Lynn Johnston
Far Better Than Worse

Canadians have a wonderful sense of humour. They love laughing at themselves and the traditions of everyday life provide a rich source. Perhaps no Canadian humorist has ever reached such heights of international acclaim as Lynn Johnston, the creator, writer, and artist behind the comic strip “For Better or For Worse.” Syndicated in 23 countries and translated into 5 languages, this probing comic strip is today read by millions of faithful followers.

Lynn Johnston’s cartoons and comic strips are based on her own family, a typical nuclear family in the sprawling suburbs of everywhere. Both serious and comic situations are rooted in real experience. Her cartoon characters are Elly and John Patterson, their children – Michael, Elizabeth, April – and their dog, Farley.

Elly is named after a best friend who died of brain cancer in high school; John, Michael, and Elizabeth are the middle names of husband Roderick, and children Aaron and Katherine, and Farley actually existed. 

Cartoonist Lynn Johnston's sterling eye for detail and her uncanny sense of what parents and children struggle with daily are a big part of the worldwide success of For Better or For Worst, the syndicated cartoon strip launched in 1979. [Photo, courtesy Lynn Johnston]
Lynn’s favourite moments with her maternal grandfather were reading the comics together. “He took them seriously. These were not merely vacuous fillers of space but bright social commentary, and he had an opinion reserved for each one of them.” She became enamoured with such comic strips as “Peanuts” where stories and pictures came alive “with expressions [that] had me literally on the floor. I wanted to be able to make someone laugh like that. I wanted to be able to draw like that.” Somehow her father knew the path she would take. He used to tuck her in at night and say, “See you in the funny papers.”

She describes herself as a born artist. From the age of four, “I would see images appear, my imagination come to life, my right hand drawing my thoughts on paper. Even to me, the gift was magic.” Her mother used to do illustrations and calligraphy that went into the stamp collections organized by her grandfather. “My mother would draw fine lines around each stamp, framing them like miniature paintings.... From as early as I can recall I drew tiny pictures in boxes, row on row, bringing thoughts and fantasies to life.”

When Lynn entered high school she found her own “signature” drawing style. She also discovered the radical, comic humour of Mad magazine. While her mother did not approve of this “absolutely dreadful” rag, she and her artist friends yearned “to be part of the magic circle that produced this great, sarcastic wit.” She attended the Vancouver School of Art, became interested in the commercial application of her field of interest, and began a job with Canawest as a cartoonist.

During her first marriage, Lynn moved to Hamilton where she got a job at McMaster University’s prestigious medical school illustrating multimedia educational tools. While pregnant with her first child, she created, for her physician, a series of cartoons to decorate ceilings in the clinic to amuse women waiting impatiently for tests. He realized her special talent and found the contacts who knew how to showcase her skills. Her book, Dave, I’m Pregnant, launched her as a cartoonist.

When Universal Press Syndicate showed interest in her work in 1977, she was heading to Lynn Lake in northern Manitoba with her second husband, the flying dentist Roderick Johnston. “For Better or For Worse” was launched in 1979, and by 1984 she and her family had moved to Corbeil near North Bay. While her home-based work has involved relatively isolated locations, her drawings could take place in any urban and suburban setting around the world. Her art is about typical situations, family humour, domestic ironies, and everyday incidents with children, adults, and dogs. Her comic strips can cause laughter, or sometimes even tears, and she has dealt honestly with such issues as abuse in the home, homosexuality, and family adversity.

In a 17,000 reader survey conducted by the Detroit Free Press in 1993, “For Better or For Worse” was rated first overall in the comic strip survey. She was first choice among females and the elderly, second among males, and fourth among age 17 and younger. Her comic strip was the only one in the first five of each category. In 1985 she was the first female winner of the Reuben Award and honoured as Cartoonist of the Year by the National Cartoonist Society in the United States, which also recognized her work in 1992 as the Best Syndicated Comic Strip. She received the Order of Canada in 1992 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

Larry Turner