Comments on: Marie-Thérèse will have her revenge on Milborough

Marie-Thérèse will have her revenge on Milborough

infinitewindow — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:06:30 -0800

Two kids. Dentist husband. New kid. Gay guy. Dead dog. Not-So-Secret wedding. Successful writer. First Nations. Another wedding. For Better. For Worse.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:10:49 -0800

That was very sweet, thanks. (context, for those who need it)

By: woodway

woodway — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:17 -0800

Aww.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:25:44 -0800

I would have enjoyed the ending a lot more if it had involved a U.S. plane dropping a bomb on the wedding by "accident".

By: josher71

josher71 — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:26:58 -0800

Really well done post. Not well done ending.

By: everichon

everichon — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:28:10 -0800

I haven't been following it for a couple of years, but I grew up with this strip. My mom and I would compare thoughts on each morning's strip, until I moved out of the house. I didn't much care for or about what was going on these last few years, but I have to give Johnston props for longevity and dedication. Anthony is a weiner. Yeah, I said it.

By: sararah

sararah — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:34:05 -0800

Crazy to believe it is over, I have "grown up" with the kids in the strip and my mom cutting out the strips on a regular basis and hanging them on the fridge.

By: kuujjuarapik

kuujjuarapik — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:35:42 -0800

No more foobs?

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:35:57 -0800

Thanks, josher71. FWIW, the comic strip (which I still have a soft spot for in spite of things like "roadside") is going to reboot a bit and become about Mike and Deanna's family. I was too young to remember when it came out, but from the collections, it was a lot better back in the day when it was mostly about kids and young parents and the crazy things they all do.

By: everichon

everichon — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:38:39 -0800

* startled eyes *

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:39:02 -0800

Foob's Paradise is well worth a look even though the layout makes it a bit awkward to read through.

By: Oriole Adams

Oriole Adams — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:48:25 -0800

I remember reading the strip where Farley died while eating lunch at my desk at work and starting to cry. Someone asked me what was wrong and I was too embarrassed to explain.

By: woodway

woodway — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:52:08 -0800

I agree with Josher71. Lame ending to such a long-running storyline. Good summary post, though.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:56:19 -0800

Lame ending to such a long-running storyline. It's been interesting to watch the reaction to the last couple years of the strip; Johnston has sort of (in the eyes of a some of the long-time readers I've seen commenting on it, thanks in no small part to, as always, Comics Curmudgeon) been cranking out a Great Lame-ening for a while now, with Liz being steered down this path of acquiescence toward her unavoidable fate as Anthony's bride.

By: ten pounds of inedita

ten pounds of inedita — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:07:57 -0800

Disappointed that the storyline was cut off before its proper end: Anthony slowly asphyxiating in a collapsed mine just after leaving the doctor's office where he's learned that he has always been impotent and thus that his kid is someone else's.

By: tommasz

tommasz — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:10:39 -0800

This strip has always had a special meaning for us, our youngest was born the same time as April. Yes, it's not been as good in the last years as it was before, but other strips have gone on long after the creator stop caring (or living, in some cases).

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:13:49 -0800

That'd be more of a Funky Winkerbean move, ten pounds.

By: paisley henosis

paisley henosis — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:18:38 -0800

I didn't know people besides my mother-in-law actually enjoyed FBoFW.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:23:01 -0800

I lost interest around the time the strip lost Paul, which was also around the time I read about Johnston's actual life. It's pitiful when you realize she's inventing a happy family life from whole cloth, because she never had one. God forbid Elizabeth marry the hot, interesting man First Nations guy from up north. She has to go home and marry the milk-and-water boy next door, because that's how happy families are made, right? Right? I don't generally accuse creators of trying to mirror their home lives, but she did name the characters after her husband and son, respectively; they haven't done quite so well for her as their counterparts, whose behavior has become the more sugary in comparison.

By: Forktine

Forktine — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:26:45 -0800

I don't look at the comics page very often, but that strip has always stood out to me as a beacon of intelligence on a page of dullness (like The Far Side used to be). I think it would take a lot of courage to do a "reboot," and I'll be watching it over the next few weeks to see how it changes.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:30:50 -0800

When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the Bob Hope specials. I'd know for weeks ahead of time when one would be on, and I'd plan out my schedule to watch it, from the opening monologue to the closing rendition of "Thanks for the Memories". But at some point, Bob's jokes just weren't that funny anymore, his guests were kind of cheesy and has-been, and I had other things to do that were more interesting than parking my ass in front of the TV at 8pm. If I was around at five to nine, I'd still listen to "Thanks for the Memories", but.... And that's I guess how I feel about FBoW. It's a comic I used to read, though not avidly, and that I haven't thought about at all in the last decade.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:31:05 -0800

Great post title, infinitewindow.

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:37:40 -0800

The sad news is not the end of the strip, which overall had a very good run, but that it will continue to clog the funny pages for years to come in rerun limbo. 2/3 of the strips out there should be removed and make room for new talent.

By: NoraCharles

NoraCharles — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:48:20 -0800

Cool post. I used to read FBoFW all the time, but fell off in recent years. I remember stumbling upon it one day on the internet and spent a while catching up on the family and all that had happened since I last read it. It was truly unique in that the characters aged and also how Lynn Johnston shared so much of her personal life with her readers.

By: bluefly

bluefly — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:00:53 -0800

I think she's going to be doing some new strips and some old strips from now on. Here's an interview with her on YouTube.

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:05:45 -0800

"It's not goatse again is it?"

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:16:21 -0800

That'd be more of a Funky Winkerbean move, ten pounds. If it was FW, the marching band trip ends with the plane crashing into the side of a mountain, and Dinkle has to resort to cannabalism to survive.

By: josher71

josher71 — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:20:53 -0800

I feel like they are really giving April the short end of the stick with this ending.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:30:02 -0800

Na, na, April ends up with a fine-looking stud. She gets the best deal of any of them.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:30:14 -0800

Wow. I find myself wondering what The Toronto Star is going to do with half of the front page of their comics section now. It's like when Calvin and Hobbes ended.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:31:57 -0800

It's like when Calvin and Hobbes ended. TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:47:37 -0800

I am reading this thread in Canada, while defecating (no joke*). "For Better or For Worse" was shitty and involved Canada. So full circle for this reader, Ms. Johnston! Well played! * I am in a hotel room in Quebec City and indeed reading Metafilter on the toilet because we didn't pack any magazines! Hi everybody!

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:59:03 -0800

Lynn Johnston has announced that she's now going to go back and do "new" (or partly new, partly old, it's not entirely clear) strips that replay the entire story over again, going all the way back to 1979. It's like "Groundhog Day," without the Bill Murray, without the Harold Ramis, and without the funny.

By: Zambrano

Zambrano — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:59:38 -0800

This was one of the comics you always skipped over because they weren't funny- like Mary Worth and Family Circle (or was it Circus?).

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:18:05 -0800

What Countess Elena and orthogonality said. I used to like it, but man, did it go downhill. And I was glad it was over, until I read: For Better or For Worse begins again on September the 1st with new material... To quote Rambo: IT'S NOT OVER! IT'S NEVER OVER!!

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:48:38 -0800

It turns out that if you actually read Mary Worth, it's pretty goddam funny in its own way. Like Toby, the vapid Mary-padawan trophy wife of the local Silverback Chinbeard? Currently having the slowest, lamest struggle with internet fraud/identity theft you could ever hope to read in serial installments of stilted three-panel soap operatics. And there's that time that Mary jilted an obsessive suitor so firmly that he got drunk and drove off a cliff to his death. Don't write off Mary Worth.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:50:37 -0800

Good bye and good riddance. The ending seemed like a fairly obvious passive-aggressive jab at her ex-husband. And I'm still bitter that Elizabeth married Blandthony.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:15:31 -0800

The interview Countess Elena linked is amazing. I think I respect Johnston a bit more now, but I still can't get past my bitterness about Elizabeth leaving what seemed like a really interesting life up North (and a badly needed mainstream depiction of First Nations life that wasn't about squalid conditions on reserves and drug addiction). And then there's the other complaint about steering April away from the horrible exploitive life of a musician to the safety of veterinary school, and, no doubt, another Patterson marriage to a high-school love interest. Anb the smearing of Marie-Therese, and so on. The series really lost me in the last few years, and I'm not alone. But she survived a brutal childhood and a bad marriage through art, which is admirable.

I was very reclusive. I spent hours and hours in my room drawing. That was my release, and that was my way of surviving. You see, anything I imagined, I could draw. And I found that if I was in a terrible depression and I closed my eyes, the blackness would appear to go on forever. But if I put it down on paper, it was no bigger than 8 1/2 by 11, and I could deal with that. If you have a horror inside of you, it goes down to your marrow. But on paper, it's not so bad.

By: the bricabrac man

the bricabrac man — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:17:52 -0800

It's much harder to defend this strip than it used to be. I grew up with it, and when I took a geeky interest in the history of comic strips and started delving into their history, it was one of the handful of "modern" comics that could still hold my respect. But seeing ol' Liz marry this hopeless dork and have it presented as a happy ending makes me want to puke a little.

By: the bricabrac man

the bricabrac man — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:25:38 -0800

Also, she sounds just a tiny bit crazy in that youtube interview.

By: woodway

woodway — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:36:59 -0800

I thought a First Nations marriage was the way to go, and I was totally behind Elizabeth's first mature love up North, but it ended in heartbreak: we find love & marry within our own ranks, from childhood? What the heck of message is that? She got over it way too quickly. Leaving grandpa on his deathbed annoys me, too. If you're going for closure, give us a genuine narrative ending. We don't get that; the Saturday ending isn't a full stop. Still, I think readers deserve better that than Iris voicing some lame platitude.

By: roger ackroyd

roger ackroyd — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:43:23 -0800

Going to quote from Wiki here: In 1993, Lawrence Poirier's coming out generated controversy, with readers opposed to homosexuality threatening to cancel newspaper subscriptions. Over 100 newspapers ran replacement strips or canceled the comic. Three years later Lawrence introduced his boyfriend, giving rise to another, though smaller, uproar. I was in high school, struggling with my own sexuality when Lawrence came out, and seeing that storyline meant the world to me at the time.

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:54:03 -0800

jokeefe brings up two good points: one, that Countess Elena's link was fantastic, and two, that the human psyche is wired to survive at any cost, and those costs don't always reveal themselves until much, much later. It's tempting to say that Johnston made FBoFW increasingly saccharine as a way of coping with her real-life dysfunctional marriage. I think there's more to it than that—a lot more—but it's entirely an intuition on my part, based partially on jokeefe's pull-quote. The "daughter-marries-hometown-boy-and-lives-down-the-street-completing-the-circle" ending takes on much darker undertones after reading about Johnston's struggles with the cycle of childhood abuse. Plate of beans, anyone?

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:29:21 -0800

I remember reading the strip where Farley died while eating lunch at my desk at work and starting to cry I can't remember what I was doing that day, but Farley dying was brutal. I was in high school, struggling with my own sexuality when Lawrence came out, and seeing that storyline meant the world to me at the time. Me too. It was an important thing to see.

By: kosher_jenny

kosher_jenny — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:31:13 -0800

This seems to be a good opportunity to link to Shaenon K. Garrity's excellent (and quite funny) essay detailing why FBoFW's Anthony is so loathed. To sum up: he basically adheres to a lot of tired and irritating character and story tropes that can really rub readers, particularly female readers, the wrong way. It's a shame that the strip isn't really properly ending. It seems like there haven't been many comic strips where the creators decided to bow out on a high note, instead of letting things shamble along in increasing mediocrity, until they're only a shadow of their former selves. The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes are the only two that come to mind. I guess that it can be daunting for creators to try a new project after a successful one. Probably more so in the world of newspaper comics, because there is very little space available for new strips. Of course, part of the reason for this lack of space is because of the existence of all these zombie strips.

By: brujita

brujita — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:39:25 -0800

I was rather annoyed that we didn't get to see Lawrence formally married and I think it's shitty it's implied that Grandpa dies the day Elizabeth ties the knot (gah, Anthony! Warren made the grand gesture of coming to her graduation in his helicopter after we'd seen Eric being smegma).

By: wendell

wendell — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:03:51 -0800

from the Shaenon K. Garrity link: "Anthony represents the death of youthful dreams." Which to me, makes him marrying Elizabeth to be the PERFECT way to end FBoFW. And Grandpa does NOT die; he simply becomes less able to take care of himself and more a burden to Grandma. Which is also a PERFECT way to end, with Iris pointing out to the newlyweds that it is "For Better of For Worse" while living unhappily ever after. It's all so appropriate, because For Better was always so much more about the For Worse. As much as Lynn Johnson tried to counter her own traumas and tragedies with a sugarcoated banality, she revealed the banality as traumatic and tragic too. An ending that was all about "settling" and "coping" fit this particular comic perfectly. And who knows how many Americans she discouraged from relocating to Canada out of fear they might live next door that family - or even worse, become that family.

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:08:54 -0800

I still have trouble believing, after discovering it via the Internet, that this comic strip, of all things, has such a devoted, minutiae-obsessed, Star Trek-like fanbase. It's like discovering that there's a world sanctioning body for championship booger eating.

By: msjen

msjen — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:31:33 -0800

Anthony = YUCK. Every time I saw a strip with him in it, I cringed. I was rooting for Paul. I am sorry that the strip ended the way it did. As others have noted, it has been a bit tired the last 2 years or so. That being said, I did enjoy FBOFW for many years.

By: josher71

josher71 — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:49:29 -0800

I just read "Remembering Farley" again on the FBOFW website and I'll admit that I cried one more time.

By: pantsonsteven

pantsonsteven — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:04:44 -0800

I'm with Roger Akroyd on this one; reading about Lawrence as a 13-yo made me think that it might actually be OK that I was gay and that my life would go on.

By: zarah

zarah — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:24:03 -0800

Epilogue

By: decagon

decagon — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:41:11 -0800

I still have trouble believing that Star Trek, of all things, has such a devoted, minutiae-obsessed, Star-Trek-like fanbase.

By: ten pounds of inedita

ten pounds of inedita — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:37:20 -0800

Oh, jayzus, that epilogue is terrible. "Deanna worked as a pharmacist until she began a small sewing school." Are you fuckin' kidding me?

By: Sidhedevil

Sidhedevil — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:06:48 -0800

I think it's shitty it's implied that Grandpa dies the day Elizabeth ties the knot She retconned that in today's strip. The past few months of this have reminded me so much of The Funnies by J. Robert Lennon. The anxious desperation with which Lynn Johnston is projecting everything she so fiercely wants to be true in her own life onto Elly-Sue and the rest of the Patterfoobs... I feel bad for her, I do. But I wish she would just BOXCAR retire already.

By: graventy

graventy — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:42:20 -0800

Honestly, 29 years? If I ever get my syndicated story-based comic off the ground, I'll start repeats after 10 or so.

By: brujita

brujita — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:47:13 -0800

She retconned that in today's strip. Okay....let me amend that to I think it's shitty that she gave Grandpa a medical crisis the day of the wedding. We'd been seeing for months how miserable he was after the second stroke and how difficult it was for Iris (what happens after he dies? does she remain isolated or does she find a circle of friends?)