Year One of the New Era: what we have learned.......

[dreadedcandiru2]

It's hard to believe that the first year of the new-ruin era has gone by already and we have learned so little. Lynn had, as we all know, promised to use the time to expand on the background of the strip and, as we've seen, not delivered at all; as howtheduck told us, the only new thing we know is that Lawrence used to suffer from shy bowel syndrome. Other than that Lynn has told us things we already know; we've already been briefed on the following facts:

• Elly is living in a self-inflicted Hell because she does too much work and never accepts offered help because they do it wrong.
• John is sort of insensitive and ridicules Elly's attempts at a career; the unpsoken context is that he knows that she'll lose interest anyway so she might as well fail where no one can see her.
• Elly is simply too stupid and self-absorbed to be a good parent and John is too detached most of the time to fill in the gap; this lead to Mike being forced to being Lizzie's primary caregiver with dubious-at-best results.
• Connie is desperate for male company and not-so-secretly regards Lawrence as a burden.
• Elly talks big about standing firm but caves all the time.
• Elly, never having been allowed a pet, can't figure out how animals behave.
• Annie likes to gossip about Connie and vice versa.
• Ted is a loser and the subject of female ridicule.
• Mike constantly embarrassed himself in front of Deanna and did whatever stupid things Lawrence told him to
• Lizzie was so filled with fear, she clung to Elly like a barnacle.

Going in, I thought we'd learn what Annie really thought of Steve or that Mira was a delusional social climber but no such luck; all Lynn saw fit to expand upon was how pathetic, selfish, petty and annoying her characters were.

Comments

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

I think the main problem with the new-runs is, once again, Lynn's divorce. She worked the new-runs with an overriding paradigm that Elly must be shown to be even more put-upon and John even more of an asshole. Even if Lynn had planned to expand on the characters and their background, her inability to let go of her anger and her desire for public revenge on Rod through her strip took over. This negative aspect affected everything, up-to-and including the return of Farley, where much of the humour for Farley involved his being abused by members of the Patterson family.

What going to reprints really did was to remind everyone, even long-term fans, that Lynn Johnston had a lot of hate directed at her husband through the strip, even back in 1979-80. Comparing the new-runs to the reprints often means that the readers have come to realize that Lynn's use of her strip to seek revenge against Rod has been going on for 30 years. When it comes to anger of the author, the new-runs are shockingly similar to the reprints.

Lynn would have been much better off showing strips from the time period after she moved away from Lynn Lake, when she was not nearly so angry. That is the strip people remember fondly.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

She worked the new-runs with an overriding paradigm that Elly must be shown to be even more put-upon and John even more of an asshole. Even if Lynn had planned to expand on the characters and their background, her inability to let go of her anger and her desire for public revenge on Rod through her strip took over.

Which is why she didn't start over from 1982 or so; she wasn't as mad at Rod then so working in examples of John being a creep would have tipped her hand in a way that even Inman would have seen it.

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

In that respect, 1979-80 was a good choice for Lynn. There is a wealth of "John is an asshat" material there. It may shock her fans, who think of John as a nice guy; but what are fans compared to the simple joys of slamming your ex- every day in a national publication.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Her need to vilify Rod for leaving her and Aaron for being a no-show in her day-to-day life will be excellent reasons for her to never quit; the need to show us that the nice John that we remember was a fraud and that Mike was a worse goof than we were told will mesh nicely with her need to tinker with things and ensure that she die at her drawing board like Schulz did.