Well, the big new collection has just arrived in the bookstores and it’s a bit of a let-down. What we have is more or less an extended version of the Meet The Artist section of the website. We have the spot art. We have the old newspaper clippings. We have a more or less scattershot intermixture of strips at random interspersed with Katie’s attempt to explain her mom to the world. What we also have are the following interesting revelations:
- The reason that Lynn and her mother never managed to patch things up is that it’s quite likely that Mrs Ridgway hoped in vain for the day that Lindy would finally realize that her mother wasn’t some sort of backbiting dragon who can only find fault and only said things like “It’s nice BUT here’s where you didn’t do it right” in order to lovingly show her where she could stand to improve.
- Also, Lynn had the habit of blowing up and called her a backbiting dragon who HATES her and can only find fault with her and Mrs Ridgway took offense because she could never figure out that Lynn is a deeply insecure and needy person who needs praise in order to function.
- The reason that Lynn hates gum is that an elementary school teacher made her chew a whole case of the stuff because of her habit of leaving huge wads of it under the desk for the custodian to clean up.
- She blew off art school because she thought the Canawest thing was a career and didn’t feel like crawling back in disgrace.
- She does admit to being strongly influenced by Doug Wright but doesn't own up to stealing from him.
- It does seem as if there was a mass exodus from Lynn Lake; she didn’t want to join the herd and move to Winnipeg and hated the idea of going back to Vancouver so joined friends in Corbeil.
- She responds to our presence by being her core self: a blubbering infant who can’t and won’t tell the difference between constructive criticism from people who don’t understand why she doesn’t have any faith in herself and being torn down by people who hate her.
- She insists on telling her nonsense story about her dystonia because the truth is absobloodylutely devastating.
- She boasts about creating those garish-looking dresses.
Also, Katie gets some person to write a scholarly look at how the strip evolved from "inept housewife screams at children as she moves the dirt around" to the strip we loved before it devolved into "horrifying and brutal farce in which a war was declared on strawmen."