John Darling was a comic strip about a talk show host created by Tom Batiuk . It appeared from March 25, 1979 to August 4, 1991.

John Darling was originally a supporting character in Batiuk's strip Funky Winkerbean. Popular with readers, he was spun-off into his own strip. The original artist was Tom Armstrong, who left the strip in 1985 for his own creation, Marvin, though he did return to draw the final three weeks of the strip. His replacement was Gerry Shamway .

Batiuk had a contractual conflict with his syndicate over ownership of the character, so he stunned readers by killing off Darling, leaving the syndicate with a largely unusable property. Darling was shot by an unknown assailant in the second to last strip.

In Funky Winkerbean, a character named Les Moore wrote a book on Darling's murder and solved the case in a 1997 storyline. Darling's daughter Jennifer appears in that strip as a minor character.

External link

• Toonopedia entry