Give it up for spacemanspiff85 and everyone else who hosted since my last turn! 2022 has been a hundred miles of bad road to hoe, or whatever they say out there on the fertile Ohioian plains. I genuinely enjoyed learning all about various local Cleveland area TV hosts of the 1900s, as that was on my personal bucket list. It’s a lengthy list. Now on to today’s piece of crap.
Hey, that’s no way to talk about Tony. Yesterday, it appeared that perhaps BatYam was humanizing Mitchell a little bit, making him a little more sympathetic and relatable and such. But it didn’t take, as Mitchell is a full-on dick again today, snarling in psychotic collector’s rage over some idiotic John Darling (Jessica’s father) trinket he saw on Montoni’s wall. The look on his face there in panel two is WAY out of proportion to the dialog, but Batty does that a lot lately.
One thing he NEVER fails at, though, is ensuring that his little stories never make a lick of sense, right down to the tiniest, most insignificant details. For example: two weeks (!) ago, Flash and Chester were talking about Mitchell in hushed weirdo tones, like he was some sort of mythical recluse. Yet he frequents Montoni’s, too. How can both be true? I mean, Boy Lisa used to work at Montoni’s, in the breakfast pizza app development department. Surely he remembers the overweight comic book weirdo, and…oh. That’s right. Never mind.
Re: The “Crankshaft” Mason Jarre crossover thing. I tried, but I just can’t. Reading “Crankshaft” just cuts against my grain, and I can’t bring myself to do it. Feel free to discuss it freely, if you must. Trying to juggle THREE Batiuk strips is just way, way too much to ask of anyone.
Son of Stuck Funky 
And, thanks to his last words in Panel Two, Mitchell Knox vaults ahead of….well, Wally’s service dog, I guess, as my new favorite character in this strip.
Does this mean Montoni’s has the only autographed photo of John Darling in existence? Given that John Darling once invited himself to host the Muppet Show… I would think he’s the kind of guy who would sign every photo of himself that he would come across.
We sure Frankie is Darin’s bio-dad, and not Flash Freeman/Fairfield?
I like to think that Frankie is the illegitimate son Flash and Ruby put up for adoption, making Dillweed their unwitting grandson.
Also, Funky once sold Starbuck Jones #1 to help keep Montoni’s (and Komix Korner) afloat… but he wouldn’t sell an autographed photo of John Darling.
Priorities priorities
That photo of John Darling kills the cockroaches, so Funky not only saves a bundle on insecticide, but he can save even more by using the dead roaches as olive substitutes. And there’s no bug-spray odor to make the customers ask if Montoni’s is offering a new type of pizza.
Well, the S.O.B. in question could be Montoni himself. Who may have wanted more than the Barnaby fingernail clippings Mitchell offered as payment…
The John Darling strip ended August 4, 1990. That was early Act 2 and supports the theory that Tony would have still been the owner of Montoni’s (although Funky was working there by then).
I wonder how much of the established history TomBa is going to retcon as he tries to sync the timelines.
Assuming that TB “tries to sync the timelines” is giving him way too much credit.
OH MY GOD WHO THE HELL CARES ABOUT ANY OF THIS?
And it’s going to drag on for another week.
Please, it’ll drag on for much longer than that. Possibly for years and years and years and….
Oh! Wait! You mean just this arc! Okay, yeah, that’ll probably drag on for another week. But surely you can see where I thought you were talking about the strip as a whole….
Oh, we’ll be lucky if it’s only another week, considering we haven’t even gotten to the part where Jess dares to ask if she can buy a memento from Mitchell, prompting him to shriek “Thief! Thief! It comes to steal the precioussss! We hates it! We hates Barbie forever!”
Almost forgot: I wanted to thank everyone for the kind comments on my post the other night. High praise, considering the sources.
Say what you will about Batty’s work, but there’s no denying it can be inspirational. Sure, it mostly inspires scorn and derision, but still…
Does this make Darrin Ken?
I started out wondering since this story started with The Daughter of My Father John Darling wanting some memento of Her Father John Darling, had she not noticed the autographed picture of Her Father John Darling in Montoni’s all this time? It would be a nice shaggy-dog joke if it turned out that was always there and she never noticed.
But then I got to thinking if this is The My Father John Darling Set, like, did Channel One clean out the blood stains after My Father John Darling got shot or did Mitchell Knox clean them out or is some thirty- or possibly forty-year-old blood set in the TV Carpet and chairs there? This is a terrible thing to start wondering and I’m sorry for putting it in your heads but, like, you know?
It may be dark, but it’s a totally fair question…
The opposite. He snuck in and, with a mat knife, lovingly removed every scrap of carpet, upholstery, and drywall with a bloodstain on it.
Wait till Jessica Darling, daughter of John Darling Whowasmurdered, sees the surprises in the spotlit, polished trophy boxes in the next room.
He wasn’t shot on or near the set:
It appears to happen in a hallway of some sort.
Peter Jennings!!
It’s worth noting that John Darling and Act I Funky worked because they used archetypes we all know (martinet school band leader; dumb cheerleader; shallow, egomaniacal local news guy), and also real people like Peter Jennings (shown resembling his real self, doing something his real self would do).
Contrast with current TomBa: Every single character is incoherent, annoying, and/or a huge jerk — and an author avatar. Real-life personalities are used, but are either dead (Barnaby, the Phantom Menace cast, et al) or bear no resemblance to any human, let alone themselves (Bill Clinton).
It should be noted that the John Darling artwork wasn’t done by TomBa. Initially the artist was Tom Armstrong followed by Gary Shamray. (I notice that the penultimate strip shown upthread was done by Armstrong.)
So who is “Bob Vojtko”?
Re “Bob Vojtko” – I found this at the linked web site.
“Ohio-based cartoonist Bob Vojtko started his comics and cartooning career in underground comix, creating stories such as ‘Doctor Budt Cures Agin!’. He was a regular contributor to the Cascade Comix monthly, and has also appeared in Hustler magazine.
If anyone can tell us more about this artist, we would be very grateful. Send biographical details, strips published, comic links or scans to Lambiek by email.”
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/v/vojtko_bob.htm
But the 8/3 strip is signed Armstrong/Batiuk between Panels 2 and 3.
Interesting. Perhaps Votkjo did some earlier work on the strip (maybe Shamray left and was replaced by Votkjo?), and whomever was creating the banner credit up top never bothered to make the change for Armstrong’s return. (With the strip ending the next day, why bother?)
“But the S.O.B. who runs Montoni’s wouldn’t sell it to me! Watch as a change my face to match his.”
“I will collect anything having to do with John Darling Who Was Murdered!”
“Do you have a copy of ‘Fallen Star’, the book by Les Moore that solved the murder of John Darling Who Was Murdered?”
“Ugh, no, I do have standards.”
(Alternate punchline: “Yeah, I got boxes of them. Some bearded weirdo was selling them at three copies for a nickel. Man, did I get ripped off on that deal.”)
Oh, I wouldn’t doubt Fallen Star, by the Oscar-winning Les Moore, will get namedropped this week. There is no point to this story other than Batiuk giving himself an excuse to talk about his favoritest things.
If is Mitchell saying this:
🤯
But if is me reading this:
😂
In the past, I’ve disagreed with some here who praise a few of Puff Batty’s Act III efforts. But it’s time to admit the man has some skill.
How anything can be so bizarre and creepy AND also so bone-crushingly boring is beyond me, but somehow he pulls it off. Bravo, Bats.
Grrr! Only the tippy-top of the characters appear in my comment box. I’ve deleted and re-installed but no joy. Any suggestions?
1. So both FW and Krankenschaaften today have decided to sit in a holding pattern and reinforce what the audience already knows or could have easily assumed… Day off for me, I guess…
2. LET US ALL LAUGH AT THE MOST HILARIOUS CLEVELAND BROWNS! THAT EPIC CHOKE JOB WAS DEDICATED TO YOU, TOMBA!!
This explains why this guy is the Pizza Monster who haunts Montonis every Halloween scaring customers He is haunting Montonis because somebody there won’t sell him the autographed John Darling picture!
The Pizza Monster…I apologize in advance to whoever gets stuck with that one this year.
So there are no bloodstains? Blast! I was hoping Batiuk would do something a quarter-inch from reality, like have Joe Kablichnik salvage a DNA sample, clone John Darling and revive his talk show. “Let’s cut to Westview Hospital where that renowned mohel, Phil Actery, will perform a briz on live TV!”