Alottabotz: a new children's book series from Lynn.
Elly sitting at a table with crumpled papers Back to the Drawing Board

In 1979, Lynn began to draw For Better or For Worse. Some of her earliest strips didn't make it to publication for a variety of reasons. We thought you'd like to see some of these rejected drawings, so we've collected them here!


An original, rejected strip:


Here's another strip that didn't make the cut. It's interesting to see how Lynn's drawing style had changed by the time she re-drew this art.


Here's another strip that eventually received the editor's approval:


...and finally a batch of miscellaneous strips that Lynn didn't re-do:

Lynn's Notes: This was obviously too convoluted and wordy, and required a follow up story to give it any credence at all. The one thing I noticed when rereading this is the name "Meredith." I always liked this name...and discovered later that it's the name of Charles Schulz's eldest daughter.

Lynn's Notes: This was not only a poor gag...it was drawn without thought for height comparison and perspective! I later learned to draw the whole scene before sketching in the principal characters.

Lynn's Notes: This was rejected as being "weak." I had to agree. Rejections made me work harder — both for my editor and for myself. It was always a good idea to keep the duds...in case I came up with a better punch line.

Lynn's Notes: Sometimes I was too hard on John and I decided on my own to delete a strip or two from a storyline. An important element of writing is to have some conflict between the characters, but I had to make sure I dumped on everyone equally!

Lynn's Notes: This wasn't an original gag. I saw it on an old sit-com, remembered it, and took it as my own. I got cold feet before I sent it in. Even if nobody else knew it was someone else's gag — I did. There's nothing good about plagiarism!

Lynn's Notes: I think this was too strong a subject for a fairly new strip. I wasn't able to focus on serious topics until the readership was sufficiently comfortable with my work to trust me to do the job well.

Lynn's Notes: I don't know why this didn't get published. Either fibreglass drapes had gone out of style, or the suggestion that the guys were scratching unmentionable body parts was too hot to handle. In any case, this really happened. My mom washed my dad's and my brother's underwear with the fibreglass drapes, and the two of them scratched themselves raw! All the clothing in that load had to be thrown out. The microscopic glass fibres were impossible to remove.

Lynn's Notes: Wow! I guess it was still too early to publish something like this, but as I reread some of this stuff....I wonder why!