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Foob Friday
Mar. 14th, 2008 04:08 pmI figure I'll shamelessly milk for all the column ideas I can give everybody a chance to respond to the meme below this weekend. Meanwhile, the big engagement announcement over on the comics pages has inspired the rant below. Apologies for the length; it's been coming on for awhile...
Dearly beloved,
We are gathered here today to witness the final nail being pounded into the coffin containing the remains of the once-beloved For Better or for Worse. The comic strip that once helped thousands, including yours truly, understand that there was real humor and pathos and sometimes even joy to be found in the hum and drum of daily life...until realization set in that it was the daily life itself the author was actually celebrating, not the release. Not the flight of imagination and adventure, but the comfort in suppressing it.
The whole thing becomes a rather sad testament to the pitfalls of artists allowing too much of themselves into their work. The occasional transcendent genius - or pathetic monster - aside, most of us really aren't all that interesting.Certainly FBoFW creator Lynn Johnston isn't, very much anyway. She might have been, had she had the vision and courage artistically to rise above what’s been an admittedly fairly tough real life. Her first husband was a dashing biker dude who left her alone with small children to raise; her second (the model for John Patterson, the strip's paterfamilias) just recently walked out after apparently carrying on behind her back for quite awhile. Her relationship with her grown children, the models for the fictional ditto, is strained at best.
So it's possible to be sympathetic to her clear desire to find safety and security for her creations, probably more so than if she’d decided to pull a Funky Winkerbean and have them all become bitter recluses who read the obituaries for fun. On the other hand…for awhile there things just looked really promising, y'know?
( Read more... )
Dearly beloved,
We are gathered here today to witness the final nail being pounded into the coffin containing the remains of the once-beloved For Better or for Worse. The comic strip that once helped thousands, including yours truly, understand that there was real humor and pathos and sometimes even joy to be found in the hum and drum of daily life...until realization set in that it was the daily life itself the author was actually celebrating, not the release. Not the flight of imagination and adventure, but the comfort in suppressing it.
The whole thing becomes a rather sad testament to the pitfalls of artists allowing too much of themselves into their work. The occasional transcendent genius - or pathetic monster - aside, most of us really aren't all that interesting.Certainly FBoFW creator Lynn Johnston isn't, very much anyway. She might have been, had she had the vision and courage artistically to rise above what’s been an admittedly fairly tough real life. Her first husband was a dashing biker dude who left her alone with small children to raise; her second (the model for John Patterson, the strip's paterfamilias) just recently walked out after apparently carrying on behind her back for quite awhile. Her relationship with her grown children, the models for the fictional ditto, is strained at best.
So it's possible to be sympathetic to her clear desire to find safety and security for her creations, probably more so than if she’d decided to pull a Funky Winkerbean and have them all become bitter recluses who read the obituaries for fun. On the other hand…for awhile there things just looked really promising, y'know?
( Read more... )
