Frequently Asked Questions
Are you new to the strip? Glad you could join us! Since many readers are familiar with all 29 years of FBorFW, some of these questions may contain spoilers if you haven't read the entire strip. Look out for the Spoilers tab!
Click any question to reveal the answer.
Common Questions:
For Better or For Worse® is in repeats! FBorFW originally ran from 1979 to 2008. In 2008, Lynn retired. Now you're seeing republished, older strips—both in newspapers and on our site.
Lynn will not be doing any more new For Better or For Worse® material. She is having real problems with her vision. Her hands are unsteady as well, so it takes her more than twice as much time to write and draw as it used to.
Sad to say, Lynn just can't continue.
First and foremost, from her imagination, along with the constant threat of a deadline!
When the strip began in 1979, Michael was already three or four, and Elizabeth was a toddler. Lynn kept the ages static until her own children, Aaron and Kate, were around three years older than the kids in the strip—and then Lynn allowed the characters to age in real time. This has caused some confusion as dates and ages don't always line up perfectly.
In a nutshell: Lynn was pregnant with her first child, Aaron, and was drawing several single panel comics for her obstetrician, who encouraged her to seek a publisher. The comics were published in a book, David, We're Pregnant! Two more books followed, a syndicate took notice and the rest is history. For a more detailed bio on Lynn and how she started, please read our About Lynn page.
A comic strip comes from many sources. You need experience in art, drama and creative writing. Ideas and gags should come naturally to a comic artist. You may find yourself working with a friend on a storyline or drawings. Lynn's best advice is to find a copy of Your Career in the Comics by Lee Nordling, published by Andrews & McMeel. It will be an invaluable resource.
The strip is very loosely based on Lynn's own life. At first, there were distinct similarities between Lynn's family and the Pattersons, but later on, the strip departed greatly from Lynn's life.
The strip has been in syndication since 1979! In 2008, Lynn ended the ongoing storyline. Now the strip is being published in repeats.
Each newspaper's comics editor makes the decision about what to keep or remove, and we're not told which paper has dropped FBorFW (or why), so often we don't find out until someone writes to us. If you want it reinstated, your best option is to write to your newspaper directly and ask nicely. This often works!
Anachronisms in the strip: since the strip is in repeats, sometimes things which were normal or common in the 80s will reappear in the strip and make no sense. Sometimes we can fix these in advance, and sometimes we just have to let them slide.
Something broken on the site: please do tell us about this—fborfw.com is very large and has lots of "moving parts," so sometimes we don't notice an issue right away. You will generally get a personal response from a real human, so please be kind. If you're reporting a technical problem, please tell us whatever you can about your computer: Mac or Windows? Laptop, desktop or phone? What operating system, and what browser?
We have donated all of Lynn's original art to Library and Archives Canada, so originals are hard to find—sometimes somebody will be selling one on eBay, but we don't offer them ourselves.
You may, however, order signed prints of almost any strip from our store. You just have to know the date of the strip you want, which you can find by searching our strip catalog.
Absolutely! Lynn is Canadian and has lived in several different parts of the country (currently she's in Vancouver, B.C.). The strip itself takes place in a small, fictional city called Milborough in Southern Ontario, not far from Toronto.
At first, Lynn's syndicate wanted FBorFW to be US-based, but Lynn insisted it remain Canadian or she wouldn't sign the contract!
About The Strip:
Some of them are and some are simply designed by Lynn based on her imagination. Sometimes she modelled them after people she found in catalogs or magazines. The ones who are based on real people often carry those people's middle or last names. Rarely did Lynn ever use real first names. Occasionally, she used the names of her friends in the dialogue of the strip to let these people know she was thinking of them. One of Lynn's favourite aspects of writing the comic strip was coming up with funny names.
When Lynn's children were young and living at home, she was careful not to use family material as to not embarrass her kids. In Lynn's mind, the FBorFW characters are all fictional; their lives and personalities are completely different from her family members.
Lynn always strived to grow and improve as an artist, and so over the years of FBorFW, the art became more complex and realistic. This evolution in her drawing style allowed her to challenge herself. The characters and backgrounds became noticeably more detailed, and so did the storylines—one story could last a number of weeks, where Lynn's earlier strips were more "gag-a-day." The gag-a-day style was difficult to maintain over a long period of time so the strip naturally evolved.
Lynn was nasally inconsistent—both with the dogs and the people—especially Elly. Her son once asked why Elly had an "inflatable nose" and she had to admit that when Elly was in a bad mood, her nose was larger than it was when she was being sweet and kind.
Lynn says, "Noses are a kind of cartoon crutch...so are eyes. The bigger the nose and eyes are, the less room there is for brain space! Too bad this isn't a gauge of intellect in real life. There would be a lot of folks sporting large honkers and googly eyes! A nose by any other size...is still a nose."
When it came to making the children in the strip look older, Lynn checked the average height charts for children and often referenced magazines or catalogues. She changed faces and hairstyles to be slightly more mature. Elly and John stayed much the same except for jowls, tummies and glasses.
Lynn compares the drawing of cartoon characters to you writing your signature: it's never exactly the same, but it's easily recognized as yours because the elements you include are always there. If you look at the signature you signed with 10 years ago, it will have changed from the signature you use today—but it is still recognizably yours. Cartoon characters evolve in much the same way.
Yes, Lynn drew the strip in boxes, but she drew them at a larger scale than what appears in the newspaper. The daily strips were drawn in a 29cm x 9.5cm rectangle and the newspapers reduce them to fit their own page format. There is a limit to which they can be shrunk according to a syndication contract, but papers shrink and sometimes squash them anyway! We just hope they're legible.
Some papers do that in order to make space in the funny pages for more strips. Lynn made a point of not including any plot-essential information or illustrations in those top panels because she knew they were often removed. You can find the entire Sunday comics in the Strip Fix section of our website.
About the Characters:
Most favourite: Edgar. Least favourite: Elly.
Lawrence is Canadian; his mom is Elly's friend Connie (a Canadian) and his dad was from Brazil. Lawrence's mother met Lawrence's father in Ecuador, where she was working at the time. He elected not to follow her back to Canada. Lawrence eventually met his father.
Michael just has a way with words, and Lizardbreath is very close in sound and spelling to Elizabeth.
It's "DeeANNA."
Yes—Lynn's father, Mervyn Ridgway, was a member of the 408 Squadron. Lynn's mother served in the army, too.
Liz's middle name is Deborah, and Mike's is Thomas.
Many names came from friends and second names of family members. Some came from people Lynn knew as a child, and some she just made up.
Connie, for example, was named for an art teacher Lynn had, Connie Watson. Mrs. Watson and Lynn did not get along at all! Lynn originally thought the Connie character would be a negative influence. Later in life, Lynn met the daughter of the art teacher she had clashed with...and discovered that Mrs. Watson was a wonderful person. Perhaps this is why "Connie" in the strip became a friend of Elly's.
This was an error. If you caught this, we are impressed! Her character wasn't quite solidified at that point. Her name officially became Mira Sobinski when she started to play a larger role in the strip.
He brings the trains into the garage for the winter around Halloween. The tracks and buildings can handle the rain. The engines and the train cars are portable enough to be brought out when the weather is good and he wants to "play."
Books, Collectibles, Etc.:
You can get the out-of-print books on eBay, abebooks.com, thriftbooks.com, biblio.com or at secondhand bookstores (call them and ask for any old books to be reserved for you; these places are great!)
The first video was The Bestest Present, in 1985, which won a Gemini award for best writing.
There was also a series of six animated half-hour specials produced for television broadcast in 1990.
In 1999, a new series of 16 half-hour TV shows were produced. Lynn doesn't currently own the rights to these shows, so we are unable to sell copies. They are no longer running on television. They may be available online somewhere. If you see them, let us know!
As of right now, you can't. The company that produced the series sold the rights to another company. After a number of mergers and changes of ownership, the current holder of the rights is looking for a way to make the series available. We'll let you know as soon as we find something out!
The now-closed Tonner Doll Company produced Edgar, April and Becky dolls for a period of time. They're hard to find now, but will occasionally pop up on eBay.
For Better or For Worse® turned 25 in 2004! To celebrate this milestone, we released an anniversary retrospective book with the title Suddenly Silver. Our loyal readers will have noticed that we published two collection books in 2003: With This Ring and Reality Check. After we caught our breath from publishing our 25th anniversary book, we published another double dose of collection books in the spring and fall of 2005.
For reasons related to printing logistics, we occasionally had to omit a strip or two from a collection book. For the entire collection of strips, look for the Complete Library treasury series from IDW Publishing. These books include every strip. You can also find the entire collection in the Monthly Archives section of our website.
You can find a list of all Lynn's books here. The list is printable so you can take it to the library or your local bookstore. We also have the entire collection online in our database. Visit this page to browse the archive by month.
Trivia:
Farley the sheepdog was in fact named after the author, Farley Mowat. This led to a long correspondence between Lynn and the Mowat family—fortunately, Mr. Mowat was flattered to have a cartoon dog bearing his name.
Aaron voiced Michael, Kate voiced Elizabeth, and Rod voiced the mailman who delivered Elizabeth's bunny.
Lynn made up the name—she thought Philpott sounded like a well-established family business.
That's John's "fickle finger." It is a lingering piece of bachelor decor that has shown up in the strip from time to time. It is often seen hanging from the ceiling of Michael's apartment.
This wasn't intentionally done by Lynn; she was writing to be funny. She wasn't aware until much later that this was how Elly came across to readers.
Possible Spoilers:
Elly got a haircut she hated on January 24th, 1996. In reaction, on the 26th of January, the bun makes its first proper appearance. She's had it ever since. This would have shown up in the Love Just Screws Everything Up book.
She's a Sheltie.
Nope, it just happened that Lawrence was the first gay character, and FBorFW just hasn't had any lesbian characters (that we know of).
Elly suggested, at one point, that John should have a vasectomy, but he never did have one.
At the very beginning, Lynn based the strip on her own family, but it quickly evolved—the Pattersons are indeed fictional. April was also created out of Lynn's own desire to have another child.
Yes—Merrie was named after Meredith Schulz.
There isn't really such a car as a Crevasse, no. Lynn thought the word was funny and would make a good name for a car. Similarly, John had wanted a high-end, sporty "Pavo" to drive—that's Spanish for "turkey."