For Better or For Worse – Comic strip characters to live on

“After a while, you kind of resent the fact that people think it’s easy, because it isn’t,” Johnston said of the daily slog to come up with new story lines and accurate depictions for her homey strip about an everyday Canadian family. “You really do have to work hard at this stuff.”

Millions of fans who have followed the Patterson family for nearly three decades in some 2,000 North American newspapers and in eight languages in 20 other countries were heartbroken to learn last year that Johnston intended to end the strip on its 28th anniversary this September.

What would happen to Elizabeth, the idealistic daughter of Emily and John? Would the teacher choose an old high school flame, a policeman or a helicopter pilot as her next beau? (An ongoing poll in the Toronto Star has Warren the pilot leading by 37 percent of respondents.)

And Grandpa Jim, who found new love late in life after the death of his first wife, Marian. Would he regain his speech after surviving a stroke? Would daughter-in-law Deanna come to terms with juggling motherhood, her meddling mom and professional life as a pharmacist?

The Pattersons’ delights and dilemmas will be revealed, Johnston assured the AP in a recent telephone interview from her home in northern Ontario. And her comic strip will live on.

Come September, however, her beloved characters will remain frozen in time.

Johnston, 59, decided she enjoyed her staff and respected her fans too much to let the Pattersons walk off into the twilight. So she devised a way in which she believes she can get some long-craved down time while pleasing her fans and distributor, Universal Press Syndicate.

Her characters will remain their current ages and the strip will bounce back and forth between new plot twists and repeats of old strips, a hybrid in the same vein as “Blondie” and “Garfield,” yet one that will allow new readers to connect with old characters.

“There will be consistent back and forth to what happened then to what’s happening now,” said Johnston. “But the characters will not change age; they will remain the age that they were when the story line comes to a full circle in September.”

This morphing of time will allow readers to discover, for example, that Michael and Deanna ? who now have two children of their own ? were once childhood classmates.

“You’ll see capsules of Michael’s children as they are today, but then you’ll see Michael and his wife as they once were,” Johnston said. “Many people, especially online, will not have seen any of the original material. So to those who have seen the material, they’ll look forward to seeing the time capsule, back and forth.”

Tom Spurgeon, executive editor of The Comics Reporter, a Web site devoted to news and views about comics, said Johnston’s strip is so popular, the hybrid is likely to work. He notes some newspaper editors continued to repeat “Peanuts” after creator Charles Schulz died in 2000 and believes Johnston’s following is as loyal.

Spurgeon said “For Better or For Worse” has worked so well because Johnston is one of the most “fundamentally sound” cartoonists in the business.