Opportunity Lost

Moving away from the narrow realm of comic books for a moment, into the newspaper comic strips.

I'm not sure if you read For Better or For Worse or not, but in one of the recent storylines, Liz (the middle daughter of the family) was attacked at work. In many ways, I see it as being an opportunity lost.

I'm not one of those people who says that Johnston shouldn't have written the issue of attempted rape. (Note, they keep using the term "sexual harrasment", but the way the comic shows it, attempted rape fits far better.) However, I just don't think it was smoothly handled. In particular, in two ways.

To give you an idea what happened (it all plays together). One of Liz's co-workers was starting to show some very strong stalking behavior, and eventually, at work, he attacked her. (See the Aug 10-11 strips )

She's rescued by an old flame whose marriage is on the rocks. He then chooses that moment to try to rekindle things with Liz.

From a storytelling point of view, I have two major problems.

1) The Anthony angle really intrudes on what is going on. It removes the focus from the attack and sends it in another direction. It could have worked, but it would have been tricky. If Johnston was creating a situation where Liz was being shown two very unhealthy relationship "styles" (for lack of a better way of saying it), it could have worked, but is rather iffy. Add to that, Liz has a history of bad relationships (at least one doozy).

2) The whole attempted rape thing largely has been dropped. They may come back to it, but aside from one little "side point" where Liz said she'd talked to the cops, we haven't seen any of the consequences play out. Now, in the "letters" on the FBOFW website, we find out that Liz has also seen a counselor, and that the attacker is looking at serious jail time. That's great. That's what I want to see, but those things should be in the strip, not somewhere that maybe 5% of readers will see it.

I don't have a problem with doing the storyline. Stories like this can bring light onto important issues that aren't addressed often enough. My complaint is that it hasn't been followed up on. Show Liz talking to the cops, the counselors, all of those things. Don't just create a situation and then drop it.

As I said, maybe it will come back later in the story, but even so, too much momemtum has been lost.