Author: Rick Marshall

After 29 years of For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston is ending her long-running newspaper comic strip… and then she’s starting it over again.

Say what?

In the same week that Nicholas Gurewitch announced that he’ll be moving Perry Bible Fellowship into semi-retirement, Johnston recently announced that she’ll be doing the same — albeit with a different definition of "semi-retirement" — to her long-running series.

According to ChicagoTribune.com, Johnston plans to tie up the series’ current plot threads by September, then relaunch it from the beginning, running strips from the start of series and "augmenting" them for present-day presentation. She also plans to redraw strips for which the original art is missing.

The semi-retirement has been long in the making, as Johnston has been peppering the series with "flashback" strips since September 2007 in preparation for her retirement. This move to the "hybrid" strips has caused some confusion among regular readers, and has led to at least one newspaper announcing that it will drop the series once the current run is completed and before the relaunch kicks off.

As of now, readers are seeing present-day strips on some days, and old strips — some from as far back as 28 years ago — on other days. Some readers have expressed confusion because they don’t realize some of the strips are old. They think someone else is drawing it on the days when old strips appear, because Johnston’s earlier drawing style is significantly different from her current one.

According to Johnston, returning to the early years of Better or For Worse creates a new set of challenges for her as an artist:

"The work that I’m doing now is very structured," she says. "The characters are much more realistic. I draw every brick on a building. The way I used to draw was much more fluid and easygoing and big expressions and lots of slapstick. … I would like to go back to that, and I think I can."

Garth Ennis ends his four-year run on the Marvel MAX Punisher series next month, but fans won’t have long to wait for his next project. War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle #1 hits shelves the same month.

War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle features the return of Phantom Eagle, a Marvel character who first appeared in 1968. In this interview with Publishers Weekly, Ennis discusses his decision to leave Punisher, the draw of war-themed subject matter and his affinity for adult-oriented fare.

“Writing for adults has always made sense to me. The [backwards] nature of the comics business, with most people writing and drawing stories under the restrictions of children’s/teen’s publishing, is something I find rather frustrating—particularly as the actual audience is mostly well over 20,” said Ennis. “That doesn’t mean every single story should read like The Punisher; it just means you should have free reign to write each story as it feels appropriate.”

Ennis also hints that return to the Punisher character is certainly plausible, as he is the "kind of character you never completely say goodbye to."

(And yes, we realize that PW referred to the character as "Iron Eagle" — it’s an understandable mistake. The movie certainly was a classic.)

For more on War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle, conducted this interview last month with Nick Lowe, the editor of the series.