A precious, tiny baby and the family dog are sharing a moment. They are both on the floor, happily munching on the canine's food. When a parent discovers them, they look up from their feast with smiles, and dog food, on their faces. This scene of family disarray comes courtesy of Lynn Johnston, the creator of the "For Better of For Worse" comic strip, where this tableau graced the cover of her book, Things Are Looking Up. When it comes to chronicling the problems and phobias of the typical North American family, no one does it like Johnston. Her drawings of the fictional--but believable--Patterson family are seen in hundreds of newspapers in the United States and Canada, and "For Better or for Worse" has consistently been voted as one of the top five strips in reader polls.

"For Better or for Worse" developed out of many of Johnston's...