Sean Huxter - For Better or for Worse

During production of Modern Ways strip I discovered Lynn Johnston lived in the same town as my girlfriend's sisters in Manitoba.

I had been reading up on Lynn and her strip was a regular read of mine at the time. I had her first book of For Better or for Worse.

I called her up out of the blue and asked her if she'd sign one of her books for me if I sent it to her. I also had the gall to ask if she gave away her original strips. (A book I had read on cartooning said that many cartoonists often She said that she didn't, that she sold them in a Toronto gallery for $150.00 each. Satisfied to get an autograph, I hung up (after a fairly long conversation, where she was very kind and considerate, and did not rush me off or hurry me in any way.) So I sent the book to her, with one of my original strips. A few weeks later I got a package back with the book, autographed to me, and my strip back with a note saying that I really would want this later in life. She also included... one of her original strips! I kid you not.

This led to months of writing back and forth. She even offered to critique some of my strips, so I photocopied some and sent them to her. She wrote comments directly on the photocopies and sent them back. At one point she even sent me pen tips. Speedball C-6 tips, the same ones she used. Naturally those were the pens I used to create the second version of "Modern Ways". I also used her strip to measure out my own format, and after that my work improved greatly.

Somewhere I still have Lynn's comments on my strips, but they're in storage. When I find them I'll post them here.

I just wrote Lynn a letter, the first in decades, to let her know how much I apprciated what she did for me back in the early 1980s. She's a truly good person.