Wash Post looks at both sides of FBoFW; drops it

Alan Gardner Published: August 28, 2008 at 8:52 am EDT 1 minute 4 comments

The Washington Post ran two opposing views of Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse comic strip. Mike Cavna writes a lengthy, but excellent article on Lynn’s career and accomplishments and Hank Stuever writes a piece entitled “Something for Everyone to Hate” which sums up his opinion.

Mike Rhode notices that at the end of Mike’s Comics Riff blog, Mike spills the beans that the Post will drop FBoFW from print, but continue it online.

Comments ⁴

Jim Thomas

It sounds like this paper is handling the situation correctly. Putting up strips with old content, or new old content or new runs or whatever, online where it can live on in unlimited archive space and freeing up precious print space for something new. I hope this starts a trend for newspapers!

Aug 28,2008
Mike Gill

Why cancel reruns of FBOFW and keep Peanuts?

Sep 06,2008
Bill Kellogg

Mike, one reason I have heard from several editors now is that FBOFW is a long-running story line which makes it harder for them to drop. Once they start FBOFW over again, if they drop it they will have to end the story in the middle and they assume that will cause more complaints.

Sep 06,2008
Wiley Miller

I heard that rationale made by editors, and it just underscores how ignorant they are of the feature as well as comics in general. FBOFW didn’t become story oriented until its later years. In the beginning, and for the majority of its run, the strip was a gag-a-day humor strip centered around this family and family life. She had the characters age in real time so that the gags would evolve as well, keeping the material fresh. It wasn’t until the children got much older that more involved storylines began to work their way in between the gags.

So their argument doesn’t hold in the analogy to Peanuts. But try explaining that to an editor. All you’ll get is a vacant stare.

Sep 07,2008

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