Lynn Johnston

This is a gorgeous rarity from a comic strip artist - a FULL COLOR PAINTING! Yes, this is a beautiful watercolored original from For Better or For Worse comic strip artist Lynn Johnston that she created for a calendar a few years back! Just note, though, that while the watercoloring is real, the ink lines are printed on the paper. Lynn told us that her original strips have all been donated to the Canadian Archives, and are no longer available. This makes her original strip art a precious rarity now, but even more rare are pieces such as this that she created of her comic strip family, the Pattersons. Here is the family all dressed for a special occasion looking helplessly for little April who is hiding up in a tree. The art is on a 15.5x13.25” piece of watercolor paper, with the image measuring at 9.5x7.5”. It comes triple matted and ready for framing. 

Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse has been delighting readers around the world since 1978. Following the lives of a suburban family, the strip’s characters and stories have always been relatable to millions of people. And why shouldn’t they be relatable, since Johnston was often inspired by her own family and those around her. For Better or For Worse was also the unique comic strip where everyone aged in real time. So the situations and humor was never locked into a family with perpetually little kids, or parents forever in their early thirties, and the stories were free to explore the highs and lows of life. The strip continues today, after having gone through a reboot in 2008 where Johnston took the family back to the early days of younger years.

Click on art for an enlarged view!