For Better or For Worse cartoonist embraces the life robotic in Alottabotz
Lynn Johnston quit For Better or For Worse in 2008.
But the beloved comic strip has never gone out of print and is now in its 16th year of reruns.
Meanwhile, the Canadian cartoonist has kept busy at her North Vancouver studio, producing colourful character designs for puzzles and other products.
In January, though, Johnston dropped the first three books of Alottabotz, a kids' series featuring the adventures of young Timothy Bot and his family and friends in Cyberland City. We talked to Johnston about the series:
Q When did you decide, “OK, it's time to actually put out a book?”
A A couple of years ago. My daughter and I decided to hire a marketing team and together we looked at all of the fabric designs that we've done.
I have done hundreds of designs for what is called surface design. But I couldn't find any fabric that was funny and fun and colourful that you could use for children's clothes or backpacks or, say, shower curtains. I had started making these designs thinking, “Gosh, this will be fun and somebody might be interested in them.”
But it was much more difficult to get into the industry than I ever would have imagined. So the marketing crew and I went through all of the fabric patterns that I'd done and we chose the robots.
That's the one that interests me the most and I decided to just focus on one set of images. And so we thought, “Well, as a challenge, let's do some children's books.”
Q Did you look to any classic robot films or anything like that in designing the robot world?
A When I lived in North Bay (Ont.), there was a robotics club and they were all young people and they were taking courses using Lego. Lego has wonderful robotic materials now that you can create all kinds of moving gadgetry with.
These kids started at a very, very young age learning robotics and then worked up to the high school level, where they have competitions with robots that control basketballs and dodge each other. Some of the robotics that the high school students were making were really ingenious and so I went to some of the competitions that they had against other schools.
Now time has gone by and there are these very lifelike robots coming out of Japan and elsewhere. It's fascinating, wondrous, exciting. There are companies now that are competing to see who can come up with the most amazing lifelike robots.
And some of them, of course, will be used for war, which is sad. But some of them will be certainly used for good and that's what interests me. And I know children love robots.
I still have a nine-year-old mind, I guess.
Q The books are aimed at three-to-five-year-olds. Did you have a test audience?
A Just our local family and friends. And there's a young man who lives in the complex where I live and he has two children, three and five. I gave him a set and they love the books. He wrote me a letter saying that he reads them to his kids every night and that they love to point out some of the things in the pictures, like robotic worms and bugs and flowers and birds.
Because I know that a little mind is going faster than you could ever imagine, I put as much in each drawing as I could without cluttering them up.
Q Will For Better or For Worse fans recognize your writing, say from some of the situations?
A It is a family. It's a mom, dad, kids, dogs and ultimately they will have ordinary family situations going on. But they live in a fantasy land with amazing, odd-looking trees and houses. It's quite different from For Better or For Worse, but I want my readers of the comic strip to know that the books come with the same fun and imagery and goofiness that I've always loved to work with.
And I know that they're going to enjoy these books. I really do.