For Better or For Worse Cartoon Strip Will go Back in Time

by Rob Walker | September 7, 2008 at 01:41 pm

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It's kind of funny really, I've been following Lynn Johnston's immensely popular comic strip 'For Better or for Worse' for about as long as I could read. My mom always said I reminded her of the son Michael, as we're the same age and kept running into the same life issues at the same time. I'm a writer, he's a writer, etc.

Well, 29 years in and the big questions have been answered, gay characters have appeared and Elizabeth finally got together with Anthony. In the final strip this Sunday, a cartoon version of Lynn Johnston came in and said the strip would be rebooting starting monday, with all the characters going back to their early versions.

Michael will be in grade school, Elizabeth will be in diapers and April won't even exist.

But then the cartoonist pulled the rug completely out from under us Sunday with a plot twist that made even the heartbreaking death of the Patterson family dog Farley (as he saved little April from drowning) seem pale in comparison. Even the comic strip that outraged readers by the thousands in 1993 when Lawrence acknowledged he was gay couldn't top this.
There it was in full color in the big Sunday strip: As Elizabeth's parents are dancing at her wedding (to Anthony, thank God) Johnston herself enters the strip in cartoon form and tells us that starting the next day "For Better or For Worse" will rocket back almost 30 years in time to soon after it began.