The cartoonist’s growing family—and subsequent problems in raising it—were the basis for this popular comic strip.
by Rich Watson
For almost thirty years, For Better or For Worse was a sitcom-like comic strip about the ups and downs of a middle-class Canadian family. It won the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award and was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1994.
The strip grew out of the family experiences of its creator, Lynn Johnston—especially when she first had kids.
Lynn Johnston and her first steps into cartooning
The Ontario native attended what is now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, aspiring to become an animator. She returned to Ontario and became a medical artist. Her first husband was TV cameraman Doug Franks.
In 1972, she became pregnant and switched to freelancing. During her pregnancy, her obstetrician encouraged her to make cartoons for his patients to look at while lying on his exam table, staring at the ceiling. She made over eighty of them, shown one at a time.
Her son Aaron was born the following year. That same year, she released David, We’re Pregnant!, her collection of parenthood cartoons (under the name Lynn Franks).
Johnston’s art style is loose and friendly, with little line variation and gentle hatching, ideal for newspaper reproduction. Even her lettering reflects this look. Plus, her backgrounds provide enough detail to suggest a lived-in world, one specific to her characters. Her perspective on parenthood and domesticity is reminiscent of the writing of Erma Bombeck, who was very popular at the time.
In 1975, Johnston released a second collection, Hi Mom! Hi Dad! She and Franks had divorced by this time.
A year later, while continuing to take on commercial illustration jobs, she married dentist Rod Johnston. Their daughter Katie was born in 1977. In 1978, now living in Manitoba, she released Do They Ever Grow Up? (as Lynn Johnston), her third collection.
Family life
The lighthearted nature of Johnston’s cartoons about family belie the life she has lived. In this 1994 interview, she candidly discusses her childhood, in which her mother physically abused her as a means of discipline. Johnston says drawing became her way of coping with her situation.
Her first marriage, to Franks, was poor. Combined with her childhood experiences, raising Aaron was difficult:
…when I had Aaron, [Franks] left me, and I didn’t know how to raise a child. And I wasn’t close to my parents, and because I was too proud to go to my parents for help, I mistreated that little baby. I didn’t want a baby…. [Aaron] came into a world that did not welcome him. I was exactly like my mother in that sense.
Her second marriage was an improvement, not only for herself, but for how she raised Katie:
When Kate was born, she was born into a world of joy and happiness and confidence. The difference between the children is night and day. She’s happy, she’s thriving, she’s full of self-confidence. I tell her she’s beautiful every day before I send her off to school. When I had her, I was happy, and when you’re happy, you can look in the mirror and say, “You know, I’m not so bad.”
Johnston says she reconciled with Aaron and their relationship became healthier.
For Better debuts
In 1978, Universal Press Syndicate approached Johnston, hoping she’d do a daily newspaper strip. Her initial presentation was of an autobiographical cartoon series. She believed not only that she could draw her family consistently, but that she could get lots of stories out of them. Her editors suggested making her cartoons fictional instead. She agreed.
For Better or For Worse debuted in Canada and the US in 1979. Unlike most strips, the Patterson family aged in real time. Johnston drew from her own family’s experiences. Her kids consented to this, and even provided input on plot and characterization.
Growing up, I remember seeing For Better in the newspaper, but I must’ve sensed it was different from the gag-a-day strips I was used to, and didn’t read it much. During college, I grew to appreciate better Johnston’s kind of storytelling in comics art, but by then I was less interested in strips. Once my taste in comics expanded to include those set in the real world, especially those by women artists like Alison Bechdel and Roberta Gregory, I became more open to the kinds of stories Johnston told.
In the eighties and nineties, Johnston returned to animation. Two Ottawa-based studios created a series of For Better animated specials for Canada’s CTV. A cable series followed, lasting two seasons.
Johnston in the 21st century
Johnston divorced in 2007. Eight years later, she moved to Vancouver. Her current work is a series of children’s sci-fi books called Alottabotz.
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