For Better or For Worse - Re-runs

Re-runs

In the last panel, along with a caricature of herself at the drawing table, Lynn Johnston thanks everyone for supporting her and concludes with a reference to the story starting over with a mixture of old and new material beginning September 1, "If I could do it all over again... Would I do some things differently?... I've been given the chance to find out!! Please join me on Monday as the story begins again... With new insights and new smiles. Looking back looks wonderful!" The next day, Michael is once again a small boy, asking his young mother, Elly, to get him a puppy.

For the next twenty-two months, the strip ran a roughly 50/50 mixture of re-runs of early strips, and re-workings of 1980s strips that featured the original artwork (sometimes slightly retouched) with new dialogue. On July 12, 2010, without fanfare, the strip quietly switched to straight re-runs of material from the 1980s.

Cartoonist Stephan Pastis poked fun at Johnston's decision in his comic strip Pearls Before Swine. In the strip, Pig referred to For Better or For Worse as "that great strip that was gonna retire, but then did not, then started running repeats, then did not, then ran new ones, but then fixed up the old ones, and now is gonna run new old un-new new ones".