For Better or For Worse

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2008 9:05:55 GMT -4 Mugsy said:

Does Lynn have grandchildren? That she sees?

No, she doesn't have grandchildren.

[Deleted]

While the strip is too dull to comment on anymore, [blue]this article[/blue] on its author is full of interesting stuff:

If Lynn can't remember the details of the day she'll never forget, she knows this much is true: around eight o'clock in the evening her husband of 30 years walked into the kitchen and broke her heart.

I'm leaving you, he told her.

I've been seeing another woman for some time. You know her.

It may not have come out in precisely those words or in that exact order, but the message was clear. He was going and that was that; he would make no amends for his betrayal.

At first Lynn was in shock, but then the pain set in -- along with its more outgoing sidekick, anger.

After he left, she drove into town, bought some vodka, drank too much vodka and unleashed her fury on her husband's jeep. Ironically, the Carrie Underwood song, Before He Cheats, was topping the charts at the time. It tells the tale of a jilted woman who takes a baseball bat to the headlights of her unfaithful lover's car; Lynn's weapon of choice was a rake.

Here is a good idea as to why she is continuing the strip:

When it came to finances, for example, she had entrusted everything to her husband and was shocked to discover, in the days following his departure, that her bank accounts were empty. Suddenly, the cartoonist whose strip appears in more than 2000 newspapers around the world, the Gemini Award winner and Pulitzer Prize nominee, and the first female to ever win the prestigious Reuben Award from the U. S.-based National Cartoonists Society, didn't have enough cash to buy groceries.

[kanding]

Wow. I feel terribly for her. Her ex-husband is a Grade A shit.

I still never liked FBoFW, but she didn't deserve that.

[Deleted]

I have a lot more sympathy for what she must have been going through, trying to write a convincing happily-ever-after storyline after being betrayed like that.

[Deleted]

Lynn spent so many years anachronistically glorifying the doormat wife who yes-dears everything her husband says. Connie not immediately telling Lawrence's stepfather to hit the road when he kicked Lawrence out of the house for being gay; Iris happily and frumpily spending her waning years wiping Jim's drool; Dee only looking mildly bewildered when Mike quit his job without telling her; John retiring without telling Elly; the whole Lizthony crap; it goes on and on. I'm not the tiniest bit surprised that she gave total control over her fortune to her husband and really, I'm not the tiniest bit sorry for her. Yes, you're supposed to trust yadda yadda but there's trust and then there's "here's the MILLIONS of dollars I earned by the sweat of my brow and my cramping fingers. Do some of that fancy husband stuff with it and I'll be over here writing stories about a poop-dolly." It's stupid. And she can't pull that generational excuse, either. There are a lot of working women her age that are smart enough to keep an eye on their finances or employ an accountant to do so. Hoisted by her own petard, I say.

[ivy]

Sept 20, 2008 0:53:12 GMT -4 @dguzpy said:

Lynn spent so many years anachronistically glorifying the doormat wife who yes-dears everything her husband says. Connie not immediately telling Lawrence's stepfather to hit the road when he kicked Lawrence out of the house for being gay; Iris happily and frumpily spending her waning years wiping Jim's drool; Dee only looking mildly bewildered when Mike quit his job without telling her; John retiring without telling Elly; the whole Lizthony crap; it goes on and on. I'm not the tiniest bit surprised that she gave total control over her fortune to her husband and really, I'm not the tiniest bit sorry for her. Yes, you're supposed to trust yadda yadda but there's trust and then there's "here's the MILLIONS of dollars I earned by the sweat of my brow and my cramping fingers. Do some of that fancy husband stuff with it and I'll be over here writing stories about a poop-dolly." It's stupid.

Word to all of this. I feel bad for her that her husband dropped the bomb on her like that ("I've been having an affair for years and it's with someone you know, buh-bye"? What an asshole) but I can't feel sorry for someone who was dumb enough to hand over her entire fortune to her husband and never once check on her bank balance or look at her finances or anything (which she obviously didn't, or else she would have seen the money was disappearing).

It reminds me of when Toni Braxton was talking to Oprah about how she went bankrupt and she was saying things like, "Well of course I just assumed I had lots of money! I was selling millions of records." You know what, Toni? You should have CHECKED IT OUT. Don't just assume. Take some control over your own $$$, especially when it's that kind of money.

I don't admire Lynn for writing a happy ending to her strip while her own life was falling apart. In fact, I think it would have been way better if she'd channeled some of that anger into her strip and we saw things go wrong for Liz and Anthony, at least sometimes. At least that way it would have been realistic. The sap we got about the perfect wedding that went off without a hitch and didn't cost the bride and groom any money was ridiculous. Life isn't like that.

[Shalamar]

In fact, I think it would have been way better if she'd channeled some of that anger into her strip and we saw things go wrong for Liz and Anthony, at least sometimes.

I sort of agree, and yet sort of don't. I remember her saying in one of her books that she was occasionally tempted to introduce an infidelity storyline into the strip (I believe she was considering showing Steve cheating on Annie). But, because her first marriage ended due to her husband being unfaithful (man, she sure can pick 'em), it was too painful.

Besides, I can easily envision the editors saying uneasily "Lynn, honey, we know you're hurting, but Anthony going to a strip club and getting a lapdance? We have a family audience, y'know."

[eclair]

If there were a FooB cartoon where someone attacks a car with a rake it just might go on my fridge.

[Mugsy]

By "her money is gone" does that mean it's all been spent and there's nothing left, or Rod siphoned it all into some sort of offshore account? Because, surely she has some legal recourse if it's the latter. And if it's all gone, then she never noticed what it had been spent on? Unless it was digs for the mistress, I guess.

[ivy]

Sept 20, 2008 21:39:30 GMT -4 Shalamar said:

In fact, I think it would have been way better if she'd channeled some of that anger into her strip and we saw things go wrong for Liz and Anthony, at least sometimes.

I sort of agree, and yet sort of don't. I remember her saying in one of her books that she was occasionally tempted to introduce an infidelity storyline into the strip (I believe she was considering showing Steve cheating on Annie). But, because her first marriage ended due to her husband being unfaithful (man, she sure can pick 'em), it was too painful.

Back in the 1980s there actually was an arc about Steve cheating on Annie. I remember that when John found out he just said, "Well, son of a gun!" and Elly had a screaming fit because she thought he was being insensitve. The storyline ended with Steve promising to leave his girlfriend, and I think Annie said they were going to counselling.

BTW, if there had been a strip about Anthony going to a strip club, I would have respected Lynn forever.