The Cardinal Really *Was* Lisa

So Tom Batiuk’s version of Calvin’s raccoon ran in the last full week of 2025. And it went like so many other stories do in the Funkyverse:

  1. Poor, innocent, helpless creature gets injured.
  2. One of the Funkyverse’s designated heroes notices.
  3. The designated hero makes a big show out of helping the poor, innocent creature.
  4. The designated hero provides little actual help to the poor, innocent creature, and may even subject it to further injury.
  5. The poor, innocent creature gets worse, for reasons that will not be blamed on the designated hero, even when they probably should be. (Optional: the poor, innocent creature may appear to get better for awhile first.)
  6. Poor, innocent creature dies, having suffered more than they probably needed to.
  7. Designated hero congratulates themselves while smirking. Never once do they ponder their own role in the death of the poor, innocent creature.
  8. Tom Batiuk starts checking his mail for Pulitzer nominations.

This isn’t just the cardinal story we just saw. It’s also Lisa’s story. In some ways, it’s Bull Bushka’s story, Becky’s story, and other pointless tragedies in the Funkyverse. And some of you picked up on this in the comments:

  • “The actual miracle will be surviving with a broken spine.” – pj202718nbca

This is closer to the truth than you’d think. Most bird-window collisions result in the death of the bird, eventually if not immediately. Pam and Jeff made no attempt to ascertain the bird’s injuries, or take it to someone who could treat it. Though to be fair, most people wouldn’t know what to do when presented with injured wildlife. Which was part of the point of the Calvin and Hobbes raccoon story.

Calvin’s mom admits to Calvin that the raccoon looks badly injured. She also admits to Hobbes that she doesn’t really know how to help.. This concept was explored more in the story where Hobbes went missing after a break-in at the family’s home. But it’s nice to see it acknowledged here… because it’s something you’ll never, ever see in Funky Winkerbean. Characters like Jeff Murdoch and Les Moore are not allowed to acknowledge their own mistakes, must less admit them. Even when their mistakes are blatantly obvious to readers.

  • “I had predicted a ‘Christmas miracle’ with the bird getting miraculously better on Thursday. But it actually got better on Friday, albeit with the ‘Christmas miracle’ as the actual punchline.” – Green Luthor

This speaks to a huge problem in Tom Batiuk’s writing, and that is: his attempts at humor, and even ordinary banter, undermine the seriousness of the situation. Pam and Jeff stored the injured cardinal in an oven warmer when any box would have worked, which made it look like they were planning to cook it. The partial first week of 2026 has been a celebration of football helmets, after a football helmet was the symbol of Bull Bushka’s stupid death and his even more stupid life. And we saw “costs an arm and a leg” jokes in CBH’s reposted Christmas story, thankfully out of earshot of Becky. Has Tom Batiuk never encountered the concept of “too soon“?

The raccoon story has jokes in it, but they’re not at the expense of the injured raccoon. Nor are they at the expense of Calvin’s emotional investment. But this happens quite a bit in the Funkyverse.

Bull Bushka’s CTE death arc started with Linda and Buck Bedlow cracking wise about Bull’s need to do laundry – a common symptom of his condition. Similarly, Mort Winkerbean’s dementia (before it was magically cured off-panel) was played for laughs in a Sunday strip where Funky observed him repeating himself.

Though this doesn’t happen in Lisa’s Story, nosireebob. Lisa’s death is the greatest tragedy in human history, and must be treated with complete seriousness at all times. Everyone in the Funkyverse must adhere to Les Moore’s inscrutable standards of “protecting Lisa.”

  • “I can’t shake the dread that something bad is gonna happen to the cardinal even if yesterday’s strip turned out to be a cop-out.” – csroberto2854

He was right – the cardinal immediately bashed into the window again. Which was played for laughs. Which reinforces all of the above criticisms, and then some:

  1. Relying on ambiguous art to make a joke work. The artwork in the above strip suggests that the cardinal flew through the open window, and then immediately doubled back, as if wanting to return to the house. However, if we assume Rule of Funny is in effect, it’s arguable that the cardinal was just being drawn from the more comedic angle.
  2. Making the joke at the victim’s expense, again. Crankshaft hilariously says “Birds just don’t get glass!” Well, that’s exactly the problem, Ed; birds don’t perceive glass as an obstacle. If they see natural habitat on the other side, they will try to fly straight to it. This feels like mocking blind people for bumping into objects.

    Contrast: Richard Pryor. Richard’s Pryor comedy material was about poverty, racism, broken families, prostitution, gang violence, substance addiction, and other awful things. But he never once trivializes those things, or mocks anyone for being affected by them. That’s how you combine tragedy and comedy effectively: by not letting the comedy undermine the tragedy.
  3. The pervasive gloom of the Funkyverse. We initially see the cardinal recover, which threw off Green Luthor’s mental timeline for how the story would play out. But pj202718nbca turned out to be right: the recovery was a temporary respite, so Batiuk could prop up yet another tragic ending. Even though the tragic ending was going for a laugh this time.
  4. The pervasive indifference and incompetence of the Funkyverse. Which are hard to tell apart, really. Tom Batiuk wants to sell his world of noble, caring, small-town Ohio people. But their actions bely this at every turn. Pam and Jeff ultimately did nothing to help the bird. Ed laughed when it got injured again. Les had little interest in keeping Lisa alive, and great interest in leveraging her death into the writing career he thought was his birthright. Becky didn’t even care about losing her own arm.

    Maybe that’s why Tom Batiuk cured Mort Winkerbean and Harry Dinkle: nobody in Westview was capable of doing it. Or cared enough to try.

Fantasy Football

Happy New Year, everyone!

This week’s Crankshaft, spanning 2025 and 2026, celebrates a time-honored football tradition: Game Helmet Day! every year, football teams update their playbooks between Christmas and New Year’s, and give out game helmets to fans who make the best suggestions! If you get a game helmet, it is customary to wear it to bed the first night…

…in some universe, apparently.

This story is ridiculous. Even by Tom Batiuk’s standards. At least the Westview Scapegoats more or less resembled a high school football team. Even in Act II, when Batiuk was apparently getting ideas from whatever writers’ room at Disney gives us movies like Air Bud.

Writing the description of what’s honest-to-God happening in Crankshaft felt like this:

Read the first paragraph again, but imagine Ren is calmly explaining it to you, in his “the Prozac just kicked in” voice. Game Helmet Day sounds just as silly and random as Yak Shaving Day, doesn’t it?

Because Tom Batiuk giving himself awards isn’t good enough for the Funkyverse anymore. No, no, no: all awards must take the exact form Tom Batiuk requires. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers already gave Ed Crankshaft an official game ball, instead of having him arrested for barging into a secured area. The team can’t just send Crankshaft a letter informing him of their glorious decision to keep using his play! The rules of courtesy on Planet Batiuk require a second team award, even though he already got one! (Needless to say, phone calls or Internet communication are completely out of the question.)

Tom Batiuk’s writing is about as subtle as a 7-year-old’s Christmas list. It also applies to that dumb Batton Thomas interview, which is probably starting up again soon. That story exists because Batiuk is telling the world how he wants to be treated by interviewers. He expects journalists to sit in rapt attention, and let him drone on for hours about whatever boring comic book-related topic he wants. Oh, and you’re paying for his lunch. (On the plus side, it’s just Luigi’s/Montoni’s.)

Note also that the team caved to Crankshaft’s demand. When Ed asked about having his play added to the team playbook, on August 15, 2025, he was told “not in this lifetime,” as if it was an absurd request (which it was). Now he gets a permanent place in the playbook, and a peace offering, as if he were Genghis Khan. Maybe the team is trying to create a harbinger of Ed’s long-overdue death. I don’t blame them for trying.

OH CHRISTMAS TREE!

Did Sunday’s strip ring a few recognition bells in long time Crankshaft readers?

Well, it should have.

The Crankshaft/Murdoch family has flip flopped on real vs artificial trees a few times over the last couple decades.

The late aughts were an era of live trees at great cost.

2007

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Then…in 2014, an arc on an artificial tree.

This all ended with a strip with some VERY FAMILIAR artwork.

I guess a couple years later, in 2016, they’d reinvested in fake.

And early in the Davis era, in 2018, another new artificial tree. And Pam is the one who throws a fit over fakery, despite a few years earlier championing the idea. I’ll let the continuity error slide this time, as the jokes in the arc are at least smirk worthy.

But I guess nostalgia won out again by 2020.

I’ve gotten a real tree ever since I moved out on my own, usually white pine, though I’ve also paid top dollar for some frasier furs. My mom has a three piece artificial tree she’s used ever since my sister scored a husband allergic to pine.

How about your nitters? Real or fake.

Christmas Time Means Time For Reruns!

Happy holidays to everyone in the SoSF community! I’ve enjoyed another year with all of you. I am honored that people continue to visit this strange little corner of the web, and read and comment about the even stranger world of Funky Winkerbean. I’m amazed that this community continues to thrive four years after the strip ended.

In the penultimate year of 2021, most of March was devoted to Dinkle answering an ad to become the new choir director at St. Spires Church in Centerville.

At the time, I used this story to make a parody Photoshop story of Harry Dinkle accidentally becoming a porn star, and posted it in the comments. It was well received. I recently realized that a lot of our visitors may never have seen it. So we decided to reprint it here, to have some new content that isn’t about dead birds or pizza box-wearing entities. I hope you enjoy it too.

NSFW Warning: The story contains lots of sexual content… in the same way late-night Cinemax movies did in the 1980s. In all seriousness, discretion is advised.

Enjoy.

Hold the Pickles

WHAT ABOUT THE BIRD, TOM?

We’re all waiting on tenterhooks to see if Ed Crankshaft presses fat lips to cold beak and puffs Pam’s Christmas Cardinal back to life, and Batiuk just shifts gears to Pam and Minty redecorating a Christmas tree that should have been well and truly decked as of Thursday afternoon when Pam strung lights under the watchful eye of her blood red companion.

And all so Batiuk can, once again, flash us that hysterical landmark, 425 West Avenue, Elyria, Ohio. The starter apartment of Pam and Jeff, Ann and Fred, and Batton and his nameless Cathy Clone.

While the bird’s fate is unknown, a surprising, long memory holed, friend has emerged from the reference sheets. Appearing for the first time in the Davis era, on Wednesday we saw a feline resembling Pickles the Tomcat. Last seen on December 23, 2016, during Ayers tenure.

Wherever Pickles has been the last nine years, I’m guessing it included a short stay in the Pet Sematary. Since the mangy old feline debuted in Crankshaft’s first couple years, while Max and Mindy were still young.

Back in the glory days when Crankshaft still had the personality of a lime-encrusted sea urchin.

Save the Cat and Pet the Dog are tropes as old as time. A quick shorthand to show the true empathy innate in a character. If you want to show your character is a slimy fake, you have a seemingly ‘nice’ person kick a dog.

If you want to show that the grumbles, grousing, and belly aching of a cantankerous old coot are just the timid farts of an emotionally constipated man, you have him get a cat.