Happiness Quote by Lynn Johnston

It starts small: one sibling, one drawing, one uncontrolled fit of laughter. Then it quietly swells into a manifesto about art as leverage. Lynn Johnston frames her origin story not around talent or ambition, but around a live, intimate feedback loop. Her brother is described as an "audience" before he is described as family, which is telling: the domestic space becomes Johnston's first stage, the place where a private sketch can trigger a public reaction.

The repetition of "laugh and laugh and laugh" does more than mimic the sound of it. It captures comedy's addictive escalation, the way a joke stops being a joke and becomes a shared atmosphere. That he wants to "keep the picture" matters too. Laughter is fleeting; a cartoon is portable. The kid's impulse to hold onto the image is an early lesson in how cartoons turn a momentary feeling into an object you can revisit, show, and treasure.

Then comes the pivot: "what power that was!" It's not the sinister kind of power; it's the dawning recognition that a drawn line can move a body, change a mood, tilt a day. Coming from Johnston, whose work in For Better or For Worse proved that comics can carry both punchlines and real life, the subtext is clear: humor isn't escapism. It's agency. It's a way to earn attention, to connect, and eventually, to tell hard truths without losing your reader.