Lynn Johnston bibliography


This is a list of works by Lynn Johnston, Canadian cartoonist.

Pre-''For Better or For Worse'' works

David, We're Pregnant! Hi Mom! Hi Dad!
  • ''Do They Ever Grow Up?''

''For Better or For Worse'' collections

Strip collections

These collections, published by Andrews & McMeel, contains reprints of the comic almost as it appeared in the daily newspapers. Although, many of the early books such as Keep the Home Fries Burning and It's All Downhill From Here do not contain Sunday strips. The Sunday collections cover Sundays up until around 1985. However the Sundays from around 1986-87 were not published in an FBorFW collection. You can find them all at fborfw.com. They are listed in chronological order; each book spans about a year in time. They lag approximately two years behind the strips' original publication. For example, She's Turning Into One Of Them! was published in 2006, containing strips dealing with April's 13th birthday in 2004. Michael and Deanna's wedding in the book With This Ring was published in 2003, two years after their 2001 wedding.
  1. I've Got the One-More-Washload Blues...
  2. Is This "One of Those Days," Daddy?
  3. It Must Be Nice to Be Little
  4. Just One More Hug
  5. The Last Straw
  6. Keep the Home Fries Burning
  7. It's All Downhill from Here
  8. Pushing 40
  9. A Teenager in the House
  10. If This is a Lecture, How Long Will It Be?
  11. What, Me Pregnant?
  12. Things Are Looking Up...
  13. There Goes My Baby!
  14. That's Not How They Do It on TV!
  15. Starting from Scratch
  16. Love Just Screws Everything Up
  17. Growing Like a Weed
  18. Middle Age Spread
  19. Sunshine and Shadow
  20. The Big 5-0
  21. Graduation: A Time for Change
  22. Family Business
  23. With This Ring
  24. Reality Check
  25. Striking a Chord
  26. Never Wink at a Worried Woman
  27. She's Turning Into One of Them!
  28. Teaching... is a Learning Experience
  29. Senior's Discount /
  30. Home Sweat Home /
  31. Just a Simple Wedding /

Treasury collections

In 2010 Andrews McMeel began publishing Treasury collections of Johnston's work. The collections include reprints of the original strips and the new-run strips from 2008 onwards. Various strips include insights written by Johnston about the inspiration for a strip or story arc.
  1. Something Old, Something New
  2. In the Beginning, There Was Chaos
  3. Making Ends Meet
  4. ''It's One Thing After Another!''

Sunday collections

When the first collections appeared, the Sunday strips were not included in them - only the dailies were included. Instead, the following two 'Sunday' collections were published. Each book contains full-color reprints of 79 Sunday strips. While the strips appeared in the Sunday paper each week, and thus are part of the overall storyline, they are not included in the list of the "Chronological" collections and are not mentioned on the official "For Better or For Worse" website. These books are:
  1. More than a Month of Sundays: A for Better or for Worse Sunday Collection
  2. ''Our Sunday Best: A for Better or for Worse Sunday Collection''

Retrospectives

These books include a 'retrospect' section, and usually some autobiographical and/or "behind the scenes" information. In particular The Lives Behind the Lines has biographies of all the major and many minor characters, including information not otherwise explored in the strip. The first two books also include the year of most recently printed comic strips.A Look Inside... For Better or For Worse: The 10th Anniversary Collection It's the Thought That Counts... Fifteenth Anniversary Collection Remembering Farley: A Tribute to the Life of Our Favorite Cartoon Dog The Lives Behind the Lines: 20 Years of For Better or For Worse All About April: Our Little Girl Grows Up!
  • ''Suddenly Silver: 25 Years of For Better or For Worse''

Little books

These "little books" combine character illustrations from the strip with inspirational text or verse.Isn't He Beautiful? Isn't She Beautiful? Wags and Kisses A Perfect Christmas
  • ''Graduation: Just the Beginning!''

Gift books

Gift books are similar to little books, but are in a larger format.So You're Going to Be a Grandma!
  • ''I Love My Grandpa!''

Tor Books

In the early 1990s, Tor Books published a series of standard-paperback strip collections.
  1. It All Comes Out In The Wash
  2. Grandpas Are For Jumping On
  3. Happiness Is A Warm Puddle
  4. Another Day, Another Lecture
  5. You Can Play in the Barn, but You Can't Get Dirty
  6. But I Read The Destructions!
  7. Shhh -- Mom's Working!!
  8. It's A Pig Eat Chicken World
  9. Misery Loves Company
  10. ''Am I Too Big To Hug?''

For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library

A book series which collects the complete run of For Better or For Worse, published by American Comics.
Background
The series was first announced in March 2017 with a planned release date in October the same year.
It was presented that the series would comprise nine volumes in total, three each per decade of the strip's original run. The books was to be made with the input from the creator, Lynn Johnston, while being edited by Dean Mullaney, Kurtis Findlay and Lorraine Turner at LoAC. This For Better or For Worse complete series became the first non-American comic strip title to get a own collection in The Library of American Comics' line of publications. In November 2017 the first volume was finally released.
Format
The volumes of this series measure 11 inches × 8.5 inches,, oriented in landscape view and are hardcover. The daily strips are reproduced in black-and-white and the Sunday pages in full color, both arranged in consecutive chronological order.
Compared to most other books series from LoAC the volumes of this one lacks sewn ribbon bookmarks and dust jackets but this is compensated by the high page count at around 540 pages per tome. The MSRP of each volume is set at $39.99 to $49.99.
Due to a misprint, volume five of the series paper stock came to be a semi-glossed type. The sixth and following volumes will go back to have the matte paper stock originally used for all other books of the series.
Kurtis Findlay assembled all the cartoons with help from Katie Hadway and Stephanie Vandoleweerd, web designer and archivist. Findlay also wrote introductions and had the role as a overseer of the project. Since this edition is a "Complete Library", a lot of material that had been neglected or discarded from previous trade paperback collections have in this series been included. Notes to the plots have been added to the margins by the creator, taking up reader reactions, own insights, even occasional regrets. The paper stock is of thick good quality.
Color restoration
Every Sunday strip has been recolored in order to make the collection more cohesive in between the different decades of it and also making it more appealing to contemporary readers. When the comic industry started its migration over to digital coloring in the early 1990s the whole coloring process changed. The effort to recolor these later years of the strip therefore are a different story. One challenge was the for 2020s standard low resolution original print files, the for its era high resolution digital files used during those years of the strip.
Amendments
The comic strips' original run ended in 2008, however, Johnston continued to update some of the older strips and also created a number of new strips in order to expand upon some storylines and character development, as well as fixing older continuity faults. After 2010 she felt she had accomplished this and stopped adding new additions to the strip once for all. However she still to this day fixes minor flaws, like updating cultural references for the strips that are in reruns, e.g. changing a SNES controller to a contemporary equivalent, and adjusting the retail price of coffee. All the significant changes will be included in the volumes of this series.
Volumes
VolumeRelease dateTitlePeriodPage countISBN
12017-11-14“For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 1”September 9, 1979–January 1, 1983544
22018-07-31“For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 2”January 2, 1983–July 5, 1986544
32019-07-16“For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 3”July 6, 1986–December 9, 1989544
42020-03-24"For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 4"December 10, 1989–April 24, 1993544
52021-01-12"For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 5"April 25, 1993–August 31, 1996544
62022-03-23"For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 6"September 1, 1996–January 1, 2000536
72023-10-03"For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 7"January 2, 2000–May 3, 2003544
82024-03-26"For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 8"May 4, 2003–July 29, 2006512
92024-11-05"For Better or For Worse: The Complete Library - Vol. 9"July 30, 2006–August 30, 2008496

Other FBoFW books

Leaving Home: Survival of the Hippest : An instructional book about single living for young readers who have recently permanently moved out of their parents' home.
  • ''Laugh 'n' Learn Spanish : Featuring the #1 Comic Strip "For Better or For Worse"''