Today’s strip is just chock-full of dialogue, all of it loopy and stilted. At least someone uses a little tact when speaking about the late John Darling: his daughter. “A great self-appreciator” sounds much kinder that “egomaniacal jerk.” And it’s easier to accept that he used to “grate on people” versus “making their workplace a living hell.”
But…Darling’s murder “still a mystery”? Les wrote (and somehow published, despite losing the manuscript) a goddam book about it. Did he leave the last chapter out?
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Self Appreciator”?
How about megalomaniac like TB?
No…most people didn’t want to kill him…they just wanted him dead.
A subtle distinction there.
She did read “Falling Star” by Less More didn’t she?
She has talked with her Mother about all this hasn’t she?
Since Ohio has the Death Penalty… Plantman should have been lethally injected by now… what some 20+ years or so?
Wait a minute. Is TB seriously implying that “Fallen Star”, a book that SOLVED the John Darling murder case, did not reveal the killer’s motive? There’s an interesting take on the “true crime” genre. No wonder no one read it.
This is exactly why I never feel bad about shredding this fraud of a comic strip. After a week and a half’s worth of “self-appreciation” over the greatness that was “John Darling”, THIS is the best “story” he could come up with: to have Jessica ponder a mystery that one of his own characters already solved years ago! He’s ignoring his own strip’s continuity, paying homage to himself AND rehashing his own material all at the same time. And it’s STILL as uninteresting and dumb as ever. The degree of hackery on display here boggles the mind. And that dialog is so tin-eared you can actually hear it clanging.
I did enjoy panel one, though. Look at the way baby Skyler is struggling to reach that spoonful of food the Blonde Beatle is holding…welcome to Westview, kiddo.
Wait a second….in what part of Jessica’s interviews did she think there would be any useful information about John Darling’s assassination? If she wants to solve the murder shouldn’t she be looking over police reports and talking to the investigators of the case? Maybe try to speak to the associates of the suspects the police had.
I guess Jessica was hoping for an on camera confession from one of her father’s co-workers. Considering how hated John Darling was, this wasn’t that bad a strategy.
Oddly enough, although I can find a few references to who killed John Darling, I have been unable to find anything about the actual motive. I guess there are some things even the Internet’s vast wells of useless pop culture trivia are unwilling to touch.
@TFHACKETT, “But…Darling’s murder “still a mystery”? Les wrote (and somehow published, despite losing the manuscript) a goddam book about it. Did he leave the last chapter out?”
In the (how) many years that have passed since the book was published no one has yet completed the Herculean task of finishing it. Most poor souls have had their lives shattered never to recover after only reading the introduction. In fact it is now considered a crime against humanity to even show it to a prisoner.
So either now the murder was never solved, or Jessica was really doing this to understand why someone would kill her father even though she never mentioned this before, and she’s spending all her time looking for motivations among people who DIDN’T kill her father.
I actually despise this character.
It’s great how Tom Batiuk (rhymes with Ego the Living Planet) (and also Attic) really pulls you away from the dull story and the uninteresting characters!
Darrin’s dialogue in panel one seems inexplicable (he’s been watching the damned thing along with her), until I realized it was probably his way of saying “Sorry I fell asleep during the show, there.”
BTW, I think “A Great Self-Appreciator” should go into the Batiuktionary.
If my Photoshop skills were a little better, I’d have panel three Darin holding up a copy of “Fallen Star” in one hand while pointing at it with the other. His facial expression is a perfect match, too.
I also like how he makes sure to ask her how the documentary on her dad is going, as opposed to the many other ones she’s currently filming. I do not remember the original arc about JD’s murder but I cannot believe the motive was never mentioned. I’m sure some awful puns and bad wordplay were heavily involved too, if Pete Moss is any indicator. Man, that mind never stops churning, you know?
Darin: “….you just spent weeks being told by everyone who knew him (except for, um, your own bio-mom) that far from being a simple pompous Phil Donahue parody, your father was actually a vile, evil, icky-doody who everyone hated and feared more than anything on Earth. You read Les’ unpublished bestseller solving the murder. And you still have no inkling WHY your father, John Darling, was murdered?!?”
Jess: “Oh, yes, it’s just such an enthralling mystery! It makes me arch my brows while I think about bricks!”
Darin: “Bricks?”
Jess: “Yes, in the middle of conversations with you, I often project my brain outside, contemplating the many fine bricks that make up our building!”
Darin: “…*….I’m going back to feeding our disturbingly doll-like, lifeless looking son.”
Jess: “Hmmm. Why would anyone shoot John Darling? John Darling, my father, who was murdered? Hmmmm.”
I think it’s even WORSE than you think it is. That’s because I think that Girl With Daddy Issues has never even HEARD of the book Fallen Star. The glazed-over expression on her face and just being generally as stupid as her father tells me that tomorrow, she’ll whine piteously about the unfairness of no one ever having written a book of some sort to explain the inexplicable.
(The reason that I think that her cranial cavity is loaded with clingy styrofoam packing peanuts instead of brain cells is that she’s spent an eternity being told that her father was a despicable, short-tempered, tyrannical self-absorbed ignoramus who subtracted from what it meant to be human and can’t figure out why people want to dance on his grave.)
Your father, John Darling, was killed as part of a contract dispute between Batiuk and his syndicate, blondie. He never bothered put an actual motive in the story. It’s called “writing”, get used to it.
Later on, someone told him “Hey there, pal…you can’t just shoot a guy and not tell us who and why.” This dovetailed nicely with his need to make failed author Les into a success for once and after pulling a name and motive out of his sigmoid colon, the rest was broadcastingmythoughtscancerBLAM history.
Jessica reveals the amazing depths of her stupidity today. I’m afraid this doesn’t reflect too well on the intelligence of Dear Author.
Heck, she could have actually read the book and STILL not understand why people aren’t that sorry to see Daddy Who Was a GREAT MAN who would have made MY LIFE BETTER (no matter what MOM!!!! says) dead.
Let’s assume for the moment that Fallen Star is 250 pages of nothing but this:
Wouldn’t Jess want to interview Mossman? Wouldn’t Jess want to interview Les?
No! Instead we get puns and this: Jesso, how goes the doco on your daddo and his murdo?
It’s inevitable that she ends up having to interview Les about the murder. I hope she has a wide enough lens to capture the smug.
i THINK Imax makes a lens that big………
I just now realized the entire purpose of today’s strip–it’s that “great” and “grate” pairing in panel two. I think it’s supposed to be wordplay? Thanks, TFH, I eventually got the hint from the headline.
So…now that Tom Batiuk has made his pun, can we go home now?
Look at all of that extra space in the panel 2 word balloon… methinks TB’s editor finally had enough of “John Darling” following every utterance of “Dad” and took an X-acto to the text.
A commenter over on the Comics Curmudgeon uncovered a little more insight into the Les and Plantman storyline. Still, even this sharp-memoried fellow does not remember Mossman’s motivation being anything more than despising John Darling for being an awful human being.
@billytheskink
That…is amazing. I’m gathering from the precis that Plantman was just crazy, and John Darling was just a random victim. Which means that this entire storyline of all these video’d people telling Jessica what a horrible, horrible man her father was is completely pointless. No one killed John Darling because he was a terrible man, he just happened to get in the way of a bullet. The waste…it’s colossal.
Ultra-failure to Plantman, though, for not killing Les.
Of course it’s all a colossal waste. For his death to MEAN something would not be as depressing and life-denying as his just being the random victim of a lunatic.
Doesn’t understand “why dad was murdered'”? Has she even heard what the people she intervewered where telling her about John Darling, her father, who was murdered? Retconned John is not a self impressed blowhard in the manner of Ted Baxter, he’s not even a narcissit, he was an abusive monster with serious rage issues. Seriously Frankie, the rapist, had more human qualities. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed by an angry mob. The question is not why he was killed but how did he manage to live that long.
From billystheskink’s link, it definitely sounds like this whole episode is a complete rehash of that earlier Les storyline. So, at least there’s less Les, but on the other hand, wow: plagiarizing your 1997 self to do weeks of “secondary John Darling characters talk about what an awful guy he was.”
It is also possible if this is Batiuk’s conscience nagging him after all these years. Admitting you have a problem (in creating characters and motivations for actions) is the first step to correcting it, i guess.
Coming next week: During a touch football game in the park, Cayla discovers a lump in her breast, thereby kicking off a five year long arc that ends with her tragic death, but not before revealing that Owen is in fact her bio-son. I mean hey, why not? After all, everything old is new again, right?
“Coming next week: During a touch football game in the park, Cayla discovers a lump in her breast, thereby kicking off a five year long arc that ends with her tragic death, but not before revealing that Owen is in fact her bio-son. I mean hey, why not? After all, everything old is new again, right?”
Well, that would make it easy for Les. He could just word substute “Cayla” for “Lisa” and resubmit the book and screenplay.
The run would have to be renamed, say LiCay’s (pronounced “leaky”) or CayLi’s, and that would give Cory another chance to build up his fortune.