Tag: it's called "writing"

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.

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:

Finally, We Know What Happened To Lisa’s Test Results!

Remember when Lisa was told she was cancer-free when she wasn’t?

Today, we learned where Lisa’s radiology scans went!

Mom Of 3 Has Part of Lung Removed After Cancer Diagnosis. 2 Weeks Later, She Was Told She Didn’t Have Cancer

A British woman had part of her lung removed following a suspected cancer diagnosis, only to be told two weeks later that she didn’t actually have the disease.

The mother of three recalled to the BBC, “I had to go home and tell my children and parents that I had cancer. I tried to be strong for them, but I just fell to pieces,” adding, “You hear the word cancer and you automatically think you’re going to die.”

Erica Hay ended up having an operation in September 2020 to remove the lower lobe of her right lung. However, two weeks after the surgery, she was told that she didn’t have cancer, and the mass in her lung had been caused by pneumonia.

She claimed that the operation has left her with breathing difficulties, saying: “I’ve had asthma since I was 17, but my respiratory problems have increased unbelievably since the surgery. It’s completely floored me. Just talking or walking into the kitchen can set my symptoms off.”

 “I am so very, very grateful that it wasn’t cancer, but I had to go through all of that and know this is probably never going to get any better now. It affects my work, my daily living, and at times it makes me feel inadequate as a [mother] and a wife.”

Hay has since pursued a clinical negligence claim. The case was resolved with a settlement. The hospital trusts involved haven’t admitted liability or causation.

You’re probably wondering how Lisa’s test results were given to someone who lives in Doncaster, England, thirteen years after Lisa died. And was diagnosed with a completely different kind of cancer than Lisa had. But we all know the answer to that!

How Many Things Can We Find Wrong With This Story?

After Pizza Box Monster week ended with this atrocity, let’s keep this discussion simple.

Let’s see how many things we can find wrong with this story. I’ll use this post to compile them into a list. GoComics and other such providers allow you to view comic strips for the past week without any login or account. So until Monday, anyone can view the entire week. Here are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Let’s begin. The only rules are:

  • Be brief. Have you ever read the nmop-əpisdn answers in Hocus Focus? They’re very short, like “beard is missing” or “arms have moved.” Explain as much as you need to, but be terse. Keep it to a sentence if you can.
  • Stick to the actual content of this week’s strips. No meta-errors, or comments about Tom Batiuk’s production process.
  • Things that are wrong in the long-term context of the comic strip, such as Pete and Mindy’s marital status and their business relationship with PBM, are permitted.

Here we go!

  1. Monday’s strip shows PBM leaving after helping decorate the restaurant. The pizza box costume would make any physical movement very difficult. (BJ6K)
  2. The PBM costume has no visible eyeholes. (Y. Knott)
  3. On Monday, PBM says he’ll “come back for lunch when things aren’t busy.” At almost any restaurant, lunch is expected to be busy. (BJ6K)
    • Gleeb points out that this could mean “the time we restaurant workers take lunch”, not “when lunch is served.”
  4. On Tuesday, Pete calls PBM “one of their silent partners” in Montoni’s. No other partner has ever been seen or mentioned. (BJ6K)
  5. Somehow, Pete and Mindy have somehow entered into a business relationship with an unknown person. (BJ6K)
  6. Pete tells Mindy to “stop obsessing” over who the PBM is. Given that business relationship, she is right to want to know who this person is. (BJ6K)
  7. On Tuesday, Pete and Mindy’s hands are visible. Neither is wearing a wedding or engagement ring. (BJ6K)
  8. The spider on the video camera screen on Saturday doesn’t match the one we see in the restaurant on Tuesday. (Green Luthor)
  9. The angle isn’t the same either. (Green Luthor)
  10. Owners of a security camera would not block it with objects. Or if they did accidentally, they would notice and correct it before an incident happens. (Green Luthor)
  11. The pizza that the PBM is served seems to shrink significantly in diameter between Thursday and Saturday. Compare how much counter space the pizza occupied on Thursday, compared to its much smaller depiction on Saturday. (Y. Knott)
  12. Despite wanting to see the PBM, the characters seem to be going out of their way to avoid seeing him. (several)
  13. How does Mindy know PBM was eating alone at the bar … unless she *saw* PBM eating alone at the bar? (Y. Knott)
  14. By dining in the restaurant and removing his headgear, it is possible that the PBM is trying to reveal his identity. Pete, Mindy, and Ed fail to consider this. (BJ6K)
  15. Even if Mindy didn’t see the revealed face *clearly*, it still seems counter-productive to leave the room with the PBM in it, only to essentially announce that “Hey, it sure would be neat to see the PBM’s face while the PBM is eating in the other room where I just was, watching the PBM eating. (Y. Knott)
  16. The story assumes that Mindy and Pete would know who the PBM is. If we’re going to ignore the whole ‘business partners’ problem, then there’s no reason to assume the PBM is someone would be recognized by them. (Green Luthor)
  17. PBM could mistakenly believe that they know who he is. (pj202718nbca)
  18. There was never any obstacle to simply looking at the PBM. Even if there was, Pete and Mindy own the restaurant now, and can easily invent a reason to be wandering the dining area during business hours. Beyond even that, it’s Halloween, and they could hide their own identities in a costume if desired.(BJ6K)

Have at it in the comments. Let me know if you made a suggestion and I didn’t include it (or an equivalent one).

Can’t Spell Batiuk Without A-I

Today’s Crankshaft is one of the most incoherent strips in recent memory. To give you a text description:

Ed can’t find his cell phone. He asked Pam to use her cell phone, so he can call his own phone to locate it. His friend Ralph is on the other end of the phone. Ed says “Ralph, what’s my phone doing at your house?” Ralph says “your phone isn’t here.” Ed says “I can hear it ringing.” Pam’s husband Jeff walks into the room wearing a Winnipeg Blue Bombers shirt and carrying a ringing cell phone, and says “somebody looking for their phone?”

At first, I thought the joke was “it’s surprisingly difficult to dial your own phone number, because you’re so used to dialing other people’s phone numbers.” I remember this being true when I was in high school, when I had to do things like call my parents from a friend’s house. But the way cell phones work negates that. You save the number under the person’s name, and pick the name out of the contacts list when you want to call. I don’t even know my friends’ or family’s phone numbers anymore.

Also: Ed never actually dials from Pam’s phone. So Ralph being on the other end of the call only makes sense if Pam is already in a conversation with Ralph. But that doesn’t make sense because Ralph is Ed’s friend, not Pam’s. She also appears to be mid-dial when Ed interrupts her, so there isn’t an active conversation going on. By the same token, Ralph’s number wouldn’t be in Pam’s phone – it would be in Ed’s phone.

The punchline is that Ed’s phone rang in the other room. But why is Ed’s phone ringing if he called Ralph? Why is Ed’s phone ringing if he’s even talking to Ralph? Ed could have done the cumbersome “put one call on hold and dial another call” maneuver, but not enough time passed for that to be possible. It’s also contrary to Ed’s usual befuddlement with technology. But we also just saw him build a sophisticated AI gardening system, so who knows?

Speaking of AI, that’s exactly what this strip looks like. The joke starts with a relatable premise, but then forgets to include an important plot point (Ed dialing his own number), and the punchline contradicts the setup. This looks like a joke an AI would write.

So I decided to fight fire with fire. I asked Galaxy AI’s Joke Explainer tool to tell me what in the hell is going on here. I fed it the textual description above, plus a few clarifications like Pam being Ed’s adult daughter and Jeff being her husband. I called it “American humor” and asked for a simple explanation. Here’s what it said:

This joke is funny because it plays with the idea of confusion and unexpected twists.

Well, I can’t argue with that. “Unexpected and confusing” is Tom Batiuk’s later work in a nutshell.

Setup and Expectation: The joke starts with Ed losing his cell phone and asking his daughter Pam to help him locate it by calling his phone. This sets up a relatable scenario—everyone has misplaced their phone at some point. We expect that Ed will find his phone soon.

Okay, fine.

Miscommunication: When Ed calls his phone, he talks to his friend Ralph, who insists that Ed’s phone isn’t at his house. This creates a little tension because Ed can hear his phone ringing, leading us to wonder where it could be.

But Ed didn’t call his phone. We never saw him do that. And if he did, he wouldn’t be on the phone with Ralph. The AI fails to detect that this series of events makes no sense.

The Twist: Just when you think the situation is getting serious, Pam’s husband Jeff walks in wearing a Winnipeg Blue Bombers shirt (a Canadian football team) and carrying a ringing cell phone. The humor here is in the surprise—Jeff is the one with the ringing phone, which is revealed to be Ed’s phone.

Classic example of “garbage in, garbage out.” The AI has ideas about how humor is supposed to work, and is trying to make this humor-like sequence of words fit that model the best it can. It can’t see Ralph’s involvement for the non sequitir it is. (Or more correctly, non ducit.) It’s an unnecessary detail that confuses the reader. Batiuk’s writing does this all the time.

It’s also not surprising that Jeff found Ed’s phone. The whole scenario implied that Ed misplaced it somewhere around the house, because that’s the only scenario where dialing it would be any help. The actual surprising part was Ralph being on the phone, but the AI had to assume that was an important part of the story.

Visual Humor: The image of Jeff walking in with the phone adds a visual element to the joke. His casual entrance contrasts with the confusion and urgency of Ed trying to find his phone.

Batiuk got “show don’t tell” right today. He visually delivered the punchline instead of having Jeff yell it from off-panel. One point for that, I guess.

Cultural Reference: The mention of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers adds a layer of cultural context. While it might not be essential to the punchline, it gives Jeff a character…

And there you have it. Jeff’s personality is Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

…and adds a bit of humor through the absurdity of the situation—why is he wearing that shirt while holding Ed’s phone?

The AI correctly identifies why we continue to be fascinated by the Funkyverse: it’s so absurd, it adds humor to itself.