Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal MUSHROOM MUSHROOM

I miss the early days of the Internet. It was devoid of toxic social media, and full of goofy creative stuff. If you’re not familiar with the primitive brainrot the title refers to, you can see it here. (WARNING: It will burrow into your brain like those Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan worms. If you do recognize the title, it probably already has. Sorry about that.)

This week’s cardinal arc reminds me of Badger Badger Badger. There’s a cardinal, and… that’s it. It exists as part of a larger work that defies any narrative sense. It’s practically trying to be a meme.

I know I’ve joked about the cardinal being Lisa’s ghost, and that’s still the favorite on the odds board right now (-500). But now, dragging out Lisa’s corpse for the millionth time seems too straightforward for Tom Batiuk. He seems to be veering into the avant-garde. As evidenced by this week’s Ingmar Bergman coloring. (NOTE: I initially missed that this effect was borrowed from Schindler’s List. Thanks to Y. Knott in the comments.)

I say this because I was baffled by the December 13 strip that ended “Pizza Box Monster as Santa” week. He gets paid by Lillian, shakes her hand, and then this:

What on earth was Tom Batiuk aiming at here?

Yes, that’s the building where this week’s proceedings occurred, but what is the point of sticking it at the end of the story? The second panel, PBM saying “Pizza on earth!”, is the kind of thing Batiuk would normally use for a punchline. It’s almost like he drew this panel and forgot to use it, so he stuck it here.

Sometimes you can end a story just by pulling back and putting it into its larger context. Like in A Streetcar Named Desire (the stage version, not the movie) or Cameron Crowe’s Singles. But that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t a scene of people wandering around, enjoying Christmas, or anything else that would lend weight to the story. Not that there was much of a story to begin with.

I think Tom Batiuk is trying to mimic visual effects, and heartwarming endings, he’s seen in movies and TV shows. But he has absolutely no idea how to execute them, or why. That’s what I think we’re getting at the end of this week: an ornately staged, but confusing, ending.

UPDATE (December 19): And with this morning’s strip, Batiuk’s true intentions are revealed:

How Many Times Did Funky Winkerbean Jump The Shark?

I didn’t mean for that last post to be a poll, but it’s revealing how many individual Jump The Shark moments posters were able to identify in Funky Winkerbean. Here’s a compiled list, in roughly chronological order (because, as you know, Timemop).

Act I (1972-1992, ends with the original class’ graduation)

Act II (1992-2007, ends with Lisa’s death)

  • Lisa’s first detection of cancer (1998)
  • Wally dies in the minesweeping simulator
  • Becky loses her arm
  • The first class reunion
  • Susan Smith’s suicide attempt
  • Wally’s first homecoming (2003)
  • John Byrne’s guest stint permanently alters the artwork (2003)
  • Sadie Summers – not because she was a bad character as Tom Batiuk thinks, but because she was under- and mis-utilized
  • The post office bombing (USA!)
  • Lisa’s cancer returns in 2006, because of a hospital error
  • Lisa’s death (October 4, 2007)

Act III (2007-2022, ends when Funky Winkerbean ends and its characters move to Crankshaft)

  • Tom Batiuk skips ten years after Lisa’s death, throwing away a gold mine of story ideas. Which also prevents Les Moore (and Batiuk) from ever moving past Lisa’s death, when that was the stated reason for the time jump
  • Les screaming at Summer over a dress for the winter dance he was pushing her to attend
  • Les saying “yes you did” and getting pissy with Funky over a mild joke about Les attracting two women at once
  • Wally’s second homecoming, which destroyed the likeable Wally-Becky relationship, and needlessly added to Wally’s suffering
  • Lisa’s Story becomes a thing
  • Starbuck Jones become a thing
  • The emergence of Cayla as a character
  • Funky’s car crash and time-altering coma (2010)
  • casting Susan Smith as the antagonist in the Les-Cayla-Susan love triangle
  • the gay prom story where the gay teens never seen or talked about again
  • Morton Winkerbean’s remarkable but never-addressed recovery from dementia
  • Wally hooking up with Rachel and turning his life around
  • Cayla’s appearance changes
  • Lisa calls in a bomb threat from beyond the grave
  • Darin and Pete become major characters
  • The rise of Atomik Komix as a central location
  • “Where’s father?” – the resolution of the Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp story
  • The death of Bull Bushka, which was ultimately insurance fraud
  • Les walking back his earlier forgiveness of Bull
  • Darin makes a toy for his son, out of a handgun that was used to murder his grandfather
  • The entire finale, featuring a long -forgotten janitor who is revealed to be a time-traveling agent, tasked with ensuring Summer’s book gets written
  • “behavior-patterned algorithms that will let us define humanity as our nation” or whatever that drivel was

Act IV (Crankshaft, 2023-)

  • The Funky Winkerbean characters invade Crankshaft
  • The alleged Burnings
  • The Batton Thomas interview arc

And must be a lot more candidates than that… because that list doesn’t mention Dinkle even once.

When Did Funky Winkerbean Jump The Shark?

Such opinions are highly subjective – I’ve told my story in detail – but I think there’s a new way to identify roughly when this happened in Funky Winkerbean.

Here is the cover blurb for The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 14, 2011-2013, released in January 2025:

[this book] sees the sons and daughters of the original Funky gang starting to make their mark on the world by playing in basketball championships, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being deployed to war zones. Along the way there are graduations, weddings, and anniversaries––including the 40th anniversary of Funky Winkerbean.

Now here’s the same blurb for the brand new Volume 15, 2014-2016, released just three weeks ago:

the Funky gang are now in their late forties and raising teenagers of their own. Batiuk continues the Starbuck Jones storyline from the previous volume, as Holly searches for the final five issues of the comic book to send to Cory in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, there is a memorable class reunion, the character of Mason Jarr is introduced, and the cast decamps to Hollywood as Lisa’s Story is about to be adapted into a movie.

Notice the difference? Volume 14 at least sounds like a comic strip someone might want to read. Volume 15 has nothing to sell. Starbuck Jones! Mason Jarr! The Lisa Movie (which wouldn’t even be completed until 2022)! That stupid time travel class reunion, which was basically another Lisa story! Oh, and someone’s in Afghanistan, but don’t worry – his mom is collecting comic books for him!

I submit that 2013-2014 is the time when Act II’s overambitious sloppiness finished transforming into Act III’s lazy self-indulgence. Because Batiuk can’t even polish this turd anymore.

…But it Often Rhymes

And let us not forget, folks, this isn’t even the first time Montoni’s has cucked Cranky out of a Margo Lanes bowling trophy in December!

Ten Years Ago…(Or Twenty…Time Bubble Rules are Still in Effect)

“I like to bowl there because of the reference to nearly dead pop culture characters from 90 year old radio dramas!”
A reminder of the time Jess has frozen Montoni’s pizza shipped to LA.
“So glad, otherwise I could have just handed that team the trophy and gone home early… soo happy…”
Gonna be safe roads in Ohio tonight, with both a school bus and a pizza van slip sliding their way through the dark!
As you know…
Why is Bull here? He was (shockingly) never a Montoni’s employee.
Whadda you mean, Tom? Don’t you want to over-explain the joke and ruin it?
This must have been pre-intervention Funky.
Anyone know any bowling rules?
I’ve never painted daisies on a big pink bowling ball…
That trophy looks familiar. And the ‘turkey’ imagery makes more sense in this context.
“I don’t remember it, of course, I was wasted.”

Why Act I Is Gone Forever

After Act I ended, Tom Batiuk said that he couldn’t use Les for hanging-off-the-gym-rope gags anymore, after his involvement in Lisa’s difficult pregnancy.

So why doesn’t he realize that Pizza Box Monster gags don’t work anymore either?

Many of us have said that we miss Act I’s sense of sarcasm, absurdity and wonder. The PBM’s annual visits to Montoni’s were probably the closest thing we got in Act III. Tom Batiuk wrote himself into a pretzel to avoid solving the easily-solved problem of who the PBM really was. But it was still fun to watch him get Funky’s goat every year.

The story wasn’t at odds with the oh-serious-tone Batiuk adopted when he decided he was the new Sherwood Anderson. Because PBM was an obviously unserious character, who existed only for a recurring joke. Like Family Guy‘s Evil Monkey, and at least a dozen Simpsons characters (Troy McClure, Gil Gunderson, Hans Moleman, the Spucklers, etc.)

But now we’re supposed to take PBM seriously. He’s essentially Pete and Mindy’s boss now. This “young” couple we’re supposed to be rooting for has their life’s savings tied up in a person they can’t be bothered to identify. Even after he tried to reveal himself to them. All they had to do was walk into the dining area with their eyes open!

Montoni’s in Crankshaft feels like the beginning of an identity theft horror story. Except that you wouldn’t have a drop of sympathy for the victims, because they brought it on themselves. And there’s nothing LifeLock can do, if you willingly choose to enter into a financial agreement with a sentient pile of cardboard. To “buy” a restaurant that closed and sold all its equipment months before. Then again, we’ve never seen Pete or Mindy do any actual work, so I have no idea who’s ripping off who here.

PBM butting heads with Ed Crankshaft should be fun, but it isn’t. Instead, it just adds more layers to “why don’t Pete and Mindy know who this person is?”