sunday: Browse The Strips

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Our kids fought over the family hammock, and we knew it would be a bone of contention until: 1) they grew up, or 2) one of the trees fell down. In a storm one night, the problem was solved; the bigger of the two trees was uprooted and had to be removed. The irony was that both kids were grown and gone by then.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This is a scene from my childhood. I liked being indoors. I enjoyed drawing and reading. Once I did go outdoors, however, it was hard to drag me back in. I remember my mom nagging me to get out and enjoy the sun and the summer--while it lasted. Seeing her asleep was a rare thing. She was one of those people who worked from sun up until sunset, and to find her relaxing anywhere was surprising. I think I'm a lot like my mother!

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Lynn's Comments: If you don't have a dog, it's difficult to make jokes about stuff that dogs actually do. Little incidents like this one, taken from everyday life, inspired my imagination. Using this as material for the strip, saved my dog from woe.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I was particularly happy with this Sunday page. If a strip made ME laugh out loud, then I knew I had a good one in the bank!

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Aaron and Katie both encouraged our dog, Willy, to clean up after them. He was a handy mop sometimes and would eat almost anything. With this in mind, I once saw Aaron offering the dog his homework.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: During the 60s, I loved a band called "The Ventures." I had all their records and I played them over and over. My mother would clap her hands over her ears and beg me to turn it off. "That is not music!" she'd tell me, "That is just horrible, awful noise!" The other day in the car I turned my satellite radio station to the "oldies," and right there was a tune by the Ventures! I hadn't heard them for years, and there they were! I tapped my hands on the wheel along with the straining, wowing chords, and remembered dancing with my girlfriends in the basement--trying to look like the kids on "Dance Party." I could see what my mom was talking about though; to someone who sang along to Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, and Rogers and Hammerstein, it was a lot of awful noise. I guess it's all about what you grew up with. This makes me wonder--will my grandkids wax poetic about Pop?

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I received countless letters from folks who told me that their dog hated peas as much as Farley did. I mean, they really hated peas! You'd think an animal that will happily chow down on road kill, old bones, and horse manure would (if covered in gravy) eat anything! --Who knew?

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I had such an island. I don't know if it was the story of Peter Pan or a project my mom gave us to do, but I had an imaginary island, and it was real.

One rainy North Vancouver day, my mom mixed up a paste using flour and water (and some other things), cut out flat cardboard bases, and helped my brother and me form an island in the middle of each one. We had to make mountains and bays, and when the paste was dry and hard, we coloured our islands with poster paint.

I took this project seriously. The ocean around my island was the deepest blue-green. There was a sandy beach in a rocky horseshoe-shaped bay. There was a forested mountain, and a jungle where I could pick tropical fruit. As I painted my island, I thought about how I got there and what I had to work with. A shipwreck was part of my story, of course, and I built an imaginary shack out of the remnants of a washed-up hull. I had a garden and I made a path to the mountaintop where I could watch for ships. Sometimes, a sailor or a passenger would be washed up on my shore and I would have imaginary adventures with this visitor. The visitors never stayed for long. It was, after all, my private imaginary space.

I daydreamed about this island all the time. When I was being bullied, I went to my island. When I was in trouble (sometimes for being a bully!), I went to my island. If I had a crush on a boy, he might be washed up on the island. Sometimes if a teacher was particularly nice, she might appear there, too. This fantasy went on until I was in high school! Even when I was well beyond childhood, I'd still find myself thinking, "You are allowed on my island." Or, "You are NOT allowed on my island!" It was a refuge. I was safe there. I had supreme control. There were no rainy days. It was a place of peace, and I think it helped me to survive some difficult times.

The island disappeared after many years--but I can still bring it into focus if I try

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This was me. I loved to sharpen my pencils until the tips were like needles. Some pencils shredded and broke, and others were perfect. I recently bought a sharpener, which gives me the same sharpening satisfaction as the old school sharpeners did. The brand name is "Sharp Tank."

--You're welcome!

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I remember this feeling. I remember going to bed and wishing so hard that it was Christmas, my teeth ached. I still love Christmas--but nowadays, it comes too fast!

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I kept my father-in-law's hard hat for a long time after he died. It was so much a part of him. For many years, he was an important part of my life, and I felt it kept him close by as long as I had it. Strange how something cold, plastic, and ordinary can have so much meaning. Divorce estranged me from his sons and his daughter. I returned his hard hat to them before I moved from Ontario. This strip was to honour the memory of Tom Johnston. He was one of a kind.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Lynn's Comments: My son, Aaron, really did stick his tongue to the school flagpole. A frantic teacher called me and I ran to the school in time to see one of the staff trying to pour hot coffee down the flagpole to warm it up. Another said to just pull him off, so I worked at his tongue, which was stretched like an elastic, and his teacher pulled him. With an "OUCH!" he was finally free. I thought he'd be upset, but Aaron was quite proud. When he'd stopped nursing his sore tongue, he happily pointed to the pole where a number of small, fuzzy spots marked battles with other frozen tongues. "Here's Cathy, and here's Bryan, and here's--" I guess it's a rite of passage: every kid has to see if the warning has merit--and every generation discovers that it does.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I went to visit Mike Peters (Mother Goose and Grimm) in Florida. He had a "NordicTrack" in his rec room and it was covered with coats and other clothing. I asked him if he ever used it and he said, "Of course!" and he pointed, theatrically to the elaborate clothes rack it had become. That was the inspiration for this strip.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Lynn's Comments: I went to visit Farley Mowat not long after the movie "Never Cry Wolf" had been released. It was based on a book Farley had written about his experience in Canada's north where, as a naturalist, he lived with wolves to see if they truly were the menace man believes them to be. He lived the way they live. He ate what they ate. In one scene, he is eating raw, wild mice; one of the most memorable parts of the movie. When I asked Farley if he really DID eat mice, he smiled and said, "My dear, I'm a writer. If something didn't happen, it SHOULD have."

This is the long way of telling you that what Elizabeth is doing in this Sunday strip never happened but it should have. Watching Katie open and pour a can of apple juice, I thought: If she'd made multiple openings, the scene might just have gone just like this.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Strips like this allowed me to vent to the fullest: to really let my feelings out. It was great to write, wonderful to draw, and then joyfully sent to the syndicate. When it was finally released in the papers, I had a chance to feel good all over again! I knew that letters would come from moms all over the place telling me I was right on track. Yeah. The strip, sometimes based on fantasy, made real life easier for me.

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Wordless strips were always fun. Making a story evident just by drawing a sequence of images kept me challenged and aware. The cartoonists who do this consistently have my admiration and applause.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Lynn's Comments: My brother and I fought all the time, and it was often out of sheer boredom. When there was nothing going on we created our own drama. I often wonder if I continue to do the same thing; when everything is going well, I tend to screw something up, creating a problem I then have to worry about!

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.