Dueling patriarchs.....

As I said back when the new-ruins had first appeared eleven months ago, the whiplash between the old material and what I expected to be filler that "explained" what was happening in the background was going to be hard to deal with. The biggest problem that I saw was that Lynn had the John of the newer material look like a younger version of the affable goof of the Later Years. Sure, he still says dumb and insensitive things but that's because he's fairly dim. The REAL Young John was an unapologetic jerkass who went out of his way to remind us how little he thought of the little woman and her ambitions. Trying to reconcile the Raymond-esque dope of the new-runs with the evil prick of the Early Years is simply not going to work; the result is to make him look like an insane tool instead of a callous one.