For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston

Commendation Quotes: ""For Better or For Worse" brought a new realism and long overdue female viewpoint to the comics' depiction of families. Instead of the stereotyped roles and generic gags of earlier family strips, Lynn drew a finely observed, warm, and idiosyncratic family based on her own life. Besides being funny, the strip had a wide emotional range and a lovely, expressive pen line. I think her work set a standard that still shapes newspaper family strips today." Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes""Marc Notes: For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston will be published to coincide with an international touring exhibition of Lynn Johnston's work, organized by the Art Gallery of Sudbury. The book features some of Johnston's most popular narratives, interspersed with an essay that chronicles the development of her drawing, her life, influences both personal and artistic, and the history of her wildly successful comic strip. This book also gathers together a generous selection of Lynn Johnston's daily comic strips and Sunday pages, spanning the lives of the Patterson family.--; Provided by publisher.; Co-published by: Art Gallery of Sudbury. Publisher Marketing: For thirty years, cartoonist Lynn Johnston made daily additions to what would become a monumental body of work: her newspaper comic strip, "For Better or For Worse." Chronicling the daily lives of the middle-class suburbanite Patterson family, Elly and John and their children, Michael, Elizabeth, and April, Johnston's strip was ground-breaking in its adherence to narrative and emotional realism, and its refusal to engage in melodrama, superpowers, or anthropomorphic animals. As the syndicated strips appeared in daily newspapers throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the 2000s, these characters aged with their readers, and their trials and tribulations were the same as those of their readers: the daily struggles of work, family, school, and bureaucracy. Wildly funny and formally innovative, "For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston" will be published to coincide with an international touring exhibition of Lynn Johnston's work, organized by the Art Gallery of Sudbury. The book features some of Johnston's most popular narratives, interspersed with an essay that chronicles the development of her drawing, her life, influences both personal and artistic, and the history of her wildly successful comic strip. This book also gathers together a generous selection of Lynn Johnston's daily comic strips and Sunday pages, spanning the lives of the Patterson family. Whether readers are new to Johnston's work or old fans returning once again, they'll find this book to be a rich treasury of "For Better or For Worse." Contributor Bio:  Johnston, Lynn Lynn Johnston is the creator of the comic strip "For Better or For Worse," which is distributed by United Feature Syndicate. It appears in more than two-thousand newspapers worldwide, in twenty countries, and in eight languages, reaching 220 million readers every day. In the twenty-four years since it was developed, there have been thirty books of cartoons published. Brenda Wegmann is an experienced teacher and author of ESL and Spanish-language textbooks and instructional guides; she also teaches at Edmonton Community College. Contributor Bio:  Hadway, Katie Katie Hadway is the daughter of Lynn Johnston and works in her studio as her mother's executive assistant. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Contributor Bio:  Landgraff, Amber Amber Landgraff is an artist/curator.