Farewell, Pattersons
Hey look it is the final For Better or for Worse strip. WIth its continuing, shifting storyline about a family whose members aged and matured (and occasionally gave birth or died) in real time, it was one of my favorite comics when I was a kid.
It grew increasingly treacly over the years, and I stopped being able to read it maybe halfway through its run. (Or maybe it was always quite treacly, and I became too cyncial for it as I got older.) For all that, it was a fine, tightly scoped soap opera with believable stories and characters, and I have always loved Johnston's loose but warm art style.
On the minus side, it looks like it's about to go into reruns, rather than step aside and let a new talent in. Once this would have made me growl and moan about the continual morass that is the North American newspaper comics page, as it clings to yet another corpse rather than try anything new, but honestly I stopped reading the funny pages so long ago that it's really not my place to say any more.
Edit Hmm, some people are interpreting messages at the strip's website that Johnston is not putting the strip into reruns, but manually rebooting the whole enterprise and starting a fresh story with newlywed (and rejuvenated) John and Elly. Which would be... well, interesting. I bet we'll get the full poop at Weingarten's chat next week.
It grew increasingly treacly over the years, and I stopped being able to read it maybe halfway through its run. (Or maybe it was always quite treacly, and I became too cyncial for it as I got older.) For all that, it was a fine, tightly scoped soap opera with believable stories and characters, and I have always loved Johnston's loose but warm art style.
On the minus side, it looks like it's about to go into reruns, rather than step aside and let a new talent in. Once this would have made me growl and moan about the continual morass that is the North American newspaper comics page, as it clings to yet another corpse rather than try anything new, but honestly I stopped reading the funny pages so long ago that it's really not my place to say any more.
Edit Hmm, some people are interpreting messages at the strip's website that Johnston is not putting the strip into reruns, but manually rebooting the whole enterprise and starting a fresh story with newlywed (and rejuvenated) John and Elly. Which would be... well, interesting. I bet we'll get the full poop at Weingarten's chat next week.