In the summer of 1978, I received a call from the syndicate asking if I’d like to write for a strip called Heads and Tails which had been submitted by a commercial artist named Tom Armstrong. It consisted of celebrity caricatures along with some sort of humorous bon mot accompanying them. I told them that I preferred writing character driven work and suggested they use a talk show setting as the raison d’être for bringing in celebrities to interact with the cast. The syndicate called back and said “What have you got?”. Actually what I had was a character named John Darling and the cast of a small Ohio TV station. Along with talk show host John Darling, there was Phil the Forecaster, sportscaster Mike Majors, and news anchors Brenda Harpy and Charlie Lord. These characters all lived in the Funkyverse and had been growing and developing almost since the strip’s beginning.
The syndicate and Tom A all liked the idea so John Darling and the cast of Channel One decamped from Funky and took up residence in their own strip John Darling. The above strip was from when JD still resided in Funky.
