Farewell, Pattersons

[prog]

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.

Comments

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Speaking of comics in reruns, here's this week's Opus. Since it's at salon.com you may have to click past an ad if you're not a subscriber.

http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2008/08/31/opus/

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd caught wind that this was happening. I have to admit I roll my eyes a little - this would be the third time that Breathed has ended this same strip. But it really does sound final this time, doesn't it.

on a related note...

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/08/28/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-lizardbreaths/

Re: on a related note...

[prog.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of 30-ish people grew up reading it and identify strongly with Michael or Liz, so the elimination of anything difficult, controversial or even interesting from the strip in favour of making everyone marry their childhood sweetheart is both disturbing and disappointing.

I resemble this remark. (From the article's comments.)

I also learned the term "foefic" - as in, the opposite of fanfic - from this post in james_nicoll's LJ, which is where also where i learned about this strip's deteriorating into a zombie. (And it is a deterioration, not a creative reboot, which is a damn shame. For everyone else who could use the page-space, I mean.)