zoethe says everyone's doing it, so here's mine

[scarfman]

Everyone in the online comics commentary community has an opinion on recent developments in For Better or For Worse, and it looks from here that they're mostly the same opinion. In short, Johnstone is ending the strip going to convert the strip to a framing story for its own reruns. One report says she feels she's lost touch with today's generation, which may be why the commentators I know and respect best are all despising the way she's wrapping up her story. Middle(?) daughter Liz seems to be being aimed at her ex-childhood sweetie Anthony, described by more attentive readers than I with terms that amount to "stalker". One of two long-distance potential relationships (long-distance, now that she's quit her teaching job and moved back home, with her parents) has just imploded for the guy being discovered in another relationship of which none of Liz's other friends there told her (for which zoethe provides a perfectly in-character explanation for the subculture). The other long-distance potential relationship is the helicopter pilot who's transporting Liz back and forth for the trip, and those who anticipate Anthony winning Liz in the end no doubt expect that'll go wrong before Liz gets home. There's been thousands of words all over the web on how creepy Anthony's behavior would be if he existed in real life while he still continues meet Johnstone's criteria for every other successful Patterson mate in the strip, and I just want to say I don't care.

I understand, mind. The people who object to what's in the wind are people who've been following the strip all their lives, love these characters almost as if they were family, and feel betrayed by what they see as Johnstone's blindness to real-world-style concerns and developments in favor of her own preferences in How Life Ought To Turn Out For Everyone. I imagine there are readers who are rooting for Anthony, too, but they're not as loud. I wouldn't mind if AKOTAS generated this kind of there's-no-such-thing-as-bad publicity when it starts wrapping up, though of course I doubt it.

But I only added FBOFW to my daily trawl about a year ago because there was a rape storyline going on and, for some reason, women's issues have imprinted on me as something I particularly want to get right in my own work. And I expect to keep on reading as an academic observation of the wrapup of a popular pop serial fiction. But so far I think all I've really learned is that even someone who's been at it professionally for decades can draw an action-scene panel which leaves what's happening unclear to more than one reader.

Edit 1-4-08 In the intervening time since this entry was posted, I've read an article about Johnstone in which she quoted that the reason she's reunited Liz and Anthony is because Charles Schulz told her that she had too many characters. I know that if I made an unpopular decision about the direction of my characters on the basis of personal advice from Sparky, I'd stick to my guns.