Lawrence: Browse The Strips

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Having someone new come into a family is an enormous adjustment. Aaron and I had been a team before I married Rod--and even though Rod adopted Aaron and gave him his last name, their personalities were never really compatible. I wanted Lawrence and Connie's story to be a happy one--one in which everyone adapted and the relationships worked. Having this kind of control over their lives was like playing God!

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Sometimes the strip was confining. I had four panels, maybe 15 seconds a day to tell what became a pretty complicated story. I would have loved to explore Connie's blossoming relationship with Greg. I wanted to show more, write more, but I didn't have the time or the space. This meant that readers had to fill in some blanks for themselves! Maybe, with comic strips going to the internet, creators won't be confined by the "one window a day" method of storytelling that we had in the newspapers.

Monday, December 28, 2015

Lynn's Comments: It was hard to introduce a new character into the strip. I had to make a number of sketches: front, side, three quarters. I drew the character laughing, frowning, shouting, and calm--all in an attempt to keep him or her consistent whenever they were in a scene. I didn't always succeed. "Greg" changed from time to time, and readers would quickly tell me when I made errors.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Bringing Lawrence and his mother back into the strip was a good idea. They were already part of the Pattersons' extended family and I didn't want to lose them! I came up with a plausible scenario; something that would allow them to come back to the neighbourhood, and the result was a much needed boost to the storylines.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Little things stay in your memory, for example, I remember when my mother and dad finally allowed me to drink out of real glass. I felt so grown up. It was as though they were saying, in a significant way, "We trust you."

Monday, January 4, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Since ours was a bit of a "blended family" I wanted to include the common concern: will my kid and our kid get along?

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I wanted to give Lawrence a challenging situation, and therefore give me something challenging to write about. How was a young boy, accustomed to being in the care of one female adult, going to adjust to a father figure--plus two more adult females in his family?

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I wanted to see this situation through Lawrence's eyes, to put myself in his position. A male child with a problem like this on his hands gave me an ample fantasy workout. Would I be able to write and draw a believable situation? Would a reader Lawrence's age accept the dialogue and the expressions as true to life, or would he say, "It's an adult pretending to know how a kid feels"?

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I've often thought I was part of a vast and complicated video game wherein the players directed my life in the craziest ways--giving me challenges I could never have imagined for myself. The players would deliver a score depending on the way I behaved under stress. Another challenging aspect to the game is that I won't know what the score is until I leave the planet. I just hope that the ultimate winner is me!

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Lynn's Comments: This was, and likely still is, a contentious issue. By opening the door to conversation on the topic of "when does life begin?" I was rattling a few cages. Knowing I was treading on thin ice, I made sure the punch line was innocuous, but I got the angry mail anyway. In the end, I was glad I had drawn this strip. It was something we were talking to our kids about and I knew other parents were struggling with this question as well. This shows you how much freedom I was given by my syndicate and many editors to write and say things that were sensitive and not easily mentioned in a comic strip.

Friday, July 1, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I was able to project this type of thinking onto Lawrence because this is exactly how my mind worked. Friends who have known me since grade school now tell me I was a serious pain in the wazoo, but likable!

Friday, July 8, 2016

Lynn's Comments: My dad had a friend who'd had surgery on his throat. The result was that he couldn't speak. He had learned to talk by what Dad said was called, "an educated burp." This fascinated my brother and me, so Dad challenged us to see how much of the alphabet we could recite in one long burp. Unimpressed, Mom told us off--saying we should have better things to do with our time. As soon as she was out of earshot, Dad, my brother and I continued our efforts. Yes, Dad didn't have to do much to convince Alan and me, and all the kids in the neighbourhood that he was one of us.

Friday, July 15, 2016

Lynn's Comments: While writing this short vignette, I remembered very clearly the vigils we made in our cherry tree. I could feel the branches, smell the leaves, sense the movement of the tree, and anticipate the pummeling my mother would give us if she caught us up there. A cartoonist has to have a good memory and an even better sense of "what if?"

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Lynn's Comments: This vignette had its roots in another story from my childhood: Across the lane from our house on 5th Street, lived the Doucette family. Their back yard faced ours, and Teddy Doucette was one of my adventurous buddies. His sister, Annette, was a teenager a few years older than we were, and everything she did was of great interest to us. The Doucettes had a small wartime house much like ours, but their attic had an outside access with a ladder going up to it--a wonderful place to play and hide. The floors in their house were thin and made of painted wooden slats. The attic was directly above. In the ceiling of Annette's bedroom, a small knot had been carefully pried open, and from inside the attic, Teddy and I could spy into her room. We could see only a very small area, but the thought of watching her unseen was great fun. (Continued tomorrow).