The Strip Catalog: Way-station to the end of the new-ruins...

[dreadedcandiru2]

As we've all seen, the latest feature to appear on the For Better or For Worse homepage is an online catalog of strips that goes pretty much back to the beginning of the Patterson saga to the Settlepocalypse as well as into the New-Ruin era. We're allowed to search for a keyword, to look at selected plotlines, to select strips at random and to search for a punchline. The only feature that is not currently available is a search by a date range but it was probably assumed that the typical end user wouldn't know when the strip he or she was looking for actually occured so it was probably deemed unnecessary to implement it at this time. The reason that this appears now is that it probably took a lot of time to fulfill a need that had been apparent for some time; most of the letters that come into Coffee Talk are probably requests for a particular strip and now they're able to point the readers into the right direction at the click of a mouse. It also reassures the readers that even though she must leave them, Lynn isn't really going anywhere; they'll always be able to find her online.

Comments

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

When those Coffee Talk comments come in asking for a particular story to be reprinted, I usually assume it's because they would prefer that to a story that is currently being reprinted. I would say the same is true for me. Having used the tool, I find that I prefer almost anything in that archive from the gravy years of the 1990s to anything Lynn has done in the last few years.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

I find myself in the same boat; I also find myself regretting the decline in quality since she stopped caring.

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

And this is the big difference between her and Charles Schulz. In his latter years he kept plugging away at his strip, trying to do the best job he could in spite of physical infirmities and running out of ideas on a strip he had done for 50 years. I remember seeing an interview with him where he got genuinely upset when he was told that some people no longer considered his strip to be that funny.

In contrast, Lynn Johnston told George Strombopolous that she hated doing the strip, and it shows.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing an interview with him where he got genuinely upset when he was told that some people no longer considered his strip to be that funny.

I remember that myself; it was the first time I'd seen the sore loser component of his personality. Before, I'd only read about it.