For those of you who are new to the Funkiverse: Jessica must always follow the words “my Dad” with “John Darling.” And for those of you who understandably are unable to recall where she left off with her documentary…well, the last time she even mentioned it was almost a year ago…
…right before she got sidetracked and derailed by the return of Darin’s “bio-dad” Frankie, and, after that, giving birth to a son. Now armed with her trusty old VHS camcorder (and her copy of Les’ first book) our Jess is set to re-re-resume her quest. There’s a surprising note of self-deprecation in panel 3, and I wonder if it comes from Jessica or from her creator: remember she’s been telling everybody about this supposed documentary since she and Darin popped up three years ago…
Son of Stuck Funky 
No Winkerbeans? So there IS a god. Thank you. Of course, Boy Lisa isn’t much of a step up, but bad variety is still variety I suppose. And look, it’s finally stopped snowing in Westview!
John Darling. Oh yeah, Jessica’s deceased dad, John Darling. So she’s finally at long last getting to work on her long-rumored documentary about her father, John Darling. It’ll be a lot tougher now with BoyBoy Lisa in the picture, not to mention the fact that her AV club contact at WHS is in college now. Not that it matters anyway because as she herself admits, it’ll never actually happen. And yikes, is that head of hair getting unruly or what? Women and hair…Batom’s long-time bugaboo.
“Didn’t we have a baby at some point…?”
“Nah, I’m sure we would have remembered or there would be visual evidence of it somewhere, right?”
Darin Fairgood, Harry Dinkle, Les Moore, John Howard and Cory Winkerbean all walk into a bar and order a beer.
“Sure,” says the bartender, “that’ll be $18.50 each.”
After a while he wanders over to their table. “Say,” he offers, “you know, we don’t get many insufferable douchebags in here.”
“And at these prices,” they answer, “you won’t get many more!“
Imagine that. Jessica… Fairgood(?) has decided that her life should consist of more than bland domestic warmth and is going to resume her lifelong, if stupid quest.
So given the last couple of months, what’s the over-under on some random stranger just giving her a video of the REAL story behind her father, John Darling, along with giving her permission to re-edit it as she sees fit without attribution to spare her the indignity of having to actually WORK for her goals?
“Crankshaft” last week, “John Darling” this week, springtime must be self-indulgence season in the mid-central Ohio valley. I like Darwin’s posture in panel one, like as soon as he saw that camera he was instantly defeated as he knows what’s coming. I also like that exterior shot of the Montoni’s building with the rain pelting down. It’s such a grim scene, like something out of an old Soviet bloc city or something. Imagine having to live AND work there day after day, it almost makes me feel a tad sorry for ol’ Boy Lisa. Almost, but not quite.
A challenge for anyone who does comic strip edits. Can you work John Darling into every speech balloon Jessica has?
On the plus side, Panel 3 may be the best artwork we have ever seen in a Funky Winkerbean weekly strip. The characters actually seem attractive.
“I also like that exterior shot of the Montoni’s building with the rain pelting down. It’s such a grim scene, like something out of an old Soviet bloc city or something.”
@$$$Westview… Yeah, the art is not too bad, did Bats break his foot again?
A challenge for anyone who does comic strip edits. Can you work John Darling into every speech balloon Jessica has?
“Can you work John Darling into every speech balloon Jessica has?”
Probably template balloons containing “MY DAD, JOHN DARLING” so that only the other words have to be filled in.
“The best part is the lone figure prowling the sidewalk under a black umbrella. Are they braving the miserable weather to eat at Montoni’s (who delivers…) or to visit Komix Korner? Whichever one is sadder, probably… a determination I find very difficult to make.”
The stairway on the side of the building looks like the ones you climb to get into those schools that sell training for all those occupations that won’t recognize the certificate from the school…………….
Perhaps this was once the site of the documentary film maker school….
I think OSHA is going to have a thing or two to say about that staircase (more like a fire escape ladder) to the apartment. I’m more interested in its design than this story arc. Who designed such a staircase to stand with a lone flimsy support? Was it St. Joseph himself, or just a hacky contractor?
–Are they braving the miserable weather to eat at Montoni’s (who delivers…”–
*GASP* And miss out on the social networking scene that is Montoni’s!
It’s been, what, twenty years since her father, John Darling, was murdered, is that right? And since Les “Genius” Moore solved the mystery of who killed him (it was probably either Cory or Cell Phone Girl), I can’t imagine there’s a huge amount of public interest in a documentary about him.
Has this been explained? Is she making a documentary just for her own sake, or is there an audience for such a film?
I know, I know, stupid questions all.
Holy Crap!! I didn’t even think about this until you pointed it out. The stairway to Boy Lisa’s upstairs apartment isn’t even protected from the elements? That must have been real fun going up and down those steel stairs with the stroller in the winter with 8 inches of snow on the ground.
She’s gonna finish before tanning season? Ambitious. And probably looks good in a bikini.
She’ll never actually “do” anything. These JD references exist for the same reason Lisa keeps popping up all the time despite being dead for seven years, TB loves to remind his readers of his “past triumphs”, so to speak. He just wants his “fans” to remember the good old days, back before he murdered his JD character out of spite. And it’s funny, because I guarantee there aren’t ten people on the planet who even remember the JD strip.
And yeah, that staircase is an absolute death trap. Imagine trudging up that thing at the end of another app designing shift, blech.
“My Dad, John Darling” is the name of my next punk band.
“She’ll never actually “do” anything.”
Does ANYBODY actually do anything in Westview?
It looks like a company town with a self contained “economy” that might be used in a sixth grade textbook chapter on economics for children.
The currency is apparently pizza slices.
Gotta admit, Darrin’s awfully tolerant of his wife who doesn’t appear to have done anything besides lay around for the last three years.
It’s weird too, because if we had gotten the impression that Jessica had been working all this time in a different job, (because let’s be honest, she’s not making money as a filmmaker) it would make a fair amount of sense. She does a little bit here and there, starts and stops and sometimes decides to start anew, because she’s working sixty hours a week selling coffee or processing bank forms, and we could probably forgive her not getting much accomplished over three years. Instead, we see her constantly talking about this but not ever moving one step.