"For Better or Worse" heads to reruns

Lynn Johnston, who draws the comic strip "For Better or Worse," says she will stop drawing the comic and just offer reruns when the current story lines end. That means we will offer our readers strips that are nearly 30 years old.

If you are a fan, don't worry, I'm not proposing we drop this strip. People get very upset when we drop comic strips, and this has long been a favorite in Augusta. But for the life of me I can't figure out why people want to read 30-year-old comics.

Ms. Johnston has been easing into this rerun cycle by sprinkling in some of her old strips with current ones. I guess she got tired of giving us mental whiplash by bouncing back and forth from old to new drawings.

One of the things we have loved about "For Better or Worse" is that its characters age in more or less real time. It was like watching your own family change over the years. Not many strips do that and none has done it as well as Ms. Johnston has. Not only did the story change over time, but so did her drawing style. So viewing some of these old strips has made me cringe.

To me, this is no different than when one of the TV networks had a campaign during rerun season that said, "If you haven't seen it before, then it's still new to you." I laughed when that was unveiled and thought what a silly idea it was.

But that's what we're going to do with "For Better or Worse." I would much rather run something new and relevant to today, but we publish the newspaper for our readers, and they have told us before they love "For Better of Worse," even the reruns.

I would love it if some of  you who want us to run the old strips would explain that to me. Feel free to respond to this entry or send me an email at dennis.sodomka@augustachronicle.com.

Oh, and we have some changes coming to The Chronicle (none involving comics) that I'll tell you about next week.