Lynn Johnston FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE-Original Farley Pencil Sketch for Sale

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Lynn Johnston FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE-Original Farley Pencil Sketch For Sale

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Lynn Johnston FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE-Original Farley Pencil Sketch:
$164.43

Original signed pencil sketch of 'Farley' by Lynn Johnston ...For Better or For WorseFarley's deathSince the comic happens in real time, it became apparent that the Pattersons' first Old English Sheepdog, Farley, was starting to get fairly old. When he is 14 years old (April 18, 1995), Farley saves four-year-old April from drowning in a stream near the Patterson home. Farley cannot take the shock of the cold water or the exertion of saving April and dies of a heart attack.
The death provoked a lot of reaction from fans. "People's emotions were kind of raw," said Johnston of the time. "I received 2,500 letters, about one-third negative. I didn't expect the response to be so great. The letters were open and emotional and honest and personal, full of stories and love."
When Johnston told fellow cartoonist (and close friend) Charles M. Schulz that Farley was going to die, Schulz jokingly "threatened to have Snoopy hit by a truck if Johnston went through with the plan". In the end, Johnston kept the timing of Farley's death a secret from Schulz.
The official For Better or For Worse website has a section dedicated to Farley; this includes the strips depicting his heroism and death, plus a selection of "Farley's Spirit" strips. Farley was also named after Canadian author Farley Mowat, a long-time friend of Johnston.
Johnston has allowed the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association (OVMA) to use Farley's name and likeness for the "Farley Foundation", a charity established by OVMA to subsidize the cost of veterinary care for pets of low-income seniors and persons with disabilities in Ontario.
For Better or For Worse

In 1978, the Johnstons and their two children relocated toLynn Lake, Manitoba. She was asked byUniversal Press Syndicateif she was interested in doing a comic strip. She sent twenty copies of a strip calledThe Johnstons, based on her family "since we were the only people I knew I could draw over and over again with some consistency."Much to her surprise, the syndicate approved of the initial strips and offered her a twenty-year contract.After a six-month "work-up" period, the strip first appeared in newspapers throughout Canada under the titleFor Better or For Worse. The strip has been carried by about 2000 newspapers in Canada, the U.S. and 20 other countries.

Many story lines draw from her family's real-life experiences. Her main characters are named after the middle names of her husband and children, with the exception of the mother, as Lynn Johnston has no middle name. Instead, she elected to name the protagonist Elly, in honor of a friend of hers who died at a young age. Her friend and Canadian comedianMichael Boncoeurinspired the controversial story about Lawrence'scoming out. Deanna was based on Aaron's high school sweetheart, who died in a car accident years after their relationship ended. Johnston's niece Stephanie is developmentally disabled and her experience is shared in recent story lines on the integration of developmentally disabled students in April's class. Elizabeth's teaching career was based on daughter Kate's decision not to pursue a career in education, but provided Johnston with a chance to imagine how that might have turned out.

The characters inFor Better of For Worsehave aged in "real time". On August 31, 2008, Johnston herself appeared in the Sunday strip, which was supposed to be the end of the cartoon, and announced that she would take the story back nearly 30 years to soon after its beginning, with half of the material to be new and the other half repeats.[4]The "new" material was actually reworked versions of older strips with retouched artwork and new dialogue that was sometimes only tweaked to use modern expressions or product names in place of older ones. On seldom occasion an entire strip or a panel has been redone, such as Michael or Elizabeth spanked being turned into a "time out". One spanking strip that remained was a story arc where Michael was spanked by John for hitting another child, and it percolating into a discussion with Elly that she disagreed that spanking was the proper remedy (although she agreed with John that Michael's violent attitude had to be nipped in the bud). Other strips, such as Elly getting annoyed and then hurling something at the back of John's head (such as a coffee cup) were also censored. As the strip was a family strip, issues of throwing a hard object behind someone's back raised issues ofspousal abuse.