For Better Or Foreshadowing

[spatch]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lynn Johnston, winner of the 2005 Subtle As A Chainsaw Award for the most egregious and heavy-handed display of foreshadowing since "God himself could not sink this ship, nyer nyer nyer!!!"

And she accomplishes it in such a... ARGH ARGH ARGH. There's like a zillion ways to reveal that policeman's name for the punchline (look at all the space she had in the second panel!) and she picked the absolute worst one.

Next week I fully expect her to draw the policeman with an arrow pointing to him that says "HEY I THINK HE'LL BECOME ROMANTICALLY ENTANGLED WITH ELIZABETH, WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK?"

Ah, spleen, thou hast been full-vented.

Comments

[wednesday]

But Liz is going to date other chappy. The scary chappy.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I could pinpoint the exact moment when Lynn Johnston started to suck, and if it would coincide with the birth of April. Or maybe the death of Farley. *resists urge to plan a research methodology*

[spatch]

But that policeman's nameplate read "THE FUTURE MR. ELIZABETH PATTERSON" an' everything!

[grumqa.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too.

What? There's nothing more metal than FBoFW!

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

bwahahahaha. i loved that one. i really did.

[gismonda.livejournal.com]

FOR WORSE!

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad it's not gonna be the Big Loser with the kid and the weird Quebecoise wife. (The "Hey, random handsome cop I just met five minutes ago while seriously sleep-deprived, go track down my daughter in the middle of nowhere and date her!" subtext actually strikes me as really weird, but...)

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

Whoa, people actually follow this comic strip? I'm amazed...

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

i'm holding out for the helicopter dude.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I forgot all about him. Man, she's got 'em on the string.

YKINOK

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. If I'd known about this before, I'd never have let him move in.

[pecosy.livejournal.com]

Love TRIANGLE! I see this as the set up for a big showdown - Who will she choose?. And when things really get interesting, then the storyline will abruptly switch to April's math homework and we'll never know what happened.

[quodlibetic.livejournal.com]

I want to know just how long Liz is planning on going Native American. Eventually Johnston is going to run out of mystical wilderness society things to write about from afar. My vote is that Liz will end up with the whipped-guy-married-to-psycho-bitch-Quebecoise in the end. Or not.

I still groaned at the "Mr Wright", though. :)

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

they are scaring me.

[nathanjw]

You know, I was in the process of going cold turkey from this strip when ucomics.com stopped carrying it this month. Now I know there's another source. Damn you!

[stopword.livejournal.com]

Helicopter dude will TAKE DOWN the stupid cop. You never want an SO who is already aligned with your mom.

I love this comic strip.

Re: YKINOK

[spatch]

I'm gonna catch you up on everything before the month is out!

[spatch]

For you, I waive the Enabler's Fee.

[asd109.livejournal.com]

Oh well. He's got 2 things going for him-he's cute and he's not anthony.

of course, he's not helicopter guy, so it doesn't really matter

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

Wait...Farley's dead?

You know, it's been a while since I saw Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street...

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Farley died saving April from a flooding backyard creek when she was a toddler. He was able to keep her head above water long enough for Dad to pull them both to safety, but the cold and the strain were too much for his heart, and he died on the creek bank.

Do not be confused by his inferior replacement, Edgar (actually his *son* by Lawrence's mother's dog, Sera) (Who got pregnant, IIRC, because April let her out of her cage at an inopportune time) (and who was named "Sera" because after all the shit that went down with Lawrence coming out, his Mom eventually said, "Que sera, sera".)

[manda-x.livejournal.com]

If you read the Detroit Free Press, it can't be helped. It's right up at the top of the full-color page so you can't avoid scanning it on your way to Get Fuzzy or Calvin & Hobbes (reruns). I mean, if I'm careful I can avoid reading Judge Parker at the bottom of the inside page, but you open up the comics and FBoFW just smacks you in the eye and your brain interprets the text whether you will it or no.

[muffyjo]

I got that from the prior one where she showed off the picture and he said he wanted to revisit the town. See, the thing is, this way everyone knows Mom is going to approve of him, he's been vetted. And so daughter will inevitably hate him at first and come to love him in the end and it will all end in tears (of joy or sadness is still to come. They might kill him off, or send him overseas. Ya never know!)

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Because dating men your mother has preapproved is *good*. As is being a schoolteacher or being a nurse (for women) and being a small-business owner or self-employed (for men or for women whose children are grown.) Living together before marriage is bad and will be punished; enjoying an investment career outside the house is abandoning your husband and child.

I'm really getting sick of the way FBoFW has transmuted into an ongoing morality tale.

[betweenstations.livejournal.com]

Love rhombus.

Anthony.
Helicopter guy.
Cop.

[muffyjo]

But it has always been one.

[redtheblue.livejournal.com]

My paper only runs FBoFW on Sunday. That may be the most pointless thing they do. It's like running just the first panel of Mary Worth every day. Ot running Mary Worth at all.

But yes, that was a godawful example of visual storytelling, Lynn: "No no no! The characters HAVE to be in full-body silluoette! And no one will believe it's a policeman's office if you don't put all the required manuals and forms in view and make it show months of use! And the nameplate on the door? It wouldn't be very big! I know police stations well."

[spatch]

Back when it started, it espoused the ideals of the nuclear family in the "ha ha, aren't small children adorable?" way. Once the kids started growing up and Farley died, things took a turn for the melodramatic.