THINGS ARE LOOKING UP . . ....

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP . . . by Lynn Johnston (Andrews & McMeel: $8.95; 127 pp., paperback original). Lynn Johnston’s popular comic strip, “For Better or For Worse,” continues the tradition of Frank King’s “Gasoline Alley”: The characters age naturally and the stories don’t always work out neatly. This new anthology chronicles the ongoing misadventures of the Patterson family as they cope with the daily crises of middle-class life in Ontario. A series of strips in which one of Michael’s teen-age friends is beaten by his father treats the problem of child abuse with a realism and sensitivity that is refreshingly free of the facile moralizing comic-strip artists often adopt when they tackle an “issue.”