‘For Better or for Worse’ to be retold

Cartoonist Lynn Johnston just can’t bring herself to abandon her fictional family.

For years, the “For Better or for Worse” creator mulled retirement, then lightened her workload by creating flashbacks from the early days of her popular comic.

Finally, she knew she needed to conclude the Patterson family’s 29-year saga.

Today’s strip, which does that, is an adieu of sorts to readers – but not a final farewell.

Johnston recently announced that she would retell the entire “For Better or Worse” story, beginning Monday, by taking her continually aging characters back to 1979, creating some new artwork and dialogue.

“I’m going back to do it how it should have been done,” Johnston says of the approach, which she is dubbing “new-runs.”

She won’t be redoing everything.

“All of September will be brand-new material,” Johnston explains. “In October, it will be 50-50 (new and old).

“The color Sunday comics will be all-new material. … I think it will be 50-50 for the first year, at least.”

Her syndicate says it’s the first time a mainstream cartoonist has set out to tell the same story twice.

What the reflective Johnston, 60, realized was that after decades of her identity and creativity and livelihood being linked to a comic strip, she wasn’t ready to give it up.

“It’s in your blood – it’s part of your life. I don’t want to quit being a cartoonist,” she says by phone from her Toronto studio.

By now, Johnston says, “I thought I would be a retired woman with my Tilley hat and sitting on a cruise ship and going to the Galapagos.”

But that was before the recent dissolution of her 32-year marriage to the man many readers chose to see as “For Better or Worse” patriarch John Patterson’s inspiration and doppelganger.

“I really wanted to be happy as a couple and make everything right, but things became more stressful. … It made me look again at my career.”

She says she hasn’t used the strip to take veiled digs at her ex-husband – with one exception.

“The only thing I’ve put in the strip with a sarcastic streak toward my ex-husband is John’s potbelly, because my ex is very proud of his physique,” Johnston admits.

She relishes the joy that comes from returning to the comic’s roots – to a time when she herself was still newly married, raising small children and discovering her full talent through a newborn strip.

“It’s going to be the best work I can possibly do. … It’s going to be a lot more fun,” she says.

Then, recalling the beloved family sheepdog who died saving young April Patterson, she adds: “And Farley is coming back!”

Johnston plays down some elements of her early work, but in the ’80s, “For Better or for Worse” soon found a following and drew critical praise.

She received the cartooning industry’s Reuben Award in 1985, and nearly a decade later, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

And Universal Press Syndicate launched her feature at a time when women cartoonists were very few and far between on the funny pages.

Today, Johnston stands near the top of the syndication heap – which is why her ending of the current stories is bound to disappoint many readers. But she speaks with conviction about this stopping point.

“The analogy would be like decorating a room: Once you’ve done everything you can do to it, you step back and (realize) you can’t do any more,” she says.

“I wanted to stop the story while it was still a reasonably good story. You can’t fulfill everyone’s needs. I’ve told the story; I can’t do any more … to redecorate this room.”