Monday, September 1, 2008
You are also witnessing Medium Large’s 700th Strip. Yay.
New Comic Strip Writing 101 Lesson: How to Cope with Artistic Failure
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Medium Large 
Thank you.
Congrats on your 700th strip! Also, hurray for the extra-large FBOFW tribute (of sorts). I especially liked the satirical twist on Patterson’s odd decision to “redraw” the old strips from the beginning. (Maybe she didn’t want to disappoint the many readers who otherwise would have nothing more to whine about.)
Again, great work…but OMG please don’t make Teenage Girl President marry Medium Large Guy or I’ll totally blast you on my LJ and write bad fanfics and otherwise cry and whine and feel sorry for myself over something that isn’t my own intellectual property to do as I please with. (Hey, it’s not that I’m such a huge FBOFW fan; it’s just I find it very odd that that one strip out of hundreds has so many readers who constantly whine and complain and second-guess the cartoonist and say how much they hate the strip’s direction of the last several years and yet they KEEP READING IT.)
700th strip?
Where can I find the other 680 or so I’ve never seen before?
In the words of the incomparable Jeff Spicoli, “Awesome, totally awesome!”
Ah, a great tribute for a true zombie strip! All the real-life zombies who robotically support FBOFW will surely think… “you must have a camera in my house!”:
I love it – THIS and things like it are the reasons I keep coming back to read Medium Large every day. Here’s looking at 700 more!
Canadian New Year’s is the same as American New Year’s. January 1st.
Apparently they don’t have sarcasm or humo(u)r in Canada or wherever mimi’s from.
Wow. I mean…wow.
The thank-you note was a great touch.
Best laugh I’ve had all month. Or year, if I was in Canada.
Boxcar, indeed! Kudos…
I’ve always thought that the FBOFW characters looked looney, with their HUGE, wide (crazy) eyes. Thank you for confirming what I’ve thought all along.
Oh Ces,
Thank you sooo much. This is a much happier ending. I wish Medium Large was in the newspapers.
No I don’t. They would censor the crap out of you.
Get off the internet, Mimi.
Steph said: 700th strip? Where can I find the other 680 or so I’ve never seen before?
You can get a lot of them from here, although the Wayback Machine gradually fails more and more as it goes along.
“Canadian New Year’s is the same as American New Year’s. January 1st.”
However, the language law DOES require Johnston to do the entire run of the strip over again in France, or Mimi would have corrected Ces.
I love the rationale for re-running the past 29 years.
Fantastic “tribute”!
Now, see, this is how you end a comic.
=v= I think Ces could be forgiven for mixing up some dates. After all, he’s a [US]American, which means he’s celebrating May Day today.
As someone that read For Better or Worse as a kid… I don’t get it. I thought it was terrible as a child and if it wasn’t for my near OCD-like obsession with reading every comic in the newspaper I would never have read more then one. For Better or Worse is trite, cliche-ridden crap with absolutely no edge or even slightly interesting commentary on life.
Now, as an adult, my strip comic reading is limited to about 4 newspaper daily strips and a number of online strips (this being oneof them). However, I’m once again exposed to For Better or Worse thanks to my near daily following of the often very funny Comics Curmudgeon blog. The author there, like many of the commenters, seems to have a near psychotic attachment to this strip, and feels the need to whine and complain about every character in a way that suggests actual identification with these cliche spouting stereotype-mobiles.
Once again, I don’t get it. Can someone explain?
Finally, cheers to Medium Large. Great strip! 🙂
Congrats!
Um, I’m not sure he’s actually ripping into FBOFW here. Quite often when longstanding, successful comics end their runs other comics run a tribute to them. This is making fun of 1) overtly sentimental “serious” comic finales in light humor strips, 2) tributes that others run when long running comics end, and 3) Canada. In it’s own way, it’s also a Medium Large style tribute to the two former (and the author’s obsession with zombies).
Satire truly is what closes Saturday Night.
Ah well. Fan though I’ve been of FBorFW, it’s good to see it “end”. I have no interest in the Phantom Menace like “prequel strips” or the a la George Lucas “touch ups” to the originals. I will simply buy the final volume(s) of the strip as I’ve known it and call it a collection and done.
This would’ve been a far more appropriate ending, I have to say!!!
And hey, this is the Canadian New Year’s. My brother in law and the neighbors ALL got ripped ass drunk last night and today none of them have to work…
Great one today. I’d say more but I’m headed off to the CN Tower for the dropping of the ball by the Blue Jays outfielder, a long-standing tradition.
Congrats and Happy New Year!
Cheers,
tim
http://www.blogoffanddie.wordpress.com
I would never hit someone with a hockey stick, unless of course, we were playing hockey. Then I swing at anything that moves.
That’s pretty funny. I found your site on accident. For Better Or For Worse is a comic in the U.S. too. Is it the same one in my Sunday paper? Anyway, good site. I hope to get more in the future. I hope you’ll visit our site for your political fix. Have a great week.
Jerame Clough
-Next Gen Politics
Nice man…you seem real talented..congrats!!!
http://andthisismyamerica.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/winners-and-losers-of-summer-08/
I just had to comment again – I am still laughing a day later. Thanks again.
Hmm…interesting? I’ve always been a fan of this strip, guess one needs to be mature to understand it. Really. It apparently doesn’t strike a chord with the younger generation, however I think once you live life, you might understand that this strip closely mimics real life on so many different levels. Yes, I can understand how 20 somethings, even 30 somethings might find it off-putting, as it addresses issues you might not want to consider at this point in your life. Trust me though, someday you will realise that these strips will be an echo of your own lives. Hard to believe, I know, as you have all pledged to never live such boring and mundane lives, but, well…good luck at that. Most of you will someday become your parents, as awful as that may sound. It WILL happen. I say this with some confidence, as I, too, had promised myself the same thing when I was young, as did my friends. Then, reality hit.
The reason I love this strip? One, the characters actually age. They don’t stay 5 or 20 or whatever the age they were when the strip originated for 10 or 20 years. This is reality. Not beautiful, but real. But, good luck with staying 20 forever, never getting grey hairs or wrinkles, etc. I do wish you success.
Sacrilicious! 😀
The thing is, I loved FBOFW – they were like the normal, wholesome family I never had. The ending made me sad as hell. That said, you’ve just done the comic strip equivalent of when my boyfriend leaned over while we were watching “Rent” and I was in tears (I’d never seen it before) and he started singing the AIDS song from “Team America”. I cried and laughed at the same time and couldn’t decide whether to punch him or kiss him. Frickin’ hilarious.
Besides, I’ve always wanted to see John Patterson use the words “fuck all”.
@Carolina deWitte – Ooooooook. Apparently you’ve missed the massive outcry over the last several years of FBOFW.
In all of that, I’ve never seen one person who had a problem with the characters aging, or that the strip was ultimately about relationships and having kids.
It’s too long to rehash. Tell you what, Google “Anthony and Liz” and start from there.
@Carolina deWitte – what you probably meant is that you have to be a mature zombie to understand FBOFW, but everyone makes a mistake now and then! Glurge glurge glurge.
Carolina, I’M ON YOUR LAWN RIGHT NOW! Get out in your housecoat and throw a slipper at me.
Also, I’m in my mid-forties and I know crap when I see it.
My idea was just to run the series in reverse. That way we both get to see Farley come back from the dead. Just in my case, not as a demon-spawned hell-hound.
This site isn’t actually Medium Large. It is the same size as all the other sites on the internet, they all fit right inside my monitor.
Oh, and there aren’t any pet cemeteries that bring back animals to life. That was just a story.
[…] September 3, 2008 by allyo Snerk. […]
Who has never passed (or failed) “the breathalizyer kiss”. O you jealous bloggerati with foul mouth, limited talent and no appreciation for any wit but juvenal (spelling intentional) cuts & put-downs. If FBOFW be sentimentalist crap – it’s my sentimentalist crap. Now leave my family alone. You’re running into our therapy time.