For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 08, 2015

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    Templo S.U.D.  about 9 years ago

    a very good thing indeed, El

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    Argythree  about 9 years ago

    Not sure I understand this. Someone getting published is being recognized as a writer. Not as a woman or man writer. A writer. So what am I missing?

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    Atewl  about 9 years ago

    Lynn’s Notes:

    As one of the few female syndicated cartoonists, I was often asked how I was treated by the men in the profession. Like every other woman, I’d been targeted (by a few people) with the usual crap and I learned to live with it. My revenge was to do a better job than my detractors

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    USN1977  about 9 years ago

    The woman is the third panel is boasting about how Elly is a woman, and Elly seems to be thinking to herself “She called me a woman? Who is her boyfriend, Captain Obvious?”

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    MagOctopus  about 9 years ago

    Not sure what point you’re trying to make, other than trying to disparage LJ. Who was lauded for her observance of real life and was pretty much the first person to depict real family life from a primarily female perspective in the comic pages.

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    Can't Sleep  about 9 years ago

    The predictable thing about trolls is that they don’t know what they’re talking about.Every writer, and I mean every writer, bases characters on people they know and experiences they’ve had. That’s how writers know the way people will behave.(It worked for Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Milne, and any other writer you’ve heard of.)- As for the crap, well, your rant is a pretty good example.Since you think she’s exploiting her family and unoriginal, why are you here? And why do you only comment on this strip?If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you were someone booted off the boards, who’s just come back with this identity to harass readers.But no one would do that, would they?

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    Rush Strong Premium Member about 9 years ago

    I wonder of Lynn intended the juxtaposition of using “Woman” in the third panel and “girls” in the first.

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    AnonaMoaner  about 9 years ago

    But – do you mean . . . that Hobbes is not real?

    (gulp!)

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    Argy.Bargy2  about 9 years ago

    I’m a writer (still unpublished), and can verify the fact that many in my group and others I’ve worked with over the years inevitably draw on family and friends to create characters.

    Jim in CT responded to you well, so I’ll just leave the issue alone…

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    USN1977  about 9 years ago

    As the strip progressed, Lynn Johnston took some flak for having female characters that were villianous in nature (not the Patterson women, but some supporting characters). Lynn’s attitude was spot on to the criticism, asking since when was sinfulness monopolized by the Y chromosone? Bravo Lynn for not kowtowing to this politically correct nonsense!

    Without being a spoiler, there is a story arc much later where Elly was blind to what a girl was doing at her shop, dismissing warnings from an older employee (also a woman), and something happens where it hits Elly like an iceberg hitting an ocean liner.

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    JP Steve Premium Member about 9 years ago

    Of course this strip would be more true to Lynn’s real life. By the time this was published, women authors were (pretty well) established as mainstream. Women cartoonists on the other hand were a rarity, and that was reflected in Lynn’s note.

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    Tarredandfeathered  about 9 years ago

    Ellie’s comment “Good thing I wore a dress.” seems to imply that some of the Men she has encountered need the Visual Clue to figure out which person IS a Woman….As opposed to an “*itch”, that is.

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