Johnston, Lynn

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Lynn Johnston

Personal

Born May 28, 1947, in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Mervyn (a jeweler) and Ursula (an artisan; maiden name, Bainbridge) Ridgway; married first husband (a cameraman), c. 1975 (divorced); married John Roderick Johnston (a dentist and pilot), February 15, 1977; children: (first marriage) Aaron Michael; (second marriage) Katherine Elizabeth. Education: Attended Vancouver School of Arts, 1964-67. Religion: Unitarian-Universalist. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, doll collecting, playing the accordion, co-piloting and navigating aircraft.

Addresses

Home—Corbeil, Ontario, Canada. Office—c/o Andrews & McMeel Publishing, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111.

Career

McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, worked as a medical artist, 1968-73; freelance commercial artist and writer, 1973—; author and illustrator of "For Better or for Worse" cartoon strip syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, 1979—. President, Lynn Johnston Productions, Inc.

Member

National Cartoonists Society (president, 1995).

Awards, Honors

Reuben Award, National Cartoonists Society, 1986, for outstanding cartoonist of the year, and 1991, for best newspaper comic strip; Gemini Award, 1987, for television special The Bestest Present; named member of the Order of Canada, 1992; Pulitzer Prize nomination, 1993; Reuben Award finalist, 1995, for outstanding cartoonist of the year; inducted into International Museum of Cartoon Art Hall of Fame, 1997; Media Human Rights Special Award, League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, 2001; Quill Award, National Association of Writing Instrument Distributors; Inkpot Award, San Diego Comics Convention; EDI Award; two honorary degrees.

Writings

self-illustrated comic collections

David! We're Pregnant!, Potlatch Publications (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), 1973, published as David! We're Pregnant!: 101 Cartoons for Expecting Parents, Meadowbrook (Deephaven, MN), 1977, revised edition, 1992.

Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!: The First Twelve Months of Parenthood, P. Martin Associates (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977, revised edition, Meadowbrook (Deephaven, MN), 1977.

Do They Ever Grow Up?, Meadowbrook (Deephaven, MN), 1978, published as Do They Ever Grow Up?: 101 Cartoons about the Terrible Twos and Beyond, 1983.

"for better or for worse" comic collections

I've Got the One-More-Washload Blues, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1981.

Is This "One of Those Days," Daddy?, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1982.

It Must Be Nice to Be Little, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1983.

More than a Month of Sundays: A For Better or for Worse Sunday Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1983.

Our Sunday Best: A For Better or for Worse Sunday Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1984.

Just One More Hug, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1984.

The Last Straw, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1985.

Keep the Home Fries Burning, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1986.

It's All Downhill from Here, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1987.

Pushing Forty, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1988.

A Look Inside: For Better or for Worse: The Tenth Anniversary Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1989.

It All Comes out in the Wash (contains reprints from previous books), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1990.

If This Is a Lecture, How Long Will It Be?, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1990.

For Better or for Worse: Another Day, Another Lecture (contains reprints from previous books), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1991.

What, Me Pregnant?, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1991.

For Better or for Worse: You Can Play in the Barn, but You Can't Get Dirty (contains reprints from previous books), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1992.

For Better or for Worse: You Never Know What's around the Corner (contains reprints from previous books), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1992.

Things Are Looking Up, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1992.

For Better or for Worse: It's a Pig-Eat-Chicken World (contains reprints from previous books), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1993.

For Better or for Worse: Shhh—Mom's Working! (contains reprints from previous books), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1993.

But, I Read the Destructions!: For Better or for Worse, T. Doherty Associates (New York, NY), 1993.

"There Goes My Baby!": A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1993.

It's the Thought That Counts: For Better or for Worse Fifteenth Anniversary Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1994.

Starting from Scratch, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1995.

Love Just Screws Everything Up, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1996.

Remembering Farley: A Tribute to the Life of Our Favorite Cartoon Dog, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1996.

Growing like a Weed: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1997.

Middle Age Spread: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1998.

The Lives behind the Lines: Twenty Years of For Better or for Worse, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1999.

Sunshine & Shadow: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1999.

The Big 5-0: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2000.

Isn't He Beautiful?, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2000.

Isn't She Beautiful?, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2000.

All about April: Our Little Girl Grows Up!: A For Better or for Worse Special Edition, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2001.

Graduation, a Time for Change: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2001.

A Perfect Christmas: A For Better or for Worse Little Book, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2001.

Family Business: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2002.

Reality Check: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2003.

With This Ring: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2003.

Suddenly Silver: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2004.

So You're Going to Be a Grandma!: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2005.

Striking a Chord: A For Better or for Worse Collection, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2005.

illustrator

Bruce Lansky, editor, The Best Baby Name Book in the Whole Wide World, Meadowbrook Press (Deephaven, MN), 1979.

Vicki Lansky, The Taming of the C.A.N.D.Y. Monster, revised edition, Book Peddlers (Deephaven, MN), 1988.

Vicki Lansky, Practical Parenting Tips for the First Five Years, revised and enlarged edition, Meadowbrook Press (Deephaven, MN), 1992.

other

(With Andie Parton) Leaving Home: Survival of the Hippest, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 2003.

(With Brenda Wegmann) Laugh 'n' Learn Spanish: Featuring North America's Most Popular Comic Strip "For Better or for Worse," McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 2004.

Has also contributed one story and a cover illustration to Canadian Children's Annual.

Adaptations

Ottawa's Funbag Animation Studios produced a weekly animated series based on "For Better or for Worse," 2000.

Sidelights

Lynn Johnston's comic strip "For Better or for Worse" has captured the imaginations and hearts of readers throughout North America. Focusing on humorous and dramatic moments in the life of the fictional Patterson family, Johnston has ranged from sight-gag humor to serious storylines about death, aging, and discrimination. Printed daily in hundreds of newspapers across the United States and Canada, "For Better or for Worse" has won numerous top awards, is regularly named one of the top five strips in reader polls, and even earned Johnston a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Drawing Provided Escape, Laughter

Though Johnston's comic is marked by gentle humor, she began drawing in her youth to escape feelings of intense anger within her. In an interview with Tom Heintjes for Hogan's Alley Online, the cartoonist described her mother as "a brilliant, talented lady with potential beyond belief," but her mother was also a frustrated person from an abusive home. Her discipline of her children's real and imagined transgressions was frequently brutal. Johnston's father did not intervene, but was a gentle, comic presence "with the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry," Johnston remembered. When the children grew too large for their mother to physically beat them, the abuse became verbal.

Filled with dark and negative feelings, Johnston would express them in drawings and find her spirits lifted. "If I wanted to draw funny pictures, I would draw them, and I remember loving watching my brother laugh at them," she recalled to Heintjes. "My brother was a great audience, and if he liked the picture, he would laugh and laugh and laugh, and he would want to keep the picture. Making people laugh with an image I had created … what power that was!"

Despite the violence in the home, Johnston's parents were both very supportive of their children's creative aspirations. Art classes were a regular activity even when money was scarce. Johnston's father encouraged her to analyze the humor in comics, seeing how timing and setting played an important part in the humor of a piece. She didn't care for superhero comics, but told Heintjes, "I loved the Little Lulu stories, where she would fantasize that her bedroom rug would turn into a pool of water, and she could dive down into the center of the world. Or Scrooge McDuck with his money bin. I loved all that stuff. It was wonderful fantasy that seemed achievable by a child. And it wasn't ugly. There were no villains with guns." Johnston also enjoyed the more raucous humor of the Three Stooges and Mad magazine, although her mother disapproved of these.

Johnston eventually enrolled in the Vancouver School of Art, but left her studies before graduation to take employment in animation and illustration. She married and moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where she found a job as a medical illustrator, a source of invaluable experience for her. Her first marriage was not a happy one, however. Johnston's low-self-esteem led her into anorexia, and her husband left her while she was pregnant. Faced with the challenges of single parenthood, Johnston found herself struggling to cope.

Breaking into Comics

After her divorce, Johnston started to do freelance work out of her home and soon found her business booming. Oddly enough, it was her obstetrician

who started a chain of events that would eventually lead to her being offered a contract for a comic strip. Knowing that she was a comic artist, he challenged her to come up with some cartoons to be put on the ceiling above his examining tables. She produced eighty drawings for the doctor, and with a friend's help, found a publisher for the illustrations. They appeared in three books: David, We're Pregnant!, Hi Mom! Hi Dad!: The First Twelve Months of Parenthood, and Do They Ever Grow Up? Submissions editors at Universal Press Syndicate were impressed with the quality and humor in her drawings. They were searching for a comic strip that could compete with the family-oriented "Blondie" and "Hi and Lois" and thought Johnston might be an ideal candidate. She was contacted and asked if she could produce in a four-frame format.

Johnston was both excited and nervous about the proposition. She had never written in a daily format, but was willing to give it a try. Shortly after Universal Press's offer, she sent them samples of a strip she had developed based loosely on her own family life. To her surprise, they accepted her submissions and offered her a daily, syndicated strip. She received a one-year development contract with which she was allowed to work on her strip for a year before it was published. After the year, she was offered a twenty-year contract.

"When I got the contract, I was totally blown out of the water," she told Jeanne Malmgren of the St. Petersburg Times Floridian. "It was the opportunity of a lifetime, but at the same time, it was terrifying. I never thought I would be able to come up with funny gags 200 or 300 times a year." She turned to her friend Cathy Guisewite, the creator of the very successful "Cathy" comic strip, for some friendly advice. Guisewite suggested that before doing the art she should write all the dialogue down as if she were doing script. "I had a tremendously good relationship with her on the phone," Johnston once remarked. "She gave me lots of hints on how she worked and then I went from there."

Over 150 papers signed on to carry "For Better or for Worse," even before the strip debuted. "It's hard to sell a new feature to papers, and many new cartoonists only start with about fifty papers, and maybe they never get past that," the cartoonist said. "I know now some young people who are struggling and they cannot seem to get past their fifty papers. So for me to start with 150 was quite an exciting thing. But then it was one of the first of the family strips that was not done by a man and also was done in a contemporary style. So I was breaking new ground in a way. … I was very fortu nate."

As her comic career was developing, another story had been brewing as well. A few years before, while driving along with her young son, she happened to spot a small plane flying overhead. She loved flying and small aircraft, so on a whim she drove to the airport to see the plane land. She began chatting with the pilot, who then invited her to fly to the next airport with him for a hamburger. In 1976, she married the pilot, Rod Johnston. He adopted her son, Aaron, and the two soon had a daughter of their own. When Rod completed dental school, they moved to northern Manitoba. Lynn Johnston credits her husband's down-to-earth, stable personality, along with his sense of humor, as being an essential influence on her career, and her life in general. She has stated that the move to a remote area was also probably a good thing, at a time when she was suddenly famous.

Patterson Family Mirrors Johnston's

The Patterson family, featured in "For Better or for Worse," developed out of many of Johnston's real-life situations and concerns. There are two parents: Elly, the harried mother, and John, a dentist who flies a plane. Michael and Elizabeth, the two original children in the strip, carry the middle names of Johnston's real-life children and are just slightly younger than their real-life counterparts. Both families are Canadian, and the Johnstons once owned an English sheep dog named Farley, as did the Pattersons. Elly's brother Phil is a wayward trumpet player just like Johnston's brother, Alan Philip Ridgway. Johnston herself has said that both she and Elly want to be rescuers, and are motivated to try to fix everyone and everything in their family.

Johnston's emotional closeness to her characters has made them very real to her, but at a certain point, the parallels end. "I find that somehow the characters develop their personalities independently of me," Johnston told Janice Dineen in the Toronto Star. Rod Johnson also noted the differences, telling Malmgren that Lynn has more polish than her fictional character, and that she "is much more of a businessperson. And she's more in charge of our family than Elly is." Johnston's children "both look very, very different from the characters in the strip, and their lives are very different," Johnston commented in an interview for Authors and Artists for Young Adults.

Unlike some comic strips, where the characters do not age, the Patterson family has seen many changes. Michael has married, grown, and become a father; Elizabeth has graduated from college and

begun a job. Elly's mother died, and her father remarried. The death of Farley, the dog, was a major milestone in the strip, one which not all readers welcomed. The addition of daughter April represented Johnston's way of working out her desire to have a baby later in life. "I brought the baby into the strip," Johnston remarked to Janice Dineen in the Toronto Star, "because for a while I really wanted another baby. I thought about adopting but instead, in the end, I made my baby up." When writing about Michael and Elizabeth, who really were based on her children, Johnston is always conscious of protecting the privacy of their real-life counterparts. With April, however, Johnston felt freer to explore her inner life and be more playful with the character. April is the only one who is totally fictional. "I can have a lot more fun with her and reveal a lot more about her private life because in reality she doesn't exist, so it's not as though I'm opening up a closet that no one has a right to see in," Johnston once told AAYA.

Serious Issues on the Comics Page

Johnston's early comics were very simple sketches of the Pattersons. They dealt with the normal daily routine of a growing family, parents and children in conflict, exhaustion, and household clutter. As time went on, however, Johnston tackled more complex and controversial issues in her strip. At one point, Elly had to deal with the problem of her friend, who gave birth to a baby with six fingers on both hands. Race relations were explored when an Asian family moved into the house across the street from the Pattersons. In a 1992 story line, Mike Patterson finds out that his friend, Gordon, is being abused by his father. Johnston admitted that the strip was taken from an incident that had happened to a friend of her daughter. She told John Przybys in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "It was an experience I had and it bothered me. And, sometimes, when experiences bother you, you know how you tend to dream about them? For me, the dreaming came out on paper."

Johnston tackled another difficult topic in a 1993 strip series. In it, family friend Lawrence Poirier tells his family that he is gay. Unfortunately, his parents react badly, denying the news and eventually kicking him out of the house. This topic choice was partly inspired by Johnston's brother-in-law, Ralph, who is gay. Ralph revealed his feelings to the family years before, but the admission of his homosexuality changed her family forever. "What happens when you hear this news is you change," Johnston told John Tanasychuk of the Detroit Free Press. "You change because your point of view is shattered. You think one thing about the person and then this comes along. Then you realize that they haven't changed. It's you."

Johnston was a catalyst for family healing when this situation happened. By writing a series of strips about a gay character, the cartoonist hoped to reach her readers with this same sort of information and sharing she had discovered. However, because of the controversial topic, forty papers took alternate material, and nineteen cancelled the strip outright. About this reaction, Johnston commented to Tanasychuk, "It surprises me in today's environment that people would want to [keep] something like that out of a newspaper. I think that the readers should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to read that."

Johnston received more than 3,000 letters after the strips were published, two thirds of which praised her for having the courage to address the issue. However, there was also a significant amount of negative backlash. She told Hentjes that whatever the reaction, she simply had to do the storyline because it felt right. "I wrote it from experience," she said. "My brother-in-law is gay. It certainly has not been by design, but so very many of my friends have been gay, all the way through school, art school, even in my husband's dental class—our very best friend, who graduated with Rod, was gay and is now HIV-positive. He's been thrown out of his home. We've been part of the private lives of so many people who have had to deal with this. I know this story. I know it's a true one, and I know the dialogue by heart."

In general, Johnston receives a lot of positive feedback from her more controversial strips. "If I do something of a serious nature, I'll get one letter against and 20 letters for," she told Przybys. "People are really comfortable reading about [serious] stuff as long as I'm careful to treat it with dignity and in a light way, because it is an entertainment medium and people do read comics for fun." One problem with confronting a controversial issue is that other special interest groups have sometimes requested that Johnston give equal time to their causes. "[A] lot of people want me to go further: 'Oh gosh, if she's willing to talk about child abuse, let's have her champion the abortion issue.' It's dangerous, when you do realistic things, turning the strip into a soapbox and people wanting you to champion their cause. You can't do that."

Johnston has won numerous awards and accolades throughout her career. In 1986, she won the prestigious Reuben Award for outstanding cartoonist of the year from the National Cartoonists Society, making her the first female and the youngest person ever to win. At the time, Johnston felt a little cowed by winning the award, feeling she could not live up to what would now be expected of her. She found her whole studio looked different after winning the award, and she began to write a letter to "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz, one of the most successful cartoonists of all time. That same morning, Schulz telephoned her, and the two began a long and profound friendship.

Besides the accolades she has received from fellow comic strip artists, Johnston has fared well with newspaper readers as well. In comic strip popularity polls held by many newspapers in the early 1990s, "For Better or for Worse" consistently placed in the top five, and, even more consistently, the top two spots. Johnston's strip was picked number one by readers of such newspapers as the Detroit Free Press, The Oregonian, the Toronto Star, the Los Angeles Daily News, Denver's Rocky Mountain News, the Norfolk Virginian Pilot, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Monterrey County, California, Herald.

Johnston works in a studio near the log home she and her husband now own on a lake in northern Ontario. It takes her about one or two days to write the dialogue for one week of her comic strip, a task that is especially trying for her. "There's a fine line between what makes something funny and what makes something just barely amusing. I think it takes a sort of acting ability to be able to set up a scene, get the expressions and then bring it to a punch line. All in four frames. It's a knack that's taken me a long time to develop," she confided to Malmgren. Johnston feels that over the course of a week, one or two strips will be significantly funny, while the rest just build the story line.

If you enjoy the works of Lynn Johnston

If you enjoy the works of Lynn Johnston, you may also want to check out the following comic strips:

Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Baby Blues by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman.

Jump Start by Robb Armstrong.

After the writing process, she sets to work creating the art. "I waste almost no paper. I draw it in pencil, then I go over it with India ink pens, and then I put on the Lettra film, with the little dots that gives you the gray tones," she told Malmgren. "You have to be the characters as you are drawing," the artist also explained to Dineen. "You have to feel what the character is feeling." Johnston admitted to Dineen that she loves her job: "It keeps me in touch with people and their lives. I get to make people laugh." And besides being a profession, it is also a means of self-expression. "This is my way of communicating. Some people use music or dance or literature. I use cartooning." Despite her love for her characters and her readers, Johnston planned to end "For Better or For Worse" after a twenty-eight-year run; her contract expires in 2007.

Biographical and Critical Sources

books

Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

periodicals

Austin American-Statesman, August 19, 1997, Patrick Beach, "'Better or Worse' Gay Storyline Brings Debate," p. E1.

Bookwatch, February, 2005, review of Suddenly Silver.

Capital Times (Madison, WI), October 16, 1999, "Cartoonist's Book to Take Us behind 'For Better' Scenes," p. 1D.

Chatelaine, February, 1987; June, 1989; March, 1997, p. 41.

Detroit Free Press, March 17, 1993, John Tanasychuk, "Gay Teen Comes out in 'For Better or for Worse'"; August 8, 1993, pp. 1J, 4J.

Editor & Publisher, April 3, 1993, David Astor, "Comic with Gay Character Is Dropped by Some Papers: But Most 'For Better or For Worse' Clients Decide to Publish the Sequence," p. 32; April 10, 1993, David Astor, "More Papers Cancel Controversial Comic," p. 34; March 11, 1995, p. 40; September 13, 1997, David Astor, "'For Better' Creator Explains Her Move," p. 36; February 20, 1999, David Astor, "'Better' Bests Competitors in Survey of Major Papers," p. 37; October 16, 1999, David Astor, "Canadian Lynn Johnston Addresses Feature Editors in Her Home Country," p. 41; December 4, 2000, David Astor, "'Better' Creator in the Canadian Club of Celebrity," p. 45; September 10, 2001, Dave Astor, "Gown Appears and Lawrence Returns in 'FB,'" p. 25; November 26, 2001, Dave Astor, "'Better' Is Best of the Family Comics," p. 14.

Florida Times Union, December 2, 1999, Susan P. Respess, review of The Lives behind the Lines, p. D6.

Fresno Bee (Fresno, CA), May 1, 1999, John C. Davenport, "Drawing on Real Life the Creator of a Popular Comic Strip Shows Many Sides of Life, For Better or for Worse," p. E1.

Houston Chronicle, March 4, 1998, Dai Huynh, "Comic Strip Experiences Death," p. 3.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 31, 1992, John Przybys, "Getting Serious."

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 26, 1989; September 13, 1992.

Maclean's, November 6, 2000, "For Better, Not Worse," p. 83.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 16, 2002, Mary-Liz Shaw, "She's in 'toon: Cartoonist Draws Way into Hearts of Fans," p. 1; April 18, 2002, Kathy Flanigan, "Comic Art Imitates Life," p. 6.

People, September 15, 1986, Ned Geeslin, "For Better or Worse, Canadian Cartoonist Lynn Johnston Draws Her Inspiration from Reality."

Philadelphia Inquirer, September 13, 2001, Denise Cowie, "Bridal Gown Goes from Comic Strip to Shops."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 2004, Daniel P. Finney, "Readers Are Clear: It's 'For Better,' Not Worse," p. E1.

St. Petersburg Times Floridian, February 1, 1989, Jeanne Malmgren, "It's Getting 'Better.'"

Seattle Times, February 19, 2003, John C. Davenport, "For Better or for Worse, Cartoonist's Life Differs from Comic," p. F1.

Tampa Tribune, September 5, 2001, "Comic's Story Line Comes Out Again," p. 1.

Toronto Star, October 9, 1992, Janice Dineen, "Better than Ever."

Variety, January 1, 1986.

Washington Post, April 7, 1996, Charles Truehart, "In Lynn Johnston's Drawing Room," p. F1.

Wind Speaker, January, 2005, Deirdre Tombs, "Cartoonist's Ordinary Native People Celebrated," p. 21.