Story’s end leaves us far better, not worse

The end of the world is here: Lizardbreath has married Blandthony. Grandpa Jim has been clinging to life. Our protagonist, Elly Patterson, is a Kleenex-clutching mess, as ever.

Somebody says something disgustingly pithy every panel now. The family comic-strip saga “For Better or for Worse” (known to some as “FBOFW,” and to others simply as “Foob”) is coming to a close, in a cataract haze of soft focus.

Foobsters everywhere, weep. Creator Lynn Johnston is semi-retiring, repurposing her archives beginning with Monday’s strip. A comic that unfolded in real time – year by year, in which characters aged and changed and sometimes even died – will now only look backward, with enhanced reruns.

As a farewell, Johnston seems to have made an extra effort to drench last week’s wedding of Elizabeth Patterson and Anthony Caine (if you read it, this is bigger than Luke and Laura) in even more sentimental goo than faithful readers have come to expect.

And so, on that note, let us honor a particular kind of “For Better or for Worse” devotee: the haters.

These are the many millions who live to despise every last thing about the strip, and, as such, have never missed a day. For them, Foob has never been worse: worse puns, worse sap, even worse life choices. (Which, in a sick way, means “For Better or for Worse” has never been better!)

Elly became intolerably sentimental as a retiree, after she sold the bookstore. Her husband, John, the dentist, retreated into a symbolically sexless world of model railroads.

Their son Michael hit it big with a best-selling novel (About what? We never learned) and he and his wife, Deanna, bought the old Patterson family home, somewhere in the suburbs of Toronto.

Little sister April Patterson’s band, the Archies-esque 4-Evah, broke up, then got a new singer, making them 4Evah & Eva.

Elizabeth (aka Lizardbreath) gave up her new life teaching native people in the Canadian hinterlands to move home and marry Anthony, her boring high school boyfriend.

If all of this means nothing to you, then carry on with your life.

For everyone else, let’s take one more opportunity to cringe.

True Foobsters loved to underscore their particular peeves: the way the characters ate (“smork, chomp, chew, smack”) or laughed with their mouths open and tongues out.

Some loved to hate Elly’s obsession with housework, or Deanna’s blankly pretty face and lips.

So why did we spend the last three decades absorbed in the lives of the most boring people in Canada?

Truly understanding “FBOFW” requires more subtextual skill than, say, loathing “Cathy” or “The Family Circus,” where nothing ever changes, where nobody ever ages. “FBOFW” kept evolving, as did its magnificent ability to irritate.

On whom can we now direct our darkest wishes for tragedy? Jeremy from “Zits”? Who is worthy of both our love and our scorn?

Farewell, sweet Lizardbreath.