street: Browse The Strips

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I have just moved "home" to North Vancouver, BC. Everywhere I look, there are changes. Few of my friends' houses are still standing. What used to be a small town is now a glass and metal city, but the mountains are still there, as are the parks and the beaches--and my heart is right where I left it; on the North Shore.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Chris is the son of Elly's neighbour, Annie. He was named for the son of a friend of mine and I thought he would play a larger role in the strip. It still amazes me how some characters would come to life and "talk to me," and some wouldn't--even though I wanted to get to know them!

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Lynn's Comments: When you are used to living in a winter climate, an image like this will tell you the temperature has warmed up and the snow has become "sticky." It will also bring back memories of working long and hard to get to a hill for the sheer pleasure of taking a 10 second ride.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Lately, I have been seeing friends I knew in elementary school. We talk endlessly about our childhood friends and the many instances, which are unforgettable. I remember standing next to kids I really wanted to talk to, apologize to or befriend--but I just didn't know how.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Connie and Lawrence were characters I simply couldn't delete. For some reason, they were compelling and important. They "spoke to me." As I've said before, some characters allowed me to bring them to life, and others disappeared like smoke in a wind. I'll never understand why.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Here's an example of how the first two panels of a Sunday page are set up to be eliminated if the features editor at the paper wants to save space. The situation here, Chris walking the baby, has nothing to do with "It's snowing again." which is the next opening line. Often this "throw-away" gag is better than the rest of the strip! Cartoonists handle the dilemma of the removable opening panels in different ways. Johnny Hart, for example, always started the B.C. Sunday page with the ants--sometimes an entirely different subject matter from the rest of the strip. Some extend the beginning of the storyline, some play with the title or draw doodles, and some don't bother with these panels at all. Ultimately, we all have to work with the newspaper editors, understand their space limitations, and help them to place our work as best they can in an ever-changing hard copy format.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Lynn's Comments: In the end, the classes paid off. We actually looked forward to convention dinners--and it gave my husband the ammunition to say: "What do you mean I never do anything for you?!"

Monday, May 23, 2016

Lynn's Comments: My dad managed a jewellery store. My friends imagined us to be rich, but nothing was farther from the truth.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I sat with a friend today; someone I've known since kindergarten. I asked Laurel what her first job was and she said, "washing hair in a salon. My mom got me the job." Mine was in my dad's store. At the time, we didn't think much of the work our parents arranged for us, but in reality, these jobs were the gateways to our futures.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I once offered local kids some money to clean up the road between my house and my mom-in-law's. It was a country road, so there was no way to cheat! The funny thing was that once they got going, they went from resenting the uncool side of cleaning a rural road, to being fanatical about it. They went down the road, far beyond our property--just because there was so much to pick up. I was so impressed!--And they say kids these days don't know how to do a job well!

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.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Lynn's Comments: The cherry tree in our front yard on Fifth Street was tall and sturdy, and one branch afforded us a great view of the neighbours' houses. Every time we hid up there, we hoped to see something important, something about which we could tell the police. If we didn't see anything, it didn't matter. Alan and I could always make something up.

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).