‘For Better or For Worse’… Not Retiring After All
Here’s some pretty amazing news….[E&P] Millions of readers will breathe a partial sigh of relief when they learn that Lynn Johnston won’t completely end “For Better or For Worse” around the time it turns 28 this September. Instead, the strip will continue as an old/new hybrid that has little precedent in cartoon history.
“I’ll be flying by the seat of my eraser,” joked Johnston, whose comic is one of only five with more than 2,000 newspapers. Details were still being worked out when Johnston spoke to E&P, but it’s possible the hybrid “FBorFW” will focus a lot on Michael Patterson and his family, who are about the same ages Elly Patterson and her family were when the comic started in 1979. Elly is the mother of Michael, who was a little boy in the early days of “FBorFW.”
Read the whole story.
Alan Gardner, of the Daily Cartoonist, summed up my feelings very well:
…I’m a bit worried about the execution of feature. As much as I’d miss the Patterson family – and I truly would, I was also happy to know that Lynn was going to end the strip so that it doesn’t turn into a tired ol’ legacy strip and to have 2,000+ openings for other features to grow would have been exciting. I guess I’ll have to see what the feature will look like before passing such grim opinion.
Read the Daily Cartoonist’s full take on the news — as well as Tom Spurgeon’s reaction in the Comics Reporter.
