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Lynn Johnston interview - continued
But people don't get to talk about them like I do, unless they do to a therapist. People don't get to put them in the paper like I do. At 46, I'm still making mistakes, but I really think people are enriched by the bad stuff, and it should not motivate you to do bad stuff in return. I'm a product of my home, and I have wonderful friends, a wonderful husband and a wonderful family. All of that is good. I could easily have been torn apart by another bad marriage. I was just so lucky to have a wonderful life after a tough marriage. I often think you bring unhappiness on yourself, because if you don't like yourself very much, you allow yourself to be influenced by people who reinforce that. Heintjes: That's what prompted my question, because in years past you seemed not to really like yourself a whole lot. Johnston: Oh, I didn't. And I still don't. In a way, a certain amount of self-criticism is a good thing, because it keeps you humble. Realizing that no matter what success you've achieved, you can still make enemies makes you humble, too. The Lawrence series has been a very humbling experience! Heintjes: I want to switch gears here and talk about your early interest in comics. I find it interesting that some of your earliest comic influences were comic books, and not comic strips. In fact, you and I share some of the same early favorites - Little Lulu, Uncle Scrooge, Mad magazine. Johnston: Well, those were all fantasy comics. I was never interested in superheroes, though. In the superhero comics the men were always all-powerful, and I was surrounded by weak men. My father was meek, and every male teacher at school that I could browbeat into tears, I did. The men were my adversaries, in a sense. Heintjes: Did you enjoy Wonder Woman comics? Johnston: No. Wonder Woman was perfect, and I was fat and ugly. I knew I could never look like that, so I didn't want to look at her. I loved the Little Lulu stories, where she would fantasize that her bedroom rug would turn into a pool of water, and she could dive down into the center of the world. Or Scrooge McDuck with his money bin. I loved all that stuff. It was wonderful fantasy that seemed achievable by a child. And it wasn't ugly. There were no villains with guns. The bad guys were the ones who were going to steal your lunch money, or who were going to stop it from raining forever. Heintjes: Were comics permissible in your household when you were a child? Johnston: Yes they were, all the time. Because they were creative. The only thing that caused a problem was Mad, and that was only with my mother, because my father had a more raucous sense of humor. Heintjes: At that time, Mad must have seemed like an underground comic. Johnston: It was absolutely an underground comic. To my mother, it was like having a porno magazine. It was gross. She also didn't approve of The Three Stooges because they were so coarse. My mother was a lady. My grandfather had been a philatelist for King George V. He was probably one of the leading experts on forgeries. My grandmother was an opera singer who worked for a portrait painter who worked for the royal family. So of course they hobnobbed with the upper crust. And my mother married a guy whose father was a shipyard worker in Collingwood, Ontario. My father's vocabulary was so big only because he was a voracious reader and taught himself to speak properly. So my mother was from the aristocracy and my father was from the bush, so she was shocked when we were captivated by something as crass as The Three Stooges. One time I whacked my brother over the head with a piece of celery to see if it would shatter as effectively in reality as it did when The Three Stooges did it, and it did! It has to be fresh, though. [laughter] Heintjes: Did you ever poke him in the eyes? Johnston: No, but my brother and I tried to kill each other many times. My father would encourage us to stage-fight behind my mother's back. He knew how to do the pratfalls without hurting himself, and he didn't mind The Three Stooges. Heintjes: What sort of creative influence did comics have on you? Did you ever try tracing any of your favorites? Johnston: No, never. I never wanted to trace people's work. I would try to draw cartoons from time to time based on other peoples' stuff, but I just wasn't happy copying anybody. If I took elements of anybody's work, it was Len Norris of the Vancouver Sun. He was my father's absolute idol; he just adored the man and had all of his books. He was an editorial cartoonist, and his drawing was just exquisite. It had a British sort of sarcasm to it. He had been an architect, so his renderings were just absolutely beautiful. He always gave you extra stuff to look at. If there was a painting on the wall of the ocean and the painting was tilted, the water was still perfectly horizontal. If there was a bird cage, all you would see of the bird was its feet, because it was obviously dead. I always appreciated that, because not only did you have all of these extra jokes, but you had 10 minutes of looking at all of these drawing thrills. Heintjes: You've mentioned in the past that your grandfather would sort of pontificate on each of the Sunday comics, and you differed with him over Peanuts. Johnston: Well, when I was a kid, my grandfather was not a nice guy. If you talked to other people who knew him, he was a great guy with a sense of humor, and he was somebody they enjoyed knowing. But to me, he was a sadistic, black, haughty, unattainable ogre. I always felt his disappointment in me. I hated him and wanted him to love me at the same time. As a child, you work so hard for the approval of a grandparent or a parent. You want them to love you, and you'll do anything, even if it means being silly or acting out. You want them to notice you and you want them to care, even if it's not positive care. You want something out of them. My grandfather used to lavish all sorts of attention and affection on my brother, while he virtually ignored me. He would give my brother 50 cents and he would give me a nickel. Right in front of each other. My grandparents lived on this wonderful piece of property that ran up to the train tracks behind their house. It overlooked a very rocky landscape. Behind the house they had peach trees, and we would grab the peaches and wait for the train to go by, and if the peaches were rotten enough, they would smack off those passenger trains' windows like you wouldn't believe! [laughter] We'd get bulls-eyes and yell "Yahoo!" And that seed in the middle of the peach would hit the window with that satisfying "click." One day in the peach trees I found a robin's nest with a perfect little robin's egg in it. I came running down the hill with it, and my grandfather was sitting in front of the house with my brother, and they were making string baskets with their fingers. I guess I was about 8 and my brother was about 6. Anyway, I said, "Look what I found! Look what I found!" I was so excited! And my grandfather said, "The way to keep this is to make a tiny hole in the end of it and blow the material out so you can preserve the shell." So he got a needle from the house, and I was so excited that I would have this robin's egg. As he was about to puncture it with his needle, he turned to my brother and said, "And I will give this to you." And I said, "But I found it! It's mine!" And my grandfather turned to my brother and said, "As I said, I will give this to you." Then he lifted up the bird's egg close enough to his face so he could see what he was doing, and he popped the needle in, and the egg must have been rotten, because it blew up in his face and covered it in the yuckiest muck. I was thrilled! I remember thinking, "There is a God."
COMMENTARY FEATURES INTERVIEWS SKETCHBOOKS CLASSICS LINKS Copyright@1997-99
Hogan's Alley Magazine. All rights reserved. |
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Johnston:
Sure, I've had some bad times, but everybody does. 
