Lynn was recently interviewed by Marc Lichter for Caring Today magazine, a publication for caregivers.
"Caring Today: Why is the storyline about Grandpa Jim's stroke so important to you?
Lynn Johnston: My mother-in-law actually suffered the stroke, and we were there when it happened. It was what she most feared. She'd said, "I don't want to be a burden to anyone, I don't want to be half there."
It was amazing to see. She simply looked at us with a strange expression and started to crumple. A friend sat her down. She looked at us-yet, she wasn't looking at us. We called the ambulance to take her to the hospital. Her stroke was sudden yet so gentle.
I wanted to show that it affected the whole family. It had involved everyone in the room that day and continued to involve everyone. Because the grandfather in the strip is in his eighties and had smoked and had had a rich life, perhaps that's what happened to him. I wanted to explore it because I'd experienced it."
You can read the full interview on their website.
The latest FBorFW collection book, Home Sweat Home, is now in stock! Once again, this book will have colour Sunday strips. Order your signed copy today!.
Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse® is the world’s most popular family strip in which characters have evolved through age and experience, rather than remaining frozen in time.
In Home Sweat Home, moves are afoot aplenty. John and Elly downsize to a new home and Mike and Deanna buy the family homestead to raise their children as a new generation fills the Patterson legacy. Romantic moves abound, too, as Elizabeth has her heart broken only to have it won back by Anthony. April turns sixteen and will soon be driving – which is driving her parents crazy.
For Better or For Worse® has been syndicated since 1979. In 1985, Lynn was the first woman to receive the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society. She has also received the Order of Canada and claims a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. Lynn lives in Corbeil, Ontario.
By Pam Becker | TRIBUNE REPORTER
February 21, 2008
Comic strip artist Lynn Johnston relishes a challenge, and she isn't afraid to break tradition. These traits are front and center as the creator of "For Better or For Worse" negotiates an unprecedented path toward what she calls semi-retirement.
Johnston says she will end the current plotlines of her 29-year-old strip by September. Then she will do something unheard of in the comic strip world: start from the beginning again, rerunning the old strips -- but tinkering with some to "augment" or "fix some of the stuff," she says in a phone interview from her home in Corbeil, Ontario. She also will have to redraw a number of strips for which original images are missing, she says.
Comics expert Lucy Shelton Caswell says, "I am not aware of anybody doing [this] before." Caswell, interviewed by phone, is professor and curator of the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State University.
Read the full article here: 'For Better or For Worse' to end, begin again'.
During the past couple of weeks, there have been newspaper and blog reports implying that the old/new "For Better or For Worse" hybrid may go completely into reruns later this year.
That isn't true, said "FBorFW" creator Lynn Johnston. "I'm not quitting," she declared, when reached today by E&P. "I don't want to quit. I plan to keep working on the strip. I love what I do."
You can read the complete article by Dave Astor of Editor & Publisher here.
