The Lives Behind the Lines: Browse The Strips

Friday March 4, 2022

Lynn's Comments: This series of cartoons received a heated response. Some readers took issue with me for suggesting Candace was dressing inappropriately, others were supportive and thought she should be told to change.

Monday March 28, 2022

Lynn's Comments: I’ve written at great length about this story so I think I will let the work speak for itself. If you wish to learn more, I encourage you to read my 15th and 20th anniversary collections.

Friday April 1, 2022

Lynn's Comments: This story ran for a couple of weeks. Each daily strip stood on its own for 24 hours, which meant that the story ran quite slowly–especially if you were not in favour of it. When you read this in a book, the story is perhaps too fast, but in the papers, it seemed to go on forever.

Monday July 11, 2022

Lynn's Comments: When I was doing this grocery store series, I had no plans to connect Michael with his co-worker, Rhetta. As in real life, stuff just happened. Things like this took me by surprise—and I just went with it. Sometimes the surprise worked out, sometimes it didn't. Either way, it added interest to the story.

Sunday May 21, 2023

Lynn's Comments: I once watched the end of a hockey game with Charles Schulz. We were in his den and he was in a bit of a grumpy mood. When the final shot was made, fans leaped from their seats screaming, "We're number one! We're number one!" He looked at me with a straight face and said, "That's ridiculous. They didn't do anything."

Wednesday April 17, 2024

Lynn's Comments: Tragically, the day this strip was originally published was also the date of the Oklahoma bombing. There was no way to halt or change this story and it ran at a time when North America was in shock and people's hearts were breaking.

Sunday April 21, 2024

Lynn's Comments: Because some papers only carried the colour Sunday page, the story of Farley's passing had to happen, almost separately, on the Sunday page as well. This meant having to craft dialogue that covered all of the important points without going into the details of the story. For the papers that carried both the daily and the Sunday page, it was important to show a reasonable flow of information without writing too much! Normally, I didn't continue a storyline into the weekend because of this conundrum, but in this case, I had no choice. Readers who only had access to the Sunday page needed to know what had happened during the week.

Sunday October 6, 2024

Lynn's Comments: One of the things I loved about Ontario was the fall markets. I looked forward to the bins of apples, the many varieties of pumpkins, sweet corn, home-canned pickles, fresh produce and baking. All around us would be the spectacular colours of the fall leaves and the smell of frost in the air. Some memories come back in Technicolor!