For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for December 28, 2023

Nice comeback Rhetta!

Yup. Rhetta is conservative. She likes her guys clean cut. So thats why she’s dressed older and all that. She’s moved on from teenagehood already. Prolly ready to get married too

There’s not THAT much hair, Rhetta. For all we know, Gordon might look like Cousin Itt!

Don’t worry, he’ll grow out of this stage. My brother did. Right around the time he joined the Army. They rather made that decision for him.

you should consult your partner on beards. While I haven’t really hadany, some don’t like the texture.

[joke omitted because this is a family strip] You’re welcome.

You’re both in college, far away from each other. Such relationships rarely last. Best to just make a clean break and move on.

From Lynn’s Comments: Quotes like, “face value” were essential to my writing. They gave me an automatic punch line. Even today, I can’t hear a cliché without wanting to work it into a strip.

Not changing you, just your face.

Beards do help keep faces warm in winter.

Lose the beard Dirty Wizard!!

There is a big difference between groomed and lazy.

I think this is pretty typical of young men when they get out on their own for the first time. Trying something DIFFERENT from their usual. :)

I actually asked my husband to grow a mustache (I like mustaches). Oddly and unfortunately, even though he has almost black hair, his whiskers grew in CLEAR! It resembled the stuff used to make whiskers on stuffed animals, except the “roots” were dark. I managed to get ONE good look at him with a mustache when the light hit it just right. It looked great on him, from what I could see. I told him he could shave it off if he wanted to, which he did.

Way to go, Rhetta ! !! !

Just shave and make everybody happy for the holidays, it grows back, way too fast, for me anyways.

My son had one but it was neatly groomed, I liked it on him.

I love you just the way you are. Now change.

A college boyfriend did the no-shave November challenge while we were together – he looked quite dashing, but it was still nice to see his face again in December!

Ahh. The days of, “I wanna look different. Just like all my friends. Regardless if it makes me more attractive to my girl or not.”

This relationship is doomed. Besides we already know who he marries. lol

Adjustments. Some take more time than others.

What person, under the age of 75, uses the term ‘whiskers’ in reference to a man’s facial hair?

And why are they borrowing John’s car? how did Rhetta get to the Pattersons’ house to begin with?

I once worked at a chemical production plant that banned beards. The rationale was that they could impair the proper wearing of air safety masks.

I enjoy the symbolism of the last two panels, where you can’t see the emotions or reactions of the two characters. All you can see is them getting smaller and smaller as they travel into the darkness of shaving conversations.

Didn’t they have a strip a couple of weeks ago where Michael was shaving his beard?

Something I’m curious about, What decade is this set in? There are no cell phones,coputers or video games and they write letters . It seems they are in the 70’s or early 80’s .

Rhetta better get used to it… Mike will change on his own the next few years at college.

I just had to shave—-I couldn’t stand the way a beard itched.

She has a good point!

Accepting each other as is as of the beginning of the relationship is not the same as accepting changes made once that relationship is under way.

Still, anything that moves them closer to their inevitable conclusion is fine by me. Their lives have already moved in very different directions, in far bigger things than this.

I started growing a beard as soon as I got out of high school. Still have it nearly 60 years later.

Luckily, the Vincent Van Gogh stage of Mike’s life was brief

Most of us at that age want to see what our facial hair is capable of

I just don’t feel “clean” unless I shave every morning.

I grew my beard at age 20, shaved it off the next summer for a job, grew it back the next year and have still got it at age 81.

In the early 60s beards were post-beatnik, pre-hippie rarities. Older women used to tell me I looked like an “old man”—remembering back to facial hair’s last heyday.

All those years of not shaving! Ahhh . . .

I always liked Rhetta. I liked her better than Deanna.

Is this gonna be the break-up arc?

Rhetta is dropping hints that she is less attracted to Michael. Now she considers him slovenly and that he gives the impressions to others he does not care about his appearance.

Women want to change their men,yet they want themselves to stay the same.

We will see how much “whisker rash” Rhetta ends up with.

And the break up begins

shave