Author Archives: stripfix

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This was me. I loved to sharpen my pencils until the tips were like needles. Some pencils shredded and broke, and others were perfect. I recently bought a sharpener, which gives me the same sharpening satisfaction as the old school sharpeners did. The brand name is "Sharp Tank."

--You're welcome!

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Every year, my mom dutifully sent us fresh holly from the tree in her backyard. Christmas wasn't Christmas, in her opinion, if there was no fresh holly. She also wanted me to miss North Vancouver in the hope that I would eventually come home. This year, we will celebrate the holidays with real west coast holly, and my parents will be here in spirit to enjoy it with us.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I wanted to use "Custer's last stand" as a punch line, and saved it for a Christmas gag. After this strip ran, I got a pile of letters from people who had the same complaint about flimsy Christmas tree stands, and a diagram from a carpenter on how to make my own.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Katie did exactly this while I was shopping in a department store. With too much to carry and deadlines to meet, I ran from the store wondering how long it would take for the management to discover her handiwork.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I used to wonder as I sat on Santa's knee, why sometimes he had a false beard and sometimes he had a real one. My dad had the answer; he said that sometimes mice got into Santa's beard, so he'd shave it off. This meant wearing a false one until it grew back--which made sense to me at the time.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Lynn's Comments: For some reason, I loved this strip. I had it framed and it hung on my studio wall for many years. In September when we moved, I took the strip out of the frame. It had yellowed badly. I put it away in my personal file, and when I find a place to put it, I'll have it framed again. I have no explanation for keeping it separate. I just did!

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Lynn's Comments: My mom made bread every two weeks. Being a kid, I figured I was missing something by not having store-bought Wonder Bread, and eagerly traded my school lunch with friends. The weird thing about the commercial bread was that you could press it flat and fold it up like cardboard. It tasted like cardboard too unless you put lots of margarine on it. (Few families could afford butter.) One of my friends made his own lunch every day, and the things he found to press between slices of bread varied from garlic cloves to dill pickles to just plain sugar.

Sometimes I traded with him, sometimes I didn't, but I was always envious of his store bought bread and the way he was allowed to make his lunch any way he wanted to. What we didn't know about each other was that my mom couldn't afford to buy commercially made bread, and his mom went to work before he got up. He had to dress himself and his brother, make both their lunches, walk his brother to a neighbour's house, and then get himself to school. With nutritious meals to look forward to and a mom who was home to look after me, I was the lucky one.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Lynn's Comments: When scratch and sniff first appeared in books and magazines and other fun places, I thought it had great cartoon potential. Imagined a dog sending another dog a greeting card, which was, naturally, scratch and sniff.

Monday, November 30, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Despite problems with his hips, Farley was a happy, healthy pooch who only seemed to avoid the stairs. I loved him because he was a real character--as close to a cartoon dog as one can get!

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Lynn's Comments: We were cautioned against letting Farley get too heavy, as this would add pressure to the already stressed hip joint. Putting him on a diet wasn't easy--he would beg for table scraps and I hated to waste them.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This was the diagnosis we were given when Farley (the real dog, Farley) began to limp and have trouble with stairs. Certain breeds of dog are more prone than others to this disorder. It's when the socket in the hip is not sufficiently bowl-shaped to hold and support the top of the femur, allowing it to slip out of place. Eventually, as the dog grows and becomes heavier, the ball of the femur slips right out of the hip joint--a painful and disabling problem. We were told that the breeder who sold us the dog was likely responsible for Farley's hip dysplasia.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: There's no punch line here. There should have been. Mike had an opportunity to answer the question with a smart comeback. I couldn't think of one--so, neither could he. This is when telling on-going stories, making one day's strip lead into another, saved my behind. Now and then I could end a strip with an obvious silence--and get away with it.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Again, the use of colloquial expressions made For Better or for Worse hard to export. It needed to be read by people whose first language was English. On the other hand, cartoons are used all the time by people teaching English as a second language, precisely because colloquial speech is the language you hear on the street.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I loved it when a punch line like this came to mind. Funny lines would sometimes "write themselves." The trouble with this kind of pun-based comedy is that it is really hard to translate! Perhaps that's why my work was in so few outside markets and we see so few international comics here. Too often the gags are lost in translation.