Lynn Johnston

From Hey Kids Comics

Lynn Franks Johnston
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Brad Mackay (left), Director of the Doug Wright Awards, inducts Lynn Johnston into The Giants of the North: the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame in August 2008
Born Lynn Ridgway
May 28, 1947 (1947-05-28) (age 77)
Collingwood
Nationality Canadian
Notable works For Better or For Worse

Lynn Johnston, CM OM (born May 28, 1947) is a Canadian cartoonist, known for her newspaper comic strip For Better or For Worse. She was the first woman and first Canadian to win the National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Award.

Early life[edit | edit source]

Born Lynn Ridgway in Collingwood, she was raised in North Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended the Vancouver School of Art with hopes of making a living as an artist. After working briefly in animation, she married in 1969 and moved back to Ontario, where she worked as a medical artist at McMaster University for five years. Johnston's illustrations are in storage in McMaster's medical archive. They include depictions of routine hospital happenings, such as a father smoking in the waiting room.

While expecting her first child, she drew single-panel cartoons for the ceiling of her obstetrician's office. Those drawings were published in her first book, David We're Pregnant, which was published in 1973 under her then name of Lynn Franks (and subsequently republished under the name of Lynn Johnston) and became a best seller. After her divorce, she did free-lance commercial and medical art in a studio converted from a greenhouse. Hi Mom! Hi Dad!, a sequel to David, was published in 1975. Shortly thereafter, she met and married dental student Rod Johnston.[1][2]

For Better or For Worse[edit | edit source]

Main article: For Better or For Worse

In 1978, the Johnstons and their two children relocated to Lynn Lake. She was asked by Universal Press Syndicate if she was interested in doing a comic strip. She sent twenty copies of a strip called The Johnstons, based on her family "since we were the only people I knew I could draw over and over again with some consistency."[1] Much to her surprise, the syndicate approved of the initial strips and offered her a twenty-year contract.[1] After a six-month "work-up" period, the strip first appeared in newspapers throughout Canada under the title For Better or For Worse. The strip is currently[when?] carried by about 2000 newspapers in Canada, the U.S. and 20 other countries.[1][3]

Many story lines draw from her family's real-life experiences. Her main characters are named after the middle names of her husband and children. Elly is named after a friend who died when Johnston was young. Her brother-in-law Ralph Johnston inspired the controversial story about Lawrence's Coming out. Deanna was based on Aaron's high school sweetheart, who died in a car accident years after their relationship ended. Johnston's niece Stephanie is developmentally handicapped and her experience is shared in recent story lines on the integration of developmentally handicapped students in April's class. Elizabeth's teaching career was based on daughter Kate's decision not to pursue a career in education, but provided Johnston with a chance to imagine how that might have turned out.[4]

The characters in For Better of For Worse have aged in "real time". On August 31, 2008, Johnston herself appeared in the Sunday strip, which was supposed to be the end of the cartoon, and announced that she would take the story back nearly 30 years to soon after its beginning, with half of the material to be new and the other half repeats.[3] The "new" material was actually reworked versions of older strips with retouched artwork and new dialogue that was sometimes only tweaked to use modern expressions or product names in place of older ones. As of July 12, 2010, this practice was abandoned, and the syndicated strip now consists strictly of straight reprints of Johnston's early 1980s-era work.

Personal life[edit | edit source]

Since the 1990s, Johnston has been notably forthcoming in her discussion of the abuse inflicted on her by her mother[5] and her first husband,[6] and being unprepared to be a mother to her son Aaron[7]—topics which have also been reflected in the strip. A column by Jan Wong of The Globe and Mail, reprinted in Lunch With Jan Wong[8] notably portrayed Johnston as somewhat difficult and irascible.

Johnston now resides in the Northern Ontario town of Corbeil.[1] Her daughter Katie lives in Corbeil and works at the For Better or For Worse studio,[1] while her son Aaron works in the television industry in Vancouver, BC. In September 2007, Lynn and Rod Johnston announced their separation and intention to divorce.[9] Johnston had talked about either ending For Better or For Worse or handing it off to another cartoonist, but changed her mind as a result of her split from her husband of over 30 years.[3][10] In September 2008, For Better or For Worse transitioned into a unique mix of straight re-runs, and strips that featured original 1980s artwork (sometimes slightly retouched) but new dialogue by Johnston. In July, 2010, however, Johnston retired completely and For Better or For Worse switched to straight reprints of earlier strips.

Johnston had a close friendship with Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts.[11] She wrote the introduction to The Complete Peanuts: 1981-1982.

On 13 March 2014, Library and Archives Canada announced that it had acquired material to add to its archive of Johnston fonds, including 3282 drawings, 296 watercolours, 244 photographs, about 3.5 m of textual items, and a few other objects.[12]

Awards and honours[edit | edit source]

[[wikipedia:Image:Lynn Johnston star on Walk of Fame adj.jpg|thumb|right|Johnston's star on Canada's Walk of Fame|]]

Selected bibliography[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Lynn Johnston. "About Lynn, by Lynn". fborfw.com (official site). 
  2. ↑ Johnston's For Better or For Worse retrospectives.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Popular comic strip ignites controversy". CNN. [[wikipedia:Associated Press|]]. September 5, 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-08. 
  4. ↑ Suddenly Silver, 25 Years of For Better or For Worse, pg. 2
  5. ↑ "I haven’t told many people this because my parents were still alive and I didn’t want to reveal it ... It’s hard to describe. On the one hand, she beat the living crap out of me. On the other hand, though, she was bright and witty and well read. Neither of my parents ever stopped encouraging my brother and me from pursuing our creativity." - Hogan's Alley interview published in September 1994
  6. ↑ "I went for these guys who treated me like shit, and I married one of them! The guys who treated me badly were the funny guys, and I always went for the guys with the sense of humor.... My husband would say things to me like my mother did, “You’re fat and ugly.” And he treated me like garbage. His girlfriends would call him at home, and when I would pick up the phone, they would giggle at me.... I married a guy who treated me very badly, but I was happy. I was miserable, so I was happy." - Hogan's Alley interview published in September 1994
  7. ↑ "I didn’t know how to raise a child. And I wasn’t close to my parents, and because I was too proud to go to my parents for help, I mistreated that little baby.... I was exactly like my mother in that sense." - Hogan's Alley interview published in September 1994
  8. ↑ Jan Wong, Lunch With Jan Wong Bantam, 2001, trade paperback, ISBN 0-385-25982-4
  9. ↑ Kansas City Star, Sept 6, 2007 and Editor & Publisher, Sept 7, 2007
  10. ↑ Lynn Johnston says it's time to move on, [[wikipedia:Peterborough Examiner|]], September 19, 2008
  11. ↑ Sarah Boxer (February 14, 2000). "Charles M. Schulz, 'Peanuts' Creator, Dies at 77". [[wikipedia:New York Times|]] LearningNetwork. 
  12. ↑

External links[edit | edit source]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lynn Johnston


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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Lynn Johnston.
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Hey Kids Comics, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:Canadian comic strip cartoonists Category:Members of the Order of Canada Category:Members of the Order of Manitoba Category:People from Nipissing District Category:Reuben Award winners Category:Female comics artists Category:Female comics writers Category:People from Collingwood Category:Writers from Manitoba Category:Canadian women artists Category:Emily Carr University of Art and Design alumni

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