Funky Winkerbean is a reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues affecting young adults…
Unfortunately, the young adults in this case are Darin and Jessica Darling Fairgood. Their “reality” involves starting a family while he’s an MBA assistant-managing a pizza parlor, and she’s a documentarianne whose project about her father has been stalled for two years. Speaking of stalling, today’s strip does nothing to move this story along.
Epicus Doomus
April 25, 2013 at 10:53 pm
[N]ote how once again the premise (“Jessica is pregnant”) IS the entire “story”, not merely a launching point for something more…
And the “story” enters its second week. “So are you two planning to look for a house? Or do you intend to live in a succession of seedy apartments in run-down neighborhoods, like Fred and I did?” Such trivial matters will have to wait: Jessica’s decided, now that she’s pregnant with her first child, it’s the perfect time to get started on that John Darling documentary, one of the things that brought her and Darin back to Westview two years ago.
I’m trying to find her dad too. For a comic strip that ran for eleven years, there’s not a lot to be found on the web about John Darling (and I don’t mean Wendy’s brother from Peter Pan).
There are entries on Wikipedia and Toonopedia. There’s an out-of-print collection on Amazon ($40 used!), and if you’ve got time, a YouTube clip where somebody pans across some JD strips collected in a scrapbook (!).
But there aren’t a lot of strips to link to online, probably because the comic ended its run before the internet got underway. JD certainly appears to have been better drawn that TB’s other projects (the art was mostly by Marvin cartoonist Tom Armstrong) in an appealing, chunky 80’s fashion. Most of what can be found on the web mentions that Batiuk was in a dispute with North America Syndicate, and decided to kill his character so that the strip could not be continued.
I mention all this because, if Darling was a real-life figure, a talk show host who was shot to death on live TV…would there not be a pretty fair amount of material to be had online and elsewhere, even 20 years later?
Inside: Jinx looks at her camera and wonders “Where do I put the film?” while Jessica gives some background on the documentary she’s making (that no one is going to see). “I moved back here to Westview…to interview people who knew my dad…who was a TV personality in Cleveland.” Makes sense, I guess. Outside: Bull allows himself to be made to look foolish and weak by a sixteen-year-old girl.
Major thanks once again to Stuckfunky for a stellar week of guest blogging!
Today we find Delicate Genius Les in a particularly magnanimous mood. He sure is het up about getting Darin and Jessica to stay in his home, and uses the occasion to crow about that book of his that we thought never got published.
(I’ve taken the liberty of ratcheting up Les’ already-insufferable smugness a few more notches [right]).
And what a sport: he’s going to get MBA Darin an interview at Montoni’s Pizza. Darin takes all of a nanosecond to take Les up on his offer, much to the delight of tiny-fisted Summer.
Son of Stuck Funky 
