'For Better or For Worse' going back

When it comes to blink-and-you-missed it marriages, Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger, Britney Spears and that high school flame of hers, even Eddie Murphy and Tracey Edmonds can't hold a candle to Elizabeth Patterson and Anthony Caine.

If you say "Who?" you're one of the few who don't follow the daily happenings in "For Better or For Worse," the syndicated comic strip that appears in more than 2,000 papers worldwide.

Regular readers know that Elizabeth and Anthony are about to get married. So why wouldn't their marriage last? Because by Sept. 1, Elizabeth will be a toddler again.

That Monday, creator Lynn Johnston plans to reboot the strip, using new comic strips drawn in the style she used in 1979 when the strip started.

According to a news release from Universal Press Syndicate, the strip's syndicator, Johnston will begin retelling the Pattersons' story from the beginning, "eventually blending at least half of the classic original comic strips with new material."

"I'm starting right at the very beginning -- when Elizabeth was a little crawling baby and couldn't say too much, and Michael was in kindergarten," Johnston said in the news release.

"Everything in September is new, the punch lines, the drawing, all are new," she added. "The only thing retro is the way I'm drawing everything. I want it to flow into the classic material seamlessly."

For the past year, "For Better or For Worse" has been a blend of new and old storylines as Johnston approached her planned retirement. "At first I thought that I could segue back and forth from today to yesterday, but that became very confusing," she said in the news release.

Johnston, 61, said her split with her husband led her to change her mind about fully retiring. "Because I don't have to work 365 days of new material into a year, I can still take some time off to paint and travel," she said in the news release. "I'm considering this a renewal, not a retirement."