The Lynn Johnston Interview

[RaVen Blackehart]

I have enjoyed the newspaper comic strip "For Better Or For Worse"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Better_or_For_Worse) for years in the Buffalo News....so today out of idle curiosity I started Googling the author, Lynn Johnston. What I found was an article with an interview that she gave in 1994, I read it and it hit a nerve with me. I'd like to share it with my fellow Demonites.

"It's easy to form a mistaken impression about Lynn Johnston. I should know. Thinking myself rather well-informed, I had known her to be a fantastically talented woman masterminding one of the most successful strips-critically and popularly-in recent comics history. I also knew she loosely modeled For Better Or For Worse on her own family. And I was also aware that Universal Press Syndicate had sought her out, intent on convincing her to wield her unique talents in fashioning a new type of family strip-one done by a woman. (This was during a time when Cathy Guisewite's Cathy had shown the comics-reading public to be hungry for a female perspective.) To prepare for this interview, I read the autobiographical introduction to her strip's tenth-anniversary collection, where I learned about her childhood, which overall seemed healthy and normal. What I did not and could not know, however, was even more striking and served to heighten my already considerable admiration for the woman behind the drawing board. In achieving the pinnacle of success she currently enjoys as the creator of a strip appearing in more than 1,600 papers, Lynn Johnston had to rise above obstacles that would have shackled most people. If For Better Or For Worse seems so honestly and genuinely realized, its characters so in touch with themselves and their world, it is because they are extensions of their creator's complex and perceptive personality. Lynn, 46, was born Lynn Ridgway in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada, and she grew up in British Columbia. She is married to Rod Johnston (whose middle name is John). She has two children, Aaron Michael, 20, and Katy Elizabeth, 16. (Do those middle names sound familiar?) They live in Corbeil, Ontario. This interview was conducted, transcribed and edited by Tom Heintjes."


http://cagle.msnbc.com/hogan/intervi...nston/home.asp

[Kitty]

I actually follow the strip on-line.. have been a fan for years.. for reference Michael and I started bugging our parents about driving right about the same time ~ I would cut the strips out and hang them in strategic places as hints to my mom. Needless to say he still got licensed before I did..

[blue_zombie]

One of my favorites!