Elly: Browse The Strips

Sunday June 2, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This scenario was real, and once again, I heard from women and men who told me they’d walked out of a store because they’d been ignored. When I think of all the money I would have spent if the sales staff had been attentive, I shudder. Disinterested sales people have saved me a lot of money! Which brings me to ask: Why is it that when a restaurant is crazy busy, the staff gives you great service...but when it isn't busy, you can be completely ignored? Strange.

Thursday June 6, 2019

Lynn's Comments: The truth is, it was my son who needed the glasses. This scenario was happening, but I shielded him by making Elizabeth the one who was having trouble in school. Things like this were often hard on my kids as they tried to explain to their friends what their mom was doing and that their lives did not run parallel to the characters in the strip.

Friday June 7, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I think I’ve said before that the word "stoopid" ruffled a lot of readers' feathers. Many times I had to explain that despite the spelling, this is the way some words sound. They were not appeased. Artistic license is not necessarily a license to misspell!

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!

Monday June 17, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I never wear shorts and rarely wear skirts. I have never liked my legs…even though I know they are average looking and hold me up just fine. Funny what a negative "body image" can do to us.

Wednesday June 19, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Readers were always suggesting I give Elly a more modern hairstyle. They were right…she really did need a change. The trouble is it's hard to change a cartoon character's established "look." Elly's hairstyle was part of her trademark; her recognizable image. Even in sitcoms, the characters tend to keep their "look." I managed to placate the critics by giving Elly a bun or a French roll from time to time, but her hair remained long for the length of the strip!

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!"

Sunday July 7, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This was done just as the helmet laws were getting serious. The youngest riders were all wearing them. Older kids defied their parents' warnings and went for "the wind in their hair."

A young boy we knew well was critically injured when he suddenly swerved across the street in front of his house— right into the path of an oncoming car. He was not wearing a helmet and hit his head on the edge of the sidewalk. He was raced to the hospital in critical condition. The driver was entirely blameless. The boy’s parents were given the awful choice of surgery, which would likely result is a seriously brain damaged child, or taking him off life support. His mom said, "Let’s give him a chance." The surgery and recovery are quite a story but he survived, and with time and lots of therapy, he grew up to be a healthy and productive young man. Ironically, one of the postoperative requirements was that he wear a helmet for awhile to protect his head. It was a happy ending to a nearly tragic accident and every kid in town afterwards wore a helmet when they rode their bikes.

Saturday July 13, 2019

Lynn's Comments: Here, Michael is served the one thing he really doesn’t want to eat.

My Aunt Margaret worked at Moir’s Chocolates during the 1950s. Every year, she’d send us a box of chocolates for Christmas. I thought she had the best job in the world. One year, when I was about 10, she came with her family from Ontario to Vancouver to visit us and I told her I would love to work in a chocolate factory. She laughed! She told me she was sick of chocolate! Apparently, the day she was sent to the packaging floor of the factory, she was told that all the employees were invited to eat as much chocolate as they wanted. She dug in! After two days, she had no desire to eat, touch or smell chocolate, and that everyone else felt the same. The Moir’s Company policy paid off. Sadly, Margie’s dislike of chocolate lasted the rest of her life!

Friday July 19, 2019

Lynn's Comments: This was me. This was how I viewed myself on a beach, and this is how I entered the water: gingerly—when I felt invisible. Now that I’m 72 and have a figure that looks, well…72, I jump right in. Worrying about how you look isn’t as important as enjoying the moment. It took me far too long to figure this out.

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.