2007-06-20

The End of the Mustachio'd Menace?

This may not come as a surprise to my nearest and dearest, but I have a serious problem.

I am unreasonably fixated on "For Better Or For Worse."

It started innocently enough. Here's a strip where the characters actually AGE. The children grow, develop acne and their own useless opinions, and flee the Patterson nest (although with Michael actually buying his parents' house, this no longer is completely true). It's a refreshing contrast to those unholy imps in "The Family Circus," with their freakishly huge heads that haven't aged a day since the mid-fifties or when-the-fuck-ever. I digress. It's a real-time comic, and I applaud this even as I wince at some of the storylines of late. Well, ALL of the storylines, really. I think Lynn Johnston is starting to hate the Pattersons, and Elizabeth in particular. How else to explain the fiasco that's been (pun intended) drawn out for the past couple of years?

Oh, yeah. I'm talking about Anthony, the Mustachio'd Menace.

There is much, MUCH hatred for Elizabeth's milquetoast ex-boyfriend out there on the interwebz. I am comforted in the fact that I am not alone, either in my repulsed-yet-fascinated inability to stop reading this strip or my gut reaction to seeing this dude rear his creepy, mustachio'd head every couple of weeks: I retch just a tiny bit.

Elizabeth has had some chiseled hunks of manmeat since leaving university, and they have all invariably turned out to be cads. The more pronounced the jawline, the more of a cad -- this seems to be the formula. And Anthony has been lurking in the shadows all this time, twirling his creepy fucking mustache and mooning over her like the spineless pussy that he is. About once a month now we see him, living alone (but for his small daughter, who as we all know was abandoned by his bitchy ex-wife a couple of years back) in his sprawling suburban compound, with his nice sweaters and - presumably - a small stash of Elizabeth's underwear. And about once a month I think, "No...NO. These two cannot get back together." And I unleash my misdirected fury over the situation via the magic of Photoshop.

So when Elizabeth attended Shawna-Marie's wedding last week and met the hunky best man, I thought, "Okay, so maybe this will work out for her. He has a very chiseled jawline, sure, but maybe he won't be a cad. And Anthony's bringing someone else as his date." Now, I consider myself to be something of an expert as far as this strip goes. I can predict storylines WEEKS in advance, which always creeps the houseboy out. So it came as a shock to me when Lynn Johnston did the unthinkable. SHE GOT RID OF ANTHONY'S MUSTACHE.

What in the holy hell?!

My theory here is that Johnston has finally gotten word that her readers LOATHE and DESPISE Anthony, and because she's bound and determined to marry these two off, she has attempted to make him more palatable to us by removing the flavor saver. Won't work. He's still a creep.

lisamcc at 9:13 a.m.

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