# Why do you like For Better of For Worse? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 11, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620 "2007-01-11T22:51:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2007, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/21 "2007-01-12T18:01:41Z")
I don’t like it, nor do I like Baby Blues or Garfield. Unfortunately (in this situation), I read so quickly that to pass over the strip is to read it. Imagine the effort it took not to claw my eyes out when my paper used to run Mary Worth. ---
**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/22 "2007-01-13T00:26:48Z")
I take extra trouble to skip over FBorW every day, because it’s stuck in the middle of my favorite comics site: [http://home.overzealous.com:8080/comics/index.html](http://home.overzealous.com:8080/comics/index.html) [http://www.comics.com](http://www.comics.com) > **[Today's Comics Online | Read Comic Strips at GoComics](https://www.gocomics.com/)** > > Welcome to GoComics.com, the world's largest comic strip site for online classic strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Baby Blues, Non Sequitur, Get Fuzzy, Luann, Pearl Before Swine, 9 Chickweed Lane and more! > **[King Features Syndicate | Our Brands](https://kingfeatures.com/our-brands/)** > > The world’s premier distributor of comics, columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and gaming brands in print and digital formats for Sunday, weekly, daily and online newspaper publishers around the globe. ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/23 "2007-01-13T04:31:03Z")
I read it daily for years, but as it started to get more soap operatic and preachy, I had to give it up… it had just got too lame for me. I can’t sustain an interest in a form of entertainment that makes me want to slap fictional characters upside the head for being morons. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/24 "2007-01-13T07:31:26Z")
[QUOTE=cmkeller] Krokodil: How old are you? Sure Doonesbury started out looking like crap in its VERY early days, but already by 1974, the art was excellent. [/QUOTE] I’m 45, **Doonesbury** reader since 1971. However much the artwork has improved over the years–and by that yardstick alone, it’s pretty good–the artwork was never its big draw. If you were to make a list of the top ten, hundred, 500 most beautifully-drawn comic strips of the last century, **Doonesbury** wouldn’t make any of them. **FBOFW** would. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/25 "2007-01-13T13:58:25Z")
[QUOTE=Krokodil] I’m 45, **Doonesbury** reader since 1971. However much the artwork has improved over the years–and by that yardstick alone, it’s pretty good–the artwork was never its big draw. If you were to make a list of the top ten, hundred, 500 most beautifully-drawn comic strips of the last century, **Doonesbury** wouldn’t make any of them. **FBOFW** would. [/QUOTE] You’ve got to be kidding me. The characters in FBofW often look similar enough that I sometimes need a scorecard to tell them apart, and I’ve been reading it for years. I’m convinced that the only reason Anthony has a cheesy pornstar moustache is to make him look different from all of Elizabeth’s other male “friends.” She can’t draw a nose properly either Besides, even without that, it certainly deserves unseating for the “animated” strips on her website in which characters **blink** at you, among other things. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/26 "2007-01-13T14:02:12Z")
And the dumpy butts. And they’re always prominently on display. ---
**Author:** ![Deaf\_Geek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3be4f8/32.png) [@Deaf\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deaf_Geek)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/27 "2007-01-13T23:26:51Z")
> [@](#): > > September 9,1979 according to Wikipedia. WOW…it’s almost exactly as old as I am (born the day after) ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2007, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/28 "2007-01-13T23:32:26Z")
> [@](#): > > The characters in FBofW often look similar enough that I sometimes need a scorecard to tell them apart, and I’ve been reading it for years. Yeah, like that. I was saying to my partner last night that I keep being surprised in the three FBoFW threads running right now when people recount past storylines, because the characters are all so similar-looking that I can’t even remember which one was in what story arc. ---
**Author:** ![Squeaker\_Snow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Squeaker\_Snow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squeaker_Snow)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/29 "2007-01-14T02:48:04Z")
Just my opinion, but I think the strip “jumped the shark” when Elly got pregnant with April. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/30 "2007-01-14T07:16:47Z")
Personally, I read it for its rare glimpse into the domestic life of that most exotic of foreign species, the Canadian! 😃 One time one of the strips mentioned Thanksgiving, and my newspaper inserted a line explaining that the strip was set in Canada where Thanksgiving takes place in October. I was just a wee bit insulted that they felt they had to explain that to me. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/31 "2007-01-14T08:06:02Z")
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig] I was just a wee bit insulted that they felt they had to explain that to me. ☹ [/QUOTE] Ah, but they weren’t explaining it to _you_! They were explaining it to Erma and Cletus down at the Shop ‘n’ Go. ---
**Author:** ![Gr8Kat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gr8kat/32/18668_2.png) [@Gr8Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gr8Kat)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2007, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620/32 "2007-01-15T01:51:57Z")
I read the strip faithfully when I was a kid, and Mike and Liz were also kids. I thought it was a lot funnier back then. It started losing me around the time April was born, though. The other kids were growing or grown up, and the strip took on a more serious, issue-oriented, soap-opera-esque tone, and the adding of a new baby seemed forced to me. Until that point, the strip had been somewhat based on Lynn Johnston’s real family, but April was a complete fiction created to recapture the original child-rearing aspect of the strip, and I didn’t think it worked. I used to love it, but now I think it’s meh. Anything pre-April, though, is still gold. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-like-for-better-of-for-worse/387620.md?page=1)