posted
I'm not angry so much as I'm sardonically amused. This thread does contain one of the few recent strips that provoked genuine anger in me.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I think Puffy is having fun. It doesn't seem like you're having fun, though. Why do you keep reading it?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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"How long will you need to be in a cow pasture with your arm stuck halfway up a cow's hoo-hoo before you realize you are tired of your little adventure and your destiny lies in Milborough doing work with cute kitties and bunnies and Gerald Delaney-Forsythe?"Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I think it's supposed to be mascara, running because a) they're cheap teenagers and the waterproof stuff is too expensive, and b) they're crying, it's just so emotional. *sob*
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
April has now realized that music and creativity are silly and lame compared to doing homework in preparation for her future career as Mrs. Gerald Delany-Forsythe, Veterinarian. Thus, she's forgiven Liz for letting Jesse the boy with SOARAS steal Grandpa Jim's harmonica.
If I removed these characters from their current context, the strip would be kind of cute...even if it does revisit a punchline Lynn's used fairly often.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Except, these are obviously false memories. Mike was a rowdy, playful, average kid. Not a sensitive, fragile, poetic flower of a lad.
It's really strange...now that Mike's Great Canadian Novel has become the best-selling book of all time, we have to change the past in order to pretend he was -always- portrayed as an artistic sort? Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
My local library has a bunch of the older For Better or For Worse collections. Scanning them, not only is there no sign of Mike's "sensitive" side, but he was the primary teaser and instigator of strife. Not Liz.
It's easy to guess who Lynn's favorite FBorFW character is, isn't it? Not even Elly gets the luck Mike has, lately.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Hey Puffy, How 'bout changing your title to "Permit me one last anti-Liz Patterson thread" Every time I see it bumped I can't help but wonder... wasn't it the last post last time?
Yesterday's framing device for this flashback is just silly. Babies don't tease the way Lynn's saying they do.
And how could Liz remember a conversation she wasn't even present for?
Lynn seems to think the period when Mike and Liz did little more than scream and spit were the 'Golden Age' of the strip. I dunno. I think it improved greatly once they were both old enough to be in school.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Hey Puffy, How 'bout changing your title to "Permit me one last anti-Liz Patterson thread" Every time I see it bumped I can't help but wonder... wasn't it the last post last time?
AJ
I always saw it in a "well, maybe I'll have one last potato chip" sort of way, and thought it was fairly funny. I don't mind that it's changed, but it was a good title, I think.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I don't think that Lynn necessarily feels that way about the earlier strips, Puffy. She's intending to run these strips that are 90% recycled material for the forseeable future, right? Is there a reason why you don't think that she's just intending to start with the earlier strips and work her way forward?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: She's intending to run these strips that are 90% recycled material for the forseeable future, right?
That was her original plan, before Rod Johnston divorced her. Since then she's made some very conflicting claims about just where the strip is headed. For instance, she's claimed recently that she's wanted all the dangling plot threads (Jim's health, Liz & Anthony, etc) resolved before spring of 2008. But, she's also made claims that the earliest strips are being used to "prep" the readership for an all Mike & Ageless Offspring strip. And the occasional reference to the Hybrid Experiment.
Personally, I think she hasn't made up her mind just what she's going to do...hence the very odd timing of certain recent stories: Jim is gonna d-...whoops, silly spitting kiddies flashback!
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Except, these are obviously false memories. Mike was a rowdy, playful, average kid. Not a sensitive, fragile, poetic flower of a lad.
It's really strange...now that Mike's Great Canadian Novel has become the best-selling book of all time, we have to change the past in order to pretend he was -always- portrayed as an artistic sort?
Specifically, the sensitive and fragile artist who spent most of their childhoods referring to her as "Lizard Breath". Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I get what the joke is supposed to be, but Robin only -just- celebrated his third birthday a couple of days ago. I think this sort of misunderstanding is more likely to occur a wee bit later in life. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Not only can Liz remember things that happened to five year old Mike that she wasn't present for and couldn't understand, but she's rattling it off like a pro-Mike fan-fic.
Anyone else notice that the rare appearances by John these days are the strips where he's being derided or physically hurt? Hmmmmm.
posted
I don't know what happened to the strip, but I am in no way emotionally connected to it anymore. I was very sad when Farley died, nearly crying, but if Grandpa Jim died this week I probably wouldn't even blink.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Out of nostalgia, today I checked out a collection of FBorFW strips from 1989-1990.
It was like a completely different world. Punchlines not based on tortured pun set-ups. Pattersons who are flawed yet still endearing and likable. Story progression that isn't all over the place.
Flashbacks that actually -do- have something to do with the then-current story, told by characters who logically would remember them. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Liz: "And that was the time that Mike made Dad feel really uncomfortable about explaining sex to his children. See? He was MEANT to be a writer from the start!" *beams*
April: "...I didn't get that out of your memory at all. And...uh...Liz?"
Liz: "Yes?"
April: "How the heck are you able to remember this?!?"
Liz: "Magic, April. Magic."
Upon consideration, it looks like Mike's smirk was the only thing 'touched up' in order to justify the syndicate paying Lynn twice for the same strip.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
JonHecht, could you read when Farley died? I remember being in second grade, and I think you're three years younger than me.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I could read back then, but I didn't read it at the time. When I discovered FBOFW my mom had some collections, and I read those. That is how I grew an emotional attachment and saw when Farley died.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Oh it was a year later than I thought anyway. I knew it was close in time to something big in my life happening but I thought it was something else. The end of second grade my first grade teacher died of Aids. April of 3rd grade my mom's friend was diagnosed with bone cancer and we pretty much moved into her house to take care of her.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Dood, that just reminds me of Family Circus twisted with 4 panels. I hate Family Circus. >.<
Anyone remember The Nietzsche Family Circus? I've been thinking that there should be "For Better or For Nietzsche." 3 panels of the normal dialogue, then the 4th panel delivering us some heavy Nitzschean truth. It'd be awesome.
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Finally, Liz is in one of these things. And yet...how old is she? Three months?
Lynn, out of all the decades of Mike strips, why are you choosing these? They don't support your new "sensitive genius Mike" paradigm. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Leaving aside that there's no way infant Liz could remember any of this, or why she hasn't let poor April free from the laundromat conversation for more than a month-
In the old days, it was probably Lynn's attempt to generate humor along the lines of "Did you ever have a kid who tried to barge in everywhere? HAH! I do too!"
These days, though, it seems like yet another one of her recent swipes at Rod Johnston.
"John, I had a dream where you left me for another woman!"
"MOM, DADDY -CHEATS-!"
And now, the husband and father character as silent, unresponsive, absent, neglectful.
It's impossible for me to read a John strip now without looking for coded messages. Lynn's shown that she's more than willing to use the strip in this manner.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
The blog was cute, but I've seen it done with Marmaduke at McSweeney's. The randomizer was conceptually cute, but not reall funny.
Garfield without the thought bubbles, though . . . Holy cow! I laughed more at the first page of that thread than I have at all the Gafield strips I have ever read, cumulatively!
(Oh, and the Video-Watching Dog strip at the blog site was just stupid. But we knew that.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Can't . . . breathe . . . laughing too hard . . . falling off sofa!
Is that an original or an editted? Did someone edit that text in or just remove Garfield's text or what?
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
It's actually not edited at all, but after spending an hour and a half or so reading edited Garfield strips, that one just killed me!
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Today's strip was amusing, though this is the fifth (or sixth) time Lynn's done an arc about Mike's brilliant, first-draft-bestseller book in the past two years. It's hardly an urgent plot thread in need of closure before "the freeze"...when and if that ever happens. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
The Grandpa either needs to die and everyone is sad, or he needs to be able to speak and everyone is happy. He has had brain damage long enough.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
What can I say, she is making me hate the characters now. I am sure you think that The Twins in Heroes should die.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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