She keeps it real, ‘For Better or for Worse’

On Sept. 9, 1979, an unconventional comic strip debuted in about 250 American and Canadian newspapers.

In the strip, a mother wearing curlers and a bathrobe vacuums her home while her young son plays with an electrical plug nearby. The radio is playing a Burt Bacharach song about married couples.

As the lyrics unfold, the expression on her face grows angry.

Hey! little girl / comb your hair / fix your makeup. / Soon he will open the door.

Don’t think because / there’s a ring on your finger, / you needn’t try anymore.

For wives must always be lovers too / Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you.

Suddenly the mother picks up the vacuum cleaner and smashes the radio with it. Then she continues vacuuming.

On that Sunday, a new voice entered the comics pages and began a remarkable odyssey that would take the strip, “For Better or for Worse,” and its Canadian creator, Lynn Johnston, into the top ranks of modern-day comics.

And as Johnston celebrates the anniversary with a retrospective book, “Suddenly Silver,” she looks ahead to a more significant milestone: the end of the strip in its current form and the beginning of new ways to tell the saga of the Pattersons, the family at the strip’s center.

“I want to write the story and have it become a complete story so it’s got a beginning, middle and end,” Johnston said on a recent visit to Chicago, the last stop on her U.S. book tour. Her plan is to wrap up all the plot lines by September 2007, when her contract with Universal Press Syndicate ends.

She knows her fans will be disappointed when the daily strip ends. “I don’t want to give this saga up either,” she said. “But I’m also not going to be able to work constantly with the deadlines anymore

Johnston, 57, and her syndicate are brainstorming about how to continue the story when the daily strip ends. Among the ideas is a series of animated TV specials. Johnston already has an animated series based on the strip that appears weekly on Canadian television. (The show is not available in the U.S.) It’s also likely that the strip will continue to have a strong presence on the Internet. The current website, www.FBorFW.com, is elaborate, offering details about each character, news updates and a selection of strip-related merchandise for sale, among other things.

In addition, Johnston has more than 30 strip-related books in print, published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, which is owned by Andrews McMeel Universal, parent company of Universal Press Syndicate.

When Johnston talks about her health as a factor in her decision to end the daily strip, she is mostly referring to a neurological disorder she developed in the late 1990s called dystonia. The illness is characterized by involuntary, often painful, muscle movements.

In recent years, Johnston has assembled a team to help with the strip and its burgeoning side businesses. That six-woman team handles duties such as finances, the licensing and sale of merchandise, the website and art direction. Her creative director, Laura Piche, helps produce the strip, inking in many of the characters and the backgrounds after Johnston has drawn them in pencil and inked the principal characters.

Rod Johnston, Lynn’s husband, sold his dentistry practice in 2001 and keeps busy with projects such as a hobby train business and community efforts to improve the lakefront area in North Bay, Ontario. The couple live in nearby Corbeil, about four hours’ drive north of Toronto.

Johnston and her team work in a building near the Johnstons’ home that has been transformed into a studio.

Whatever form “For Better or for Worse” takes, its audience is likely to be large and varied. The strip appears in more than 2,000 newspapers in 20 countries, including The Times. It appeals to a wide age spectrum.

The comics pages have no shortage of family strips, but “For Better or for Worse” distinguished itself from the start. While focusing on daily life among Elly and John Patterson and their children, Michael, Elizabeth and April, its humor often had a dark edge. The stressed-out wife and mother, the uncontrollable children wreaking havoc at home, the husband who doesn’t understand -- these portraits appeared along with more warm, and conventional, scenes.

As time passed the strip evolved from its somewhat crude early form into a more sophisticated story with multiple characters and plot lines. On the way it broke new ground.

For one thing, the characters age in real time. Though the approach is not unprecedented -- older strips such as “Gasoline Alley” use the same technique -- it is unusual.

More important, however, was Johnston’s willingness to take on difficult or controversial topics, including infidelity, homosexuality and death. Though some of the more controversial story lines angered many readers, the strip continued to grow in popularity. This success can be attributed to Johnston’s uncanny ability to see into the heart of daily life so accurately that readers feel she is speaking directly to them.

Johnston’s husband described early audience reactions to the strip. “The thing that was a stunner to us -- it really was a stunner in the early years -- was that people wrote back saying, ‘Exactly that happened to me. Where are you hiding in my house? Are you under the fridge?’ ”

Asked what it is about Johnston that gives her this ability, those who know her use words such as “humanity,” “generosity” and “vulnerability.” And they all mention her sense of humor. Johnston’s penchant for making fun of her characters, loosely based on her own family, also endears her to readers.

Despite such praise -- or maybe because of it -- Johnston often has discussed the less positive sides of her life. Newspaper reports over the years quote her describing herself as a difficult child and her mother as a stern parent not above using corporal punishment.

On the subject of how she is able to create story lines that ring true, she is straightforward.

“Everything that I do in the strip is something that, if I haven’t personally experienced it, I know somebody who has, and I work with them,” she said.

In her introduction to “Suddenly Silver,” Johnston writes that she is part of every character. So it’s not surprising to see her philosophy voiced by one of the characters, Gordon Mayes, a friend of Michael Patterson’s.

As Mayes begins to take over the business he will eventually buy, he tells John Patterson: “An’ you know what, Dr. P? I’m the toughest boss I’ve ever had!”