IDW Collecting For Better or For Worse in Library Editions

For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library Volume 1

There are few long-running comic strips recognized as so important and affecting as to have their entire run collected in handsome hardcovers. Some of them include Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Bloom County, and of course, Peanuts. Now comes the first (I can think of) created by a woman.

Beginning in October, IDW will be releasing For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library by Lynn Johnston. The series, which ran from 1979-2008, will be collected in nine hardcover volumes. It was the story of the Patterson family, everyday Canadians who aged in real time, and their friends and neighbors.

Two of the best-known storylines revolved around the passing of the family’s dog, Farley, while rescuing a child in 1995 and the coming out of one of the characters in 1993, which caused a minor controversy at the time.

For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library Volume 1

The first volume collects all the daily and color Sunday strips from the strip’s debut in September 1979 through the end of 1982, accompanied by occasional context notes and comments by Johnston, the first woman to receive the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society. The book will list at $39.99 for over 500 pages of strips in chronological order.

“The strip reflects the experience that we readers shared,” says co-editor Lorraine Turner. “Life is like a tide that ebbs and flows — raising children, caring for aging parents, and accepting the aches and pains of getting older. Lynn Johnston allowed us to witness — and sometimes laugh at — a part of ourselves through the eyes of her characters.”



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