Poster Y. Knott and I have been talking about Tom Batiuk’s history of Pulitzer Prize nominations, and I need to correct the record about something.
Tom Batiuk was a genuine Pulitzer nominee once, in 2008, for the year of work when Lisa died. You can view the list of Pulitzer winners and Finalists for the Cartooning category at https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/215. He was not a finalist in 1987, which I’ve long incorrectly claimed he was. So that’s my fault, and I apologize to poster Y. Knott for not checking my facts first. I have a journalism background and I need to be better than that.
He also wasn’t a finalist in 1999. This is relevant because of a certain post on his blog:
[Jay Kennedy] also nominated two of the stories in this volume for a Pulitzer Prize.
https://tombatiuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Match-to-Flame-144.png
However:
Since 1980, when we began to announce nominated finalists, we have used the term “nominee” for entrants who became finalists. We discourage someone saying he or she was “nominated” for a Pulitzer simply because an entry was sent to us.
https://www.pulitzer.org/page/frequently-asked-questions
So Tom Batiuk basically wrote a book foreword/blog post to congratulate himself for getting a recommendation letter. And proudly showed off that letter. Even though he wasn’t a finalist. Even though he got a legitimate Pulitzer nomination later.
This is the kind of thing conspiracy theorists and other dubious hucksters do. They call themselves “nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize” when this is meaningless, even if it is technically true. The Nobel Committee makes a similar instruction that the Pulitzer does, and explains why: “Hundreds or thousands of nominations are received for the Nobel Prize every year… in theory anybody could be put forward for a prize and as such being nominated is in no way an endorsement by the Nobel Prize. ” It’s the academic equivalent of stolen valor. “Harvard alumni” is another variant, popular in web ads for dubious inventions.
This bit of résumé padding inspired me to wonder what awards the “award-winning Funky Winkerbean” has actually won. I can confirm:
- He was a 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalist, as outlined above.
- Comic-Con’s Inkpot Award in 1999.
I’m going to stop right there and declare the answer “Yes.” The Inkpot is a big deal, despite being given out to a large number of people across many disciplines. The 2008 Pulitzer nomination is prestigious enough that “it’s an honor just to be nominated” applies. These are the two that get mentioned the most in his biographies, and they compare well to the peak achievements of other cartoonists. The Reuben Award is conspicuously absent, considering the C-tier comic strips that have won it. But let’s not nitpick…
…okay, now let’s nitpick. After those two, his awards closet gets a little iffy. And a little IPPY.
- A Bronze IPPY Award (Independent Publishers Association) in 2015.
Apparently he’s so proud of this one, he posed it with his recent blog photo of Funky Winkerbean Volume I. Twice. And does this sticker look bronze to you?
The IPPY has also been accused of being a “profiteering award,” that exists only to charge expensive entry fees and sell add-on products to nominees. It was awarded in Gold, Silver, and Bronze levels for 78 different categories the same year Funky Winkerbean won it. Just to be clear, he won the bronze, though you wouldn’t know it from the above photo. (The actual medal is a little less egregious.)
Other awards. I can’t confirm most of these, but have no reason to doubt them.
- The Crankshaft book Roses In December was a finalist for 2016 Ohioana Book Award. It didn’t win.
- Nominations for the 2016 Eisner Award for both The Complete Funky Winkerbean Vol. 4 and Roses in December. Neither won. The official website doesn’t keep a list of nominees from past years.
- A Silver Nautilus Award in the “Grieving/Death & Dying” category in 2008. I can’t confirm this, because the official website’s lists of past Nautilus Award winners only goes back to 2015. Like the IPPY Awards, it is given to several books a year, at multiple levels, across dozens of categories.
- The “Friend Of Education” Award from the Ohio Education Association in 2002. The official website does not maintain a list of past winners.
- 2001 Ohioana Citation in the Field of Art by the Ohioana Library Association.
- A Ohio Governor’s Award in 1996. The official website says “Contact communications@oac.ohio.gov for more information about past winners.”
- This list of awards that are even smaller, more local, more specific, and less verifiable.
- Probably more, but nothing that’s likely to change the overall perception.
Compare that to the list of awards won by Charles Schulz (Peanuts) and Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), Jim Davis (Garfield) and others. Berke Breathed actually won the Pulitzer for Bloom County. Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Jeff MacNeely (Shoe), and Doug Marlette (Kudzu) have also won it, though mostly for editorial cartooning as opposed to their comic strips. Gary Larson (The Far Side) has a species named after him. Randall Munroe (online comic xkcd) has a planet. Schulz received a Congressional Gold Medal and has been on postage stamps.
If you’re a college basketball fan, you hear a lot this week about team’s “résumés” for entry into the NCAA Tournament. If Tom Batiuk was a bubble team, he’d be James Madison. One legit win, one legit loss that’s nothing to be ashamed of, and a whoooole lot of Tier 4 wins. Nothing in between.
Funky Winkerbean wasn’t the most award-winning comic strip in history, but it’s definitely the most award-giving comic strip in history. But that’s a post for another day.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Chien: Miss, you’re going to have to leave. Right now.
Still Gabby says
Bj6k— Jean Chance and John Griffith would not be happy with your fact error 🙂
TB’s claim of being Pulitzer “nominated” reminds me of the handful of college football programs that have decided to hang national championship banners for pre-poll era seasons where their teams were retroactively declared to be national champions by glorified historical societies. Decoration determined by a few and recognized by very few more.
Meanwhile, this description of The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 9…
… may be the most entertaining thing Tom Batiuk has written since the Clinton administration. So much so that I’m not entirely sure he wrote it (though he did use that insufferable Roman feast bit on his blog). TB successfully, if likely inadvertently, using an entertaining TV Trope?! Can it really be?
Ah, another good Batiuk blog post for volume 9 there.
Tom, it’s a blog post. A ONE-PARAGRAPH blog post. You can take as much room as you need or want there. (And given the word zeppelins you cram into a comic strip, it’s a little late to be thinking about how much word space you’re using.)
That’s not a saying, Tom. Stop trying to make it one.
“Roman feast”, “stunningly spectacular and staggeringly sublime” and “really takes things to the next floor” are what I call Writerese. “Purple prose” is another word for it.
It’s flowery, but meaningless and unnecessary. The purpose is to show off how clever the writer thinks they are. It backfires, because the writing would be better served by simple words that convey their meaning… whatever the heck that is.
Which is the real problem. Writers like this have nothing to say, but they desperately want you to think they do.
In the immortal words of the Black Lectroid Commander in “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” “So what? Big Deal!” Just this past week I received a notification, hand-delivered by the United States Postal Service, from a well-known publishing clearing house informing me that I may already be a winner!
He thinks he’s this misunderstood genius when he’s actually Harry Dinkle: a pompous, blustering, self-important nobody who’s kind of a sinister joke….mostly because he isn’t in on it.
The Dinkle comparison is spot-on. That blog picture of FW Volume I is a hilarious bit of self-parody. It’s got a sticker pf that stupid IPPY Bronze award, and he’s got the medal itself hanging from it, like Dinkle’s Belgian sales medal he apparently wears 24-7. But it never says “bronze” anywhere.
It’s one of over 250 medals they gave out just that year. And Batiuk basically bought it for himself, like a royal title for the sad little kingdom for he wants to be the ruler of. It’s exactly the kind of thing Dinkle – or any vainglorious fictional character – would do.
And the Sunday Crankshaft is a follow-on from last week when Ed wants very much to not admit that there’s a surlier, less sympathetic and eve more inconsiderate driver coming up the ranks to steal his phony crown.
More Flash Fridays!
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/flash-fridays-the-flash-326-october-1983/
And at the end of that 28-issue story… the book was cancelled. Maybe there was a lesson to be learned there, Tom?
(Okay, in fairness, the end of The Flash coincided with the start of Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which one of the major events was the death of Barry Allen. I’m not entirely sure at what point that decision was made, and if they cancelled The Flash because of Crisis, or if they chose to kill Barry because of cancelling his book, or if it was some combination of the two. Still… Batiuk’s own two-year story arc was what caused him to skip into Act III, a change the strip never recovered from over the next 15 grueling years.)
Anyhoo, some fun with his “Behind the Books” blog post while we’re at it.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/behind-the-books-book-26/
“Hmm, let’s see… e-mails from comic.book.harriet@sonofstuckfunky.com, curmudgeon@joshreads.com, dan.ronan@lateliveshow.com, tbatiuk@gmail.com, tom.batiuk@gmail.com, cathy.batiuk@gmail.com, totally.not.toms.sock.puppet@gmail.com, thomas.batiuk@gmail.com, batton.thomas@gmail.com, les.moore@lesmoore.com…”
(Seriously, though, only 75 e-mails? Maybe it’s just me, but that seems a bit low? Like… I would think a Charles Schulz or a Bill Watterson could get at least 10 times that many, y’know? Or maybe I’m just being too critical here, I really don’t know.)
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Ed, You’re still jealous that Rocky beat your previous record
Which should drive stories! “New guy wants to beat old guy’s workplace record” is a great source of conflict. Pushing Tin (John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton) comes to mind. But they never actually do it, though, do they? All they ever do in Crankshaft is stand around and talk about it. Batiuk can’t ever show it happening, because you’d immediately see how the story doesn’t work.
Just like you can see how it doesn’t work in today’s splash panel. It would take days before that many cars would want to go down that stretch of rural road. And none of them would be semi trucks. It’s completely asinine.
Oh, you could have so much fun with this storyline.
Crankshaft says the new record is invalid and accuses Rocky of “juicing” — getting an advantage by drinking a fancy juice drink from the new juice place in town.
Or Crankshaft insists that Rocky lined the brake pedal with cork in a clear violation of school-bus driver protocol.
Or Cranky demands that Rocky’s record be marked with an asterisk.
Etc. But again, as you say, BJr6K, we get another half-formed, depressingly unrealized germ of an idea that’s already tired.
All good ideas. But as you point out, it’s what Batiuk always gives you: a premise with zero execution.
“What would happen if Lisa died of cancer”? He spent 5 years killing her, and another 15 years rehashing it. We’re still waiting for something to actually happen. In fact, he did a time skip, to eliminate the possibility of anything ever happening.
It’s not impossible, just highly improbable. There’s a road in CT that’s not major, but literally the only way to get to about 20% of the state. It’s 2 lanes, with only 1 or 2 passing lanes depending on your direction. There are lots of dotted white passing lines, but there’s enough oncoming traffic that you’re not going to be able to do it. There’s a 2 laner in my old hometown that’s the same.
I once, on the first road, got stuck behind a farm tractor doing 15. No way to pass without risking a crash.
On the second road, it was the same deal once. Except it was this million year old man in some 1980s boat like an El Dorado or Lincoln. The only way he could drive was to have long poles attached above his headlights, and drive with the solid white line on the shoulder between them.
So, it’s possible. Although those happened about 30 years apart. The way it’s IMpossible is because we don’t see any oncoming traffic. (Unless Rocky is driving in the center of the road, and since the other lane looks like half a lane, that’s possible, as Rocky’s an asshole)
Sadly, Old Lincoln Man is undoubtedly deader than Lisa by now, and thus never has read Crankshaft.
Wait–“never read Crankshaft”? That’s not sad at all!
I tend to be fairly neutral on reading into Batiuk’s quirks. His tastes are subjective and shortcomings aren’t always worth a discussion that others get, in my experience. But I have wondered about his award resume and what exactly was straight about it, so I appreciate this post.
Good for him on earning the Inkpot Award at least, wonder what exactly about his input in 1999 warranted him getting right to the top with it. Without trying too hard to accuse him of benefiting from knowing people, wonder just how many friends he’s made in the comic industry that could see his benefits (John Byrne and Tony Isabella are pretty impressive pals, at least) that see good stuff that can get him networking the right people. Not enough for the full Pulitzer of course, but comfortable kudos at a glance.
The Inkpot isn’t for any particular work. It seems to be a “lifetime achievement award”. So the year he gets it isn’t meaningful IMHO.
The funniest thing about BatYam’s thirst for and bitterness over awards is how he wants to be recognized for the topics of his shitty little stories, and not the stories themselves. Writing “a” story about some timely, pertinent and/or “serious” topic and writing a GOOD story about some timely, pertinent and/or “serious” topic are two different things, a fact Batty frequently ignores or overlooks.
Not just him, but the fluff pieces too. That last WaPo article (among so many others) was a reach around that did exactly as you say – acknowledge that those storylines existed without a single moment of analysis into whether they were any god damned good or not.
Thank you for the post!
My main response to it all is that it lowers any kind of value that I’d perceive as coming from earning all those awards and accolades. We have an overabundance of evidence as to how Tom Batiuk makes continuous fundamental and critical errors in his work – errors which go beyond mere matters of taste and well into the realm of a piece of literary work being objectively bad – and yet he still managed to have those plaudits given to him. Why. How is it that his work has managed to convince enough people that it is worthy of that kind of recognition.
We have observed that his 50th Anniversary among other milestones were basically ignored (i.e., the last Rose Bowl whatever-the-hell-thing that was). We have statistical evidence that his main compilations are among the worst selling books within the genre. Yet the awards were given anyway. Why.
I don’t think it’s a falsehood or embellishment to say that any of us who regularly read or post here can write at least as well as Tom Batiuk. What do we fail to do where TB has managed to make a living out of this.
I think the lesson is that the people who give these awards are as lazy as Batiuk is. “We need comic strip nominees for this award – what about that guy who wrote a story about cancer?” The end.
Medicine should have disavowed the Funkyverse long ago. The entire profession is portrayed as inept, dishonest, and indifferent. This was bad enough before the pandemic, which reframed medicine as a universally admired profession. Now the doctor-bashing just even more petty and hateful.
And Lisa’s Story makes patients look just bad. All she did was sit there and die and complain the world wasn’t doing enough to save her. It’s like one of those parody demotivational posters.
I think it’s partly a function of this: when individual FW strips are read in isolation, without necessarily knowing the background of all the characters, they can actually work (in a mild sort of way). Or, if they don’t really work on their own, to a casual reader, they can seem as if they must be part of a larger whole that works, even if this particular installment isn’t anything special.
It really isn’t until you look at the storytelling as a whole that it becomes apparent that the stories are invariably hollow at the core.
This is how FW (and now Crankshaft) continue to hold on. Very rarely is one strip terrible if you don’t know what came before it. It’s really the devastating cumulative effect that makes Batiuk’s writing so deserving of snark.
So before the committee nominated FW, I’m guessing they did read some strips. And they thought … “Well, hey it’s broaching an important topic! There’s some emotion here. Flawed characters are looking for answers about an impossible subject… that’s kinda cool. Okay, we can nominate this — can’t wait to read the whole run of this arc, and see where it goes.”
Then, after the nomination, they read one FW after the other after the other. And realized that it was not award-worthy … not even nomination-worthy … when experienced that way. But by then, of course, it was too late…
I would say that most of them are counting on that.
This is a great insight, and I think it’s why Tom Batiuk gets away with so much.
Yes, many individual Funky Winkerbean strips look like they’re part of a greater story. But they never are. They’re constantly setting up a story, but it never arrives.
Like that “it’s okay for you to go” strip. By itself, it’s very powerful. It’s a fantastic snapshot of the moment a man comes to terms with terms with the fact that his life partner has chosen to die.
But that’s not what Lisa’s Story is. Lisa spent the rest of her life whining and seeking attention. She never once acted like a person who made a choice to decline treatment and accept fate. And Les saw it as a great opportunity to kick-start his writing career. The great moment dies the instant you learn anything else about these characters. Anything at all.
My grandfather declined treatment at the end of his life. He had a treatable condition, but he was told the medicine would ultimately build up in his body and kill him. He chose to take the medicine as long as he could, and then gracefully accept the end.
He was almost 90, still had all his faculties, still did the things he loved, died surrounded by loved ones, and spent his last days seeing as many of us as he could. He died almost 25 years ago, and he is still my shining example of how to live well, and how to die well. He clearly rubbed off on my dad, and some of that rubbed off on me.
If I’d have brought my grandfather Lisa’s Story as an example of how to deal with the end of your own life, he’d have disowned me. After kicking my ass. And I’m proud of him for that.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Crankshaft: It still has to stop at Denver a few times and then It’ll be ready.
(everyone groans (including me (a second generation Mexican-American)) and decides to pee on crankshaft)
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Ed: why isn’t my Bean’s End stuff here yet? it should be here right now!
(somebody comes to Crank’s house and brutally murders him)
Meanwhile in….
Big Nate: Nate’s relationship with Daphne is going to end soon, and too soon for Nate’s comfort
Which isn’t even right. Package tracking tells you when your package will arrive. It doesn’t tell you every step of the way, at least not in advance. Providing logistical details about when and where packages are going to be is setting up delivery drivers to be mugged.
Unless the joke is that Crankshaft instinctively knows the route all the Bean’s End crap takes to get to his house. And if that’s the joke, it should be the punchline. Especially on a Monday of a full week that’s going to be about this dumb topic.
When an Amazon package is out for delivery, sometimes it will let me actually track the location of the truck on a map and let me know how many stops are left. So I’ll give him a pass on this one. Today’s joke isn’t so bad, and is consistent with what we expect to see in the Crankiverse. I expect it to get much worse as the week wears on, as he continues to milk the premise dry.
I’ve never seen that, but I’m not much of an Amazon guy. When I have used it the description has been less detailed, or told me only where it’s been and not where it’s going (other than my house). I’ll withdraw my comment though.
“Punchline”?
Like the 3/5 strip, there is nothing here that could be considered a joke. What’s inherently funny about it coming from a country next door? Was “Canada” just too esoteric for him? Why not make it Brazil, as it’s farther? Or Lesotho, which might prompt a Cranker to look it up. (Lesotho is one of only 3 countries whose border is all one country–South Africa) How about Murania of the Phantom Empire?
Don’t worry! Only 5 more days of nothing!
I feel like Batiuk stopped caring about getting awards after the pultzer nomination about Lisa’s Story, and generally stopped caring about FW slowly until the end of 2022 (when FW ended)
I think he stopped caring about FW as anything but an awards vector. He didn’t get any for Lisa’s Teen Pregnancy, but he got media attention. I think that’s why the strip declined–he was an *Artiste* now. So, Lisa is battered, Lisa is date raped, Bull gets CTE dementia, Susan and Marianne both attempt suicide (hey, they were both in Les’ proximity, so it tracks), etc. I bet he really thought he’d get kudos for Les marrying Cayla, as if Loving v. West Virginia wasn’t settled law. Ooh, gay teens at the prom! (Let’s not name or show them; TB might get Gay Cooties)
I’m pretty sure that his readers were tired of FW long before Tom was. Dude, you got a Pulitzer nom and a Simpsons ref! Just accept that! Lynn Johnston didn’t win, and you don’t see her bragging about her bronze award from Podunk.
And I have to add: [When Rob Schneider discounted a critical review of his movie ‘Deuce Bigalow’ because the critic had not won a Pulitzer prize:]
Ebert: “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.”
Deuce Bigelow=Funky Winkerbean on any scale of quality.
Country roads take you home to West Virginia, but court records make the case “Loving v. Virginia.”
Thank you, Amicus Breef. How does ICE feel about the new management at Montoni’s?
“Loving v. Virginia.”
I knew it was 1 of the two, but when I googlegrampied it, all it said was “In 1940, movies were silent but chimps could talk.”
At least I didn’t spend a whole month’s arc repeating it!
Worth remembering is both men’s thoughtful follow-ups when Ebert was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually proved fatal: https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-bouquet-arrives
That’s a great story, and a great lesson on not letting criticism define you. Tom Batiuk could learn a lot from Rob Schneider.
Siskel & Ebert were at their funniest when either they agreed a movie was bad, or disagreed about whether it was. They’d go right at each other, but you always knew they were friends who Just Loved Movies. When Siskel sadly died of cancer–bet his doctors confused his test results!–it was Ebert & Roeper. Roeper suuuucked. He once gave a negative review to an anime because, and I semi-quote: “I hate all anime. I don’t like the way they draw the eyes.” Dude, that’s like becoming a restaurant reviewer who only goes to McDonald’s. “Thankfully, the Kansas City MO Big Mac tasted exactly the same as the Kansas City KS one did.” I’m not sure which anime it was, but I think it was some utterly forgotten tripe like Ghost in the Machine or Princess Mononoke. Thank god it wasn’t Akira, or at the end Roeper would’ve been the one who exploded.
Then they became a syndicated show. PBS replaced them with the 2 most Les-like critics of all, Jeffery Lyons and Michael Medved. Little whiny shits, one an overbearing egotist, one a whimpering simp. Lyons and Medved disagreed on a movie, but by the end Medved AGREED with Lyons, like the coward he was. Don’t become a critic if you can’t stand criticism.
That version of the show disappeared quickly. Lyons, who cares what happened to that pompous ass. Medved…Well…(WARNING: Politics) would become a right wing pundit most famous for saying that Blacks should THANK Whites for slavery, because then they got to go to AMERICA, because Africa is SO AWFUL.
Look it up.
So, half of my family line should thank the English for the Potato Famine, because Ireland is sooo rainy? Dude, you’re Jewish, you gonna thank Hitler for the Holocaust because you guys got Israel out of the deal?
I must respectfully disagree. Though I’ve never seen Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, I’ll bet it’s just awful. However, the title shows that the film was meant to be ridiculous, over-the-top, and silly.
The title Funky Winkerbean promises the same: ridiculous, over-the-top, and silly. And the strip was exactly that — successfully — till TB got a taste for awards and acclaim.
Imagine if Deuce Bigalow started off as the zany story of a dweeb who somehow became a gigolo, and by the third reel had become a weepie about a lonely old Holocaust survivor whose beloved dog was hit by a car, and the last 25 minutes was dedicated to closeups of the woman sobbing as she tries to decide whether to have Fido put down or let him die in agony. And as this is going on, Deuce Bigalow occasionally pops in for a waka-waka zinger, before the scene cuts back to the old woman’s tear-streaked face.
I’m sure even Deuce Bigalow isn’t that bad. But Funky Winkerbean was.
I’ve seen Deuce Bigalow and it’s pretty bad. It’s an underdeveloped, mean-spirited, sexist premise, without ever mining any humor or meaning from that. It also one of those early-2000s shock comedies that has aged itself from unfunny to cringeworthy.
Like the Funkyverse, it just kind of restates its premise at you. Every joke is “oh, this dweeb’s a male escort, LOL.” Compare The Full Monty, which wasn’t a comedy, but explored ideas beyond its premise, especially male insecurities. It was a much better execution of the same idea.
You, sir, have a will of iron and a stomach of steel, subjecting yourself to that. Ebert did it because it was his job. Why you did it I don’t know, but I respect your fortitude.
My point was intended to be that FW was not as bad as Deuce Bigalow, but actually worse. However, maybe I was wrong. Once upon a time FW was lighthearted and fun; apparently DB was mean-spirited and unfunny fro the get-go.
An interesting article, BJr6K!
The closest comic strip to what I think FW wanted to be — in terms of general subject matter and impact — would be For Better Or For Worse (sometimes funny, sometimes socially relevant, the characters age, there were some continuing storylines, and occasional controversy). People may have found it went on too long, and had some character-based issues, but it ended cleanly on its own terms, and is still widely seen in syndication more than 15 years after its demise. Compare with FW, seen absolutely nowhere 15 months after its demise.
Lynn Johnston: a Pulitzer nom, an Inkpot Award, plus a Reuben Award, the Order of Canada (the Canadian equivalent of a knighthood), and a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame. Plus more honorary doctorates than you can shake a stick at.
What, am I stuck On The Beach? Because I seem to be in the–NEVILLE CHUTE!
(No, it’s not funny, but everyone in a Tom strip would mildly smirk at that bad a pun that makes no sense if not read instead of spoken, and would make no sense even if it was)
Congratulations! You’ve just won a trip to a town like Alice!
Springs, that is…Todd Mall Market…Old Telegraph Station…
No Highway, Nevil Shute Norway!
nice pun, but even FW season 1 characters would be too young to stand in line for On the Beach references no?
Just a minor note: Garry Trudeau’s Pulitzer (in the Editorial Cartooning) field was indeed cited as being “for his cartoon strip Doonesbury” (that is, not for any other editorial cartoons he might have drawn).
That’s why I said “mostly.”
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Crankshaft: Finally, It’s here! My bean’s end crap!
(the house goes up in flames, causing the Byrnings)