Conversations with Lynn Johnston

Canadian cartoonist Lynn Johnston (b. 1947) is best known for creating the comic strip For Better or For Worse. This widely acclaimed strip debuted in 1979 and ran until 2008 before being reintroduced as reruns. It chronicles the lives of the Patterson family and, more specifically, new mom Elly Patterson, as she tries to manage a household and family. For Better or For Worse is celebrated for its relatable portrayal of everyday family experiences and, notably, for the way the characters age in real-time, adding depth and authenticity to a narrative readers return to again and again. This book, presented in sequential order, offers a collection of interviews with Johnston ranging from 1980, shortly after the debut of her best-known work, to a conversation with Kate Beaton and Raina Telgemeier at the 2014 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, to a new, unpublished interview with editor Jeff McLaughlin conducted in 2023. Many of the early interviews were published in Canada and are presented to US readers for the first time. These interviews explore the evolving narrative of For Better or For Worse, including the introduction of a gay character—a historical moment in comics—in the early 1990s and the death of the beloved family’s dog. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1994, Lynn Johnston has wrongly been overlooked by comics scholarship. This book seeks to establish her in the comics canon and offers readers an all-encompassing study of the creator and artist behind one of the most enduring comic strips still being published in reruns.

Jeff McLaughlin is professor of philosophy at Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, British Columbia. He is editor of the groundbreaking Comics as Philosophy as well as Graphic Novels as Philosophy and Stan Lee: Conversations, all published by University Press of Mississippi. His teaching and research interests include applied ethics, critical thinking, popular culture, and the Holocaust.