Джон Дарлинг: Комикстің тарихы

American comic strip by Tom Batiuk

John Darling is an American comic strip, created by Tom Batiuk, a spin off of his earlier comic strip Funky Winkerbean. John Darling appeared from March 25, 1979, to August 4, 1990.

John Darling, a talk show host, was originally a supporting character in Batiuk's strip Funky Winkerbean before being spun off into his own strip. Much of the strip's humor came from Darling's outsized ego, quirks, and frequent displays of ignorance; in one strip, he interviews musician Prince, asking him "Exactly which country are you a prince of?" Other featured characters were Darling's co workers at "Channel One", the TV station where he worked, including ratings obsessed producer Reed Roberts; clueless old school anchor Charlie Lord; shrewish reporter Brenda Harpy; and insecure weatherman Phil. The strip also featured a large number of parodic appearances by celebrities (often being interviewed by Darling); this was such a feature of the strip that numerous newspapers carried John Darling on their TV page, rather than the comics page. Sunday strips generally included two panels of "TV Trivia" content otherwise unrelated to the strip as a whole.

John Darling debuted in March 1979 in 22 newspapers. The strip's original artist was Tom Armstrong, who left in 1985 for his own creation, Marvin, though he did return to draw the feature's final three weeks. John Darling wound down in 1990, as writer Batiuk by his own account was growing tired of the work it involved. Perhaps even more of a factor was that the strip was no longer financially remunerative, as it had been dropped by numerous newspapers. With John Darling having been dropped by a number of newspapers over the years, the syndicate decided the strip was simply no longer profitable, and allowed it to die. Batiuk, who had a contractual conflict with his syndicate (King Features Syndicate) over ownership of the character, stunned the strip's remaining readers by killing off Darling in the next to last strip. (The final strip featured other characters gathered around Darling's gravesite.)