'For Better and for Worse': A comic contempt
COMMENTARY
Some have lived to despise Lynn Johnston's comic strip, and thus have never missed a day.
The end of the world is here: Lizardbreath has married Blandthony. Grandpa Jim is on his deathbed, with pitiable second wife Iris at his side. Our protagonist, Elly Patterson, is a Kleenex-clutching mess, as ever. She can't believe how the years have gone by a wrinkle at a time, blah, blah, blah.
Somebody says something disgustingly pithy every panel now. You can feel the comic-strip family saga known as "For Better or for Worse" (known to some as "FBOFW," and to others simply as "Foob") coming to a close, in a cataract haze of soft focus.
Foobsters everywhere, weep. Creator Lynn Johnston is semi-retiring, repurposing her archives beginning with next week's strips. A comic strip that unfolded in real time -- year by year, in which characters aged and changed and sometimes even died -- will now only look backward, with enhanced reruns.
As a farewell, Johnston seems to have made an extra effort to drench this week's wedding of characters Elizabeth Patterson and Anthony Caine (if you read it, this is bigger than Luke and Laura) in even more sentimental goo than faithful readers have come to expect.
And so, on that note, let us now honor a particular kind of "For Better or for Worse" devotee: the haters.
These are the many millions who live to despise every last thing about the comic strip and, as such, have never missed a day. For them, "Foob" has never been worse -- worse puns, worse sap, even worse life choices. (Which, in a sick way, means "For Better or for Worse" has never been better!)
Elly became intolerably sentimental as a retiree, after she sold the bookstore. Her husband, John, the dentist, retreated into a symbolically sexless world of model railroads. Their son Michael hit it big with a bestselling novel (About what? We never learned) and he and his wife, Deanna, bought the old Patterson family home, somewhere in the suburbs of Toronto. Little sister April Patterson's band, the Archies-esque 4-Evah, broke up, then got a new singer, making them 4Evah & Eva. Elizabeth (a.k.a. Lizardbreath) gave up her new life teaching native people in the Canadian hinterlands to move home and marry Anthony, her boring high school boyfriend.
If all of this means nothing to you, then carry on with your life.
For everyone else, let's take one more opportunity to cringe.
