Rejected Strips

When a strip was rejected by Lynn’s editors, she would usually make the changes that the editors had requested. Often it was quicker for Lynn to redraw a strip than to edit what she had previously drawn. Below are a number of samples where the rejected strip was reworked, approved and then published.

According to Lynn, "The position of the adults is less 'cozy' in the second effort."

This gag merited being reworked as a Sunday strip.

Over the years, Lynn included many "fight" panels in the strip; for her, they are visually interesting and fun to draw!

Michael would eventually marry Deanna Sobinski, a girl he had known in elementary school. These strips below show Michael’s first attempts at getting Deanna’s attention. Lynn doesn’t recall why these strips were rejected, unless they were leading into a storyline and her editors wanted more "gag-a-day" strips. Storylines don't work too well in the early stages of a comic strip—the readers need time to familiarize themselves with the characters. Hopefully they will care enough about them to want to read what happens the next day!

The following strips were consigned to the back of a drawer to be rediscovered by Lynn’s studio staff years later. What do you think? Should they have made the papers?

Dentists particularly enjoyed seeing strips about John's dental practice; there's something about knowing other people share your professional tribulations. These strips didn’t make the grade for publication, but Lynn kept them anyway in case she thought of a way to rework them—her deadlines weighed heavily on her, so every bit of time saved was certainly appreciated.

Lynn’s husband at the time nixed this one as it was too negative—dentists need all the positive press they can get!

Lynn decided not to submit this one because it gave the wrong impression of sedation.

Despite being based on a real-life experience at the clinic, this one was just too provocative to print.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart! Thankfully, Lynn’s own experiences with parenting provided a lot of material that she could incorporate into her comic strip.

In June of 1980, Elly decided to take the kids to Vancouver to visit their grandparents. Here are two strips that were dropped from the series:

Here's a strip that eventually received the editor's approval.

Here's another strip that didn't make the cut. It's interesting to see how Lynn's drawing style had changed by the time she re-drew this art.

Lynn transformed this idea into a Sunday strip.

Another source of endless material for Lynn was marriage; many true-to-life situations (both from Lynn’s personal experience or stories from friends) made it into FBorFW. Some subjects were either too sensitive or too negative to publish.

This was too strong a subject for a fairly new strip. Lynn wasn't able to focus on serious topics until the readership was sufficiently comfortable with her work to trust her to do the job well.

This really happened. Lynn’s mom washed her dad's and brother's underwear with the fibreglass drapes and they scratched themselves raw! All the clothing in that load had to be thrown out—the microscopic glass fibres were impossible to remove. Lynn is not sure why this didn't get published; either fibreglass drapes had gone out of style, or the suggestion that the guys were scratching unmentionable body parts was too hot to handle.

This wasn't an original gag. Lynn saw it on an old sit-com, remembered it, and took it as her own. Lynn claims that she got cold feet before she sent it in. Even if nobody else knew it was someone else's gag—she did. There's nothing good about plagiarism!

An important element of writing is to have some conflict between the characters, but sometimes Lynn was too hard on John, so she would choose to delete a strip or two from a storyline.

This was rejected as being weak.

Here is another example of a strip that Lynn redrew for publication.

Lynn wanted to have Elly take a night-school class to introduce a little drama and temptation into the strip. Sadly, she didn't follow through and this storyline was scrapped.

Although Lynn scrapped this series, she did rework the idea of Elly taking extra courses. She also couldn’t resist using macramé in the gag, but this time, in a less demeaning way.

Lynn quickly realized the she wasn't prepared to attempt a touchy subject like this one, so she ended it before it was inked.

We're not sure why Lynn redrew the strips in this series, but you can see that her style of drawing had evolved between the time she drew the rejected strip to the time she drew the reworked and published strip.

Marta was a new character Lynn attempted to introduce who never made it into publication.

This strip was too convoluted and wordy, and would have required a follow-up story to give it any credence at all.

This was not only a poor gag...it was drawn without thought for height comparison and perspective. Lynn later learned to draw the whole scene before sketching in the principal characters.

Even the best ball players don't hit a home run every time! Here are some strips that Lynn simply didn't finish or submit for publication.

Phil, a favourite character among FBorFW fans, was based on Lynn’s brother—who is also a professional jazz musician.

Readers may remember that Connie and Phil dated briefly. When the story originally ran in 1981, Lynn had Connie drive to Montreal to surprise Phil by returning the pipe he'd left at her house in Milborough. The following two strips were originally meant to be part of the series but were not published.

Lynn hadn't thought this story through when she started it. This series of strips sort of "died" with no follow up and no explanation.

In 2010, this storyline was due to run again in the newspapers. Lynn drew the following strip to fill the gap in the narrative that had been caused by the rejection of the two strips above:

Here's one more pair of strips from this sequence, originally rejected and unpublished in 1981 and later redone and published in 2010.

The second strip in this sequence wasn't published.

Throughout the early days of FBorFW, Anne struggled with her weight. This never-published series shows Anne, Connie and Elly joining a support group.

It was the cost of an expensive spa that shut down this series. Readers would wonder how any of these ladies could afford it—or even have the time. Spas were not as popular then as they are now.