled poorly to depict Paul as dishonest (he should have called her immediately, at least before the other lady moved in), Warren was a jerk, leaving Anthony at least as the good friend who cared for her. I thought lynn should have had Liz stay up there with people she loved, and Jesse, the kid who figured Liz was another teacher who would eventually leave them. So now, yeah, I still read it, for better or for worse. I really miss the DTWOF gang though, not that i am pressuring, i just check in occasionally. Many Happy Returns. Wait, where did the time go, 1.58 hours to go…….
yeah, I find the rehash boring and tedious. And who really wants to go back? Except people who are unfulfilled with the present. I too felt some of the character decisions and developments toward the end was odd and jumpy.
I miss the DTWOF gang too. Alison always kept these people in character. And any changes always made sense and she never cut corners with her stories.
I’m so glad that CS mentioned the “Lawrence is gay” story line, because after that, I was alays and forever in Lynn Johnston’s corner. She got lots of hate mail but took her stand and did a nice, not to treacly story.
Also, the “bye bye Farley” story line; a grown man weeping over a cartoon of a dog dying. Several of the follow-up were too Hallmark sweet (the worst being Micheal’s girlfriend telling him to write about dead dog because “one has surgery when something needs to come out”), but still.
Anyway artists all have a crazy edge to them or they wouldn’t stand out. She’ll make a good go of it or it will fail… It is weird though, especially since little kids in 2008 are not doing all same things as in 1979.
NOW I wish there had been a debate about “Cathy marries Irving!” which murdered a certain other cartoon.
Finally – “most historic election ever” – I’m sad too only because I wanted to see my STWOF buddies arguing more in the primary. But it’s actually hard to say they would be unique in their views this time – Obama slightly less weenie than Kerry, which was the main DTWOF point.
This year is actually a rerun of 2008 (clueless R vs. cerebral D) and I’m sick that Obama still thinks there is a high ground to victory, that he doesn’t need to get angry or loud. There isn’t when you run against the Cheney-Rove-Atwater slimebag party.
mary anne, I didn’t mean anything negative at all, I’m perplexed if you were somehow offended. Birthday eve is the same thing as a day early, after all.
Lynn Johnston’s world was always nice to visit for citizen of the USA; the problems were the ones that could be seen and solved in domestic life, and not the giant gut-corrosive ones that you can’t solve in your spare time (you know, bats and bees mysteriously dying… wrong presidents, things like that) Maybe it’s easier to do that in Canada. I also liked her strip for the same reason I love Daumier, and DTWOF; she identifies with ordinary people, and likes them, even if she finds them very amusing. I hope she keeps going. I couldn’t live with only Sarah Palin jokes for the next decade…
Maybe I’m a little more sanguine about redoing earlier works because I’ve read so many superhero comics, and redoing/retconning a character’s origin is pretty much a constant thing. And don’t artists in other media do this all the time? Witness the different editions of Stephen King’s The Stand; even the “complete and uncut” version that was supposedly the original version had updates for cultural references that had become obscure since the first edition in the 70s. It seems that every other movie that’s out on DVD has a “director’s version” that is supposedly superior to the cut that made it into theaters, and so on. Even your coming out story in The Indelible Alison Bechdel is significantly different from the one in Fun Home, although the annotation in the margin of the former makes it clear that it’s not necessarily the definitive version of that series of events.
As for what’s up with Lynn Johnston, I dunno really. But a recent rerun of a strip does make me wonder: the strip has Elly telling people that John does the dishes, and John later thanks her for lying to them about sharing household chores. I could see her wanting to maybe revisit that bit.
Honey, why worry your pretty head about it?
Personally I feel like Alison does on this one. Not a nostalgic step back but a tedious regression. I think the fact that she wants to relive it again in light of her real life issues recently, it just seems odd. Its like still wearing the wedding ring after the divorce or keeping photos all around of exes. Move on! I think she is living in the past for not necessarily good reasons.
And in terms of the FBOFW stories, I like the involved story lines, the more precise drawings, the strips that weren’t just one liner gags. Although I do feel the last few years, she was rushing through the plot. I often felt either left to dangle with a story line or it resolved itself much to perfectly, too neatly – ESPECIALLY the last story line with Liz and her ex showing up out of the blue and her fairly sudden decision to marry Anthony. Plus I think the work harassment story line was a bit to formula and unbelievable.
Ok – maybe after saying all that – maybe she needed to go back to what she was better at. Asinine one gag strips about mommies and poop.