Anyone following the saga of Lynn Johnston's long-running comic strip knows that this is the month the strip was supposed to go into permanent "rerun-mode." After 20+ years, Ms. Johnston, who was suffering from an illness and hoped to retire, relax, and travel with her husband, wanted to end the strip permanently, but instead she was offered the chance to recycle some of the oldest strips, when John and Elly Patterson's kids Michael and Elizabeth were about age six and a toddler, respectively. "For Better or For Worse" was only running in a handful of newspapers back then and most people had not seen the early material except in retrospective bound volumes.

This has actually started already, with Michael telling his children stories of when he was a kid, using the old strips as flashbacks. However, circumstances have changed at the FBOFW ranch: Lynn's illness has eased (the story I heard was that medication she was taking was actually causing her problem) and she will still be traveling, but not in the manner she planned since, sadly, she was divorced in April. So there are plans for some new Sunday strips and also a resolution to the story of Elizabeth getting back together with her old beau Anthony, which has created a furor over at the comic discussion groups because Anthony is considered "boring" and "stupid," at least through 2008.

Here's a long article about what happened and a shorter piece from KansasCity.com.

Labels: comics

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:33:00 PM

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