CSotD: Moving right along
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Friend-of-the-blog Sandra Lundy is in the process of giving the ladies of Between Friends a bit of an update. I guess it began with Maeve's new haircut, but now she's making Susan try to climb out of schlumpdom.
Which is sorta-kinda an ongoing theme in the strip, except that there was a recent series that, she wrote, heralded a conscious effort to "move my characters along in age a bit."
I'm not anticipating a Doonesbury leap in which everyone assumes new lives and stations; more of a Luann nudge along the path, which is a good thing for a strip to do now and then, because not only does it better reflect where the artist is at the moment, but it also freshens the jokes.
How many "Gosh this backpack is huge?" gags can you make about elementary school kids before they become as tedious as, well, jokes about elementary school kids with giant backpacks were to begin with? Get the kid into middle school and bring on the new material!
Baby Blues may be the champion at this: When I began reading the strip, Hammie couldn't talk. Now he follows his sister around as the pesky little brother and Wren has arrived on the scene to take over as the resident baby. While I remember Wren's arrival, the other elements of growth just kind of happened, as they do in real life.
Peanuts was strange in this respect, because it had a glass ceiling for age. Lucy and Schroeder began as toddlers, and Linus was born during the run of the strip, as were Sally and Rerun. The latter two grew, but remained younger than the other characters. Everyone else grew until they reached Charlie Brown's age and then stopped. And I think Charlie Brown had once been slightly younger than Patty and Violet, but that didn't last.
But, of course, the Peanuts gang were metaphorical, not real, children, and the strip's themes were only ostensibly couched in childhood activities.
I hardly even think to include "For Better or For Worse" in this discussion, because the "journal" nature of the strip was such a groundbreaker on its first iteration that it kind of exists beyond the framework. The strip was, really, about the kids as they grew older. Growth was written into the premise.
The current run of FBOFW is more self-aware, I would add — I'm not sure Lynn Johnston had a clear vision the first time around and the strip was a continual work-in-progress until the last maybe five to eight years, which was part of its dynamic nature. There was an element of improv that you can't recapture but that added to the strip's appeal and to its historical significance.
In any case, I don't know where Susan, Maeve and Kim are headed. Perhaps the changes will be evident to anyone, perhaps you'll have to have an obsessive interest in the strip to pick them up. But it's good to see a cartoonist invested in the process of storytelling and not just in the process of producing the next month's run of strips.
And I'm getting a kick out of the current arc because I think Susan and I are in about the same place: Almost ready, but fighting the urge.
About two weeks ago, I went down to buy a six-month membership at the local gym and found out that, if I waited until next week, I would be a senior citizen and it would save me $75.
I have no idea what next week's excuse is going to be, but I thought that was a rather good one. We'll have to see what Susan comes up with.
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