Will ... not ... get sucked in ... to pointless ... Becky-April storyline!
However, I am finding it a bit odd that April has so rapidly turned on Becky after the whole "singing at grad" thing. (Uh, that's "turned on her" like a wolf turning on its prey, not "turned her on," in case you were confused.)
I mean, Becky could insult Shannon, get all roadside with the boys, and generally treat April like dirt, and all was well and good. But the minute she actually starts to exercise her own actual talent, April gets all huffy? Did April really think 4-Evah was the next Beatles, and Becky was their Yoko?
I was reading some old FBOFW collections over the weekend (hey, I've been sick! I still am!), and you know what? For a while I'd been thinking I was being too harsh on this strip, but reading the old books makes me remember that it was often quite funny and smart in the past, relying less on final-panel puns and more on actual, personality-derived humor. The Pattersons were actually allowed to make mistakes! They could laugh at themselves! Oh, I miss those days.
If you want to time-travel back there, I highly recommend "Suddenly Silver," the strip's 25th anniversary book. It includes long letters from Lynn, her husband, their kids, and others (including her sister-in-law, a vet, who helped design the "Farley dies" storyline), and it's a great trip down memory lane. I had forgotten totally about John and Elly's brother getting lost on a canoe trip; turns out it's based on actual events when Lynn's husband actually went temporarily missing in his small plane. Terrifying.
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2 comments:
But... didn't you know that teenaged girls randomly turn on their friends? (I keed, I keed, but isn't that how mainstream society views girl friendships?)
I've always said that the strip used to be a lot funnier. I have several of the early books, and they make the reader smile. I think FBOFW jumped the shark with Farley's death, and has slid into a self-aggrandized soap opera ever since. I keep reading it hoping that it will rediscover the lighthearted fun of its early days.
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