John: Browse The Strips

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Lynn's Comments: If nothing else, travelling gave me an opportunity to get out of the house--a house in which I often felt like a prisoner.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Lynn's Comments: The breakfast in bed scenario is always shown in cartoons as a parent in bed and the kids delivering a messy meal. I wanted to turn it around and have the kids messing up their own space. I thought this was more often the case.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Lynn's Comments: The real story behind this strip was quite different from what you see here. It began with a dream. I was on a dock on Bowen Island waiting for the ferry to arrive. It came in with a rush of water and a hiss from the engines, and when it pulled in, the hull hit the wooden pilings and the waves pushed it up and down against them, making an awful, rhythmic scraping sound. This became so loud, it woke me up. There I was in bed, with my arm around my husband, and he was snoring --with the same rhythmic, grating sound!

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I think moms should go away once in awhile, just so the family left at home can discover for themselves what we REALLY do all day!

Friday, April 11, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I went away on business several times a year. The most exhausting trips were the book tours. Authors, at the time, were routinely sent from city to city to do as much publicity as possible. At first it's exciting and rewarding--and dangerously ego boosting as well. By the end of the tour I was tired of talking, tired of signing, and just tired of ME! Still, I was a ham--eager to please, and by the time the next book was due, I would be looking forward to the next tour.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Lynn's Comments: When I look at these drawings again, it's always from a new perspective. In this case, I wish I had drawn Elly with a happier expression. After all--a clean house is the perfect gift, no matter how it's announced!

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Lynn's Comments: This is another gift from the horse’s mouth. Any time I got my husband into a clothing store, it was a special occasion. He hated to think about his attire. As long as he was comfortable, he didn’t much care about his image! He’d buy a year’s worth of clothing in one shot. The salesman would make sure that ties went with shirts, socks matched trousers, and that everything fit accordingly. Dressing him for a special occasion was much easier when there was a plan of attack. Still there were lapses, and this exact exchange took place before a dinner we had to attend.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Lynn's Comments: A question like this would have made my parents get out the encyclopedia and look up the answer. My mother especially enjoyed teaching us stuff about plants and animals and would easily pick up a snake or a spider to show us it was something to admire. She was responsible I'm sure for my brother's degree in biology and my years working as a medical artist!

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Lynn's Comments: This was true. My house and my yard were always full of kids, and though it sometimes became a chore, I always knew where my children were!

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Lynn's Comments: As kids, our backyard parking space was a covered rectangle--which smelled of cat spray and mud. North Vancouver's heavy rainfall was the one thing we needed protection from. Sweeping out the garage would have been a serious chore--if we had one. It wasn't until I moved my family to Ontario that a garage became familiar and oh so necessary. At this point, it was MY kids who hated sweeping the garage!

Friday, May 2, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I remember saving to buy my mom something for Mother's Day. What can you buy for a few cents? Even in "the day" when things cost less--earnings were less too. Dad would give me 10 cents for chores that were "one off", like pulling weeds from the front path or picking up branches from the lawn. I preferred these small chores to an hourly wage. For a kid, 60 minutes of "work" is a sentence, not a job!

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Lynn's Comments: The first gift I ever bought my mom for Mother's Day was a blue rose. It was artificial; fabric, paper and wire--but I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Very fortunately--so did she.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Lynn's Comments: Aside from getting out the message that chaos always happened when I needed to think, I did owe a letter to my aunt Bessie. This was a way to tell her I was thinking about her and get some work out at the same time. Unfortunately, Bessie never read the paper the day this was released, but I did write the letter I owed her!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Lynn's Comments: Waterbeds were all the rage in the '80s, so we bought one. It was a miserable thing. The heater was defective, so the mattress was often clammy and cold. Putting the sheets on took practice. We had to pull up the edge of the mattress, then work a band of elastic under this blubbery, rolling water-filled sack while skinning our knuckles on the frame. It occurred to me that it was kind of like dressing something warm, large, and flabby!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I actually thought I was overweight when I drew this. I thought the bulge I drew on my tummy was enormous. It amazes me now to think that I saw myself as unattractive. On the other hand, a little ego bruising at the time was a good thing!

Friday, May 23, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I actually did make two meals one for me on a diet and one for my family--who wanted more substantial grub. The hard part was cleaning up their leftovers and not swilling down the lot!

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I got away with this drawing, perhaps because there was no Internet to give me an instant blast for inconsistency: The car isn't backing out of the garage, it hit the frame while driving in!

Monday, May 26, 2014

Lynn's Comments: Having moved to a more southerly clime, we were able to grow real plants! I went crazy finding ornamental trees and flowering perennials to fill our garden. I dug and I trimmed. The job was bigger than I had imagined, so I hired a lady to help me. She would arrive with her young children in tow; I'd feed and water them while she did the same for the garden. Eventually, we had a beautiful place to live, surrounded by pine forests and open fields.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Lynn's Comments: Another actual quote from the man himself. He complained that I used the lines he didn't like and ignored the lines he did.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Lynn's Comments: In real life, this didn't happen; the story grew around the idea of Elly babysitting, and I kept saying to myself, "what if?" It's the sort of thing you do when you're lying in bed and wondering where your teenaged kids are. You come up with all kinds of "what ifs"! When you look after little ones, the troubles encountered are often bathroom related, so this was my imagination running wild!

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Lynn's Comments: I have to tell you a story, here.

Years ago, I was in Santa Rosa visiting Charles and Jeannie Schulz (Peanuts). They had invited me to stay at their home before we all attended a comic art event in San Francisco. They had recently put a very sophisticated alarm system into their house--and were just getting used to how it worked.

I had not stayed before in their guest room and was pretty nervous about, well, everything: Did I talk too much? Did I keep the room neat? Did I use too much water--you know, that kind of stuff. Anyway, after dinner we hit the sack, and the wind started to blow hard against the windows. Soon the trees were whipping wildly against the house, and all of a sudden, this massive, deafening alarm went off: WAAAA! WAAAAAA! WAAAAA! WAAAA!!!! All the lights in the house turned on, and so did all the lights in their yard. It was as if giant searchlights were trained on the windows. In a blind panic, I ran up the stairs into their kitchen, and there were Sparky and Jeannie in their pyjamas saying, "Wha? Wha's happening? Wha???." It was great. Here we all were hopping about in our pyjamas, ready for the end of the world.

Well, the next day S&J decided to rework the sensitivity on some of the outdoor sensors, and maybe cut the lights down a bit. We went to the comic art event, and I returned home, no longer shy of Charles Schulz. Having seen the great man running around in his pyjamas, I could say we were now well acquainted.