Elizabeth: Browse The Strips

Thursday June 13, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Having Elizabeth wear glasses separated my real life daughter even more from the character in the strip. Glasses gave Elizabeth a new look and something else to worry about! Things like this marked the growth of the characters and the passage of time. In FBorFW, everyone aged and changed.

Saturday June 15, 2019

Lynn's Comments: In the first panel, you can see Elly twisting Elizabeth's hair as she is getting it ready to put into a ponytail. I was able to draw things like this pretty realistically by using a Polaroid camera. I’d ask whoever was in the room to pose for me and I'd take the shot from the angle I needed. Somewhere I have an album filled with these crazy photographs!

Saturday June 22, 2019

Lynn's Comments: To write this stuff, I had to go back into the space I was in when I was eager to leave home; to get far away from my parents, the same old rules and routines, the same old house. I daydreamed about my freedom and the adventures I'd have when I was free. Funny to think about how much freedom you actually have when you're living at home!

Wednesday June 26, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Girls with the name "Elizabeth" did not appreciate this strip. I recently heard from a reader who said that after all these years, her brother still calls her "lizard breath!"

Saturday June 29, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This never happened to my brother and myself, nor to my own kids. I just thought it was a plausible outcome. I was following in the footsteps of Farley Mowat. When I asked him (referring to his book "Never Cry Wolf") if he actually ate mice, he said, "If it didn’t happen, it SHOULD have." Truth and artistic license blur sometimes when it comes to a good story.

Monday July 1, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This series posed a bit of a conundrum when we started animation. We see a window in the basement of the house here, but other illustrations of the downstairs showed no window at all. A complete layout of the house had to be made, and this meant some "creative architectural drawings!"

Monday July 15, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Here’s another punch line that could never be translated! When strips like this one reached international papers, the dialogue, and therefore the gag, had to be changed entirely. The translators who did this were excellent creative writers who often had an almost impossible job.

Thursday July 25, 2019

Lynn's Comments: One of the best things about summer camp for me was the bus ride there and back. The laughter, the singing, eating damp sandwiches (flattened in waxed paper bundles), hanging onto best friends who were strangers a week ago—what fun that was. After 65 years, the smell and the sounds of that long bus ride can be conjured up as if it all happened yesterday. Summer camp. It's a wonderful rite of passage.

Saturday July 27, 2019

Lynn's Comments: These are all names from my elementary school days. Luccia (I spelled her name incorrectly in the strip), Ruby and Laurel are still good friends today. When we get together, we all see each other as being much the same as we were in grades one and two and all the way through high school. What a joy it is to see them now!

Tuesday July 30, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I might have told you this before: my son was the one who had to wear glasses, and he wasn't happy about it. He lost them and they got broken; it was a struggle to get him to wear them at all. Because this was such an issue, I had Elizabeth in the strip be the one who needed glasses. This way, with Aaron and Kate's permission, I was able to show the struggle both kids and parents have when eyesight is a problem. It also provided another visible difference between my real kids and the ones I drew in the strip.

Friday August 2, 2019

Lynn's Comments: When I was a kid, my bed could fly; I was convinced of it! With the covers over my head, my imagination took me everywhere and I sometimes fell asleep dreaming about flying. It's no wonder that many years later, I found myself marrying a pilot and learning how to fly!

Monday August 12, 2019

Lynn's Comments: When I was 16, I went to Montreal to visit my mom's sister Monica and her family. It was the time of greased hair and Elvis wannabes. My cousin Marty had the best hair. He wore it in a perfect "duck tail" with a suave curl on the forehead. He looked like he was right out of "West Side Story." His dad, my uncle Maurice, owned a Cadillac convertible and was happy to load all of us kids into it. I was surprised when Marty complained that his dad was putting the top down—the rest of us were thrilled. My memory of that drive to the country is Marty crouched in the back trying to keep his hair straight while the rest of us enjoyed the wind.