When Wizards Banned Comedy
On January 21, 2026, Wizards released a terrapin-pun laden statement on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, often abbreviated as TMNT, leaks that occurred during the Lorwyn prerelease. While acknowledging the leaks, Wizards also updated the TMNT visual guide with all of the leaked cards, which were all the rares and mythics from the set. With these 79 cards revealed, and none of them featuring Phelddagrif, it’s a foregone conclusion that Phelddagrif will not be appearing in this set. I mean, they wouldn’t dare denigrate Phelddagrif to appear as an uncommon (despite my constant and loud yearnings and moanings for an uncommon printing of Questing Phelddagrif so I can build Pauper EDH and Clover decks around them).
Well, sometimes Wizards has a good reason for Phelddagrif not appearing in the set. There are certain demands, and I’m sure that the media franchise that is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has a lot of deep lore to it that can hardly fit into 190 cards. So let’s see what is taking Phelddagrif’s place instead:
Oh…hum…well…hmm.
Funny, isn’t it?
Transdimensional Bovine is an oddity because, printed 30 years ago, I think it would have fit in with other Magic cards. But, if designed a little after that, it would have banned along with the rest of Magic comedy.
It’s weird to think, although it’s true, that Wizards once banned jokes from Magic. It’s always felt that humor was fused into Magic’s fused to its DNA like a melted whoopie cushion. Since Alpha, we’ve had wacky cards with some bizarre art. Some may have been unintentional (I’m pretty sure Animate Wall was meant to be a joke) while the art on others communicate the humor of the card’s mechanics. Counterspell, depicting a wizard in a gaudy outfit with their mouth agape as their spell fails to cast, weakly deflating in the air before their rube face: a ludonarrative combination of art meeting card function.
Flavor text has been another vehicle for the fine sitcom writers moonlightin at Wizards to practice their bits. Grizzly Bears flavor text sounds like an excerpt from an experienced travelers encyclopedia, until we reach the sarcastic final sentence:
Phil Foglio’s work feels like it’s the Adonis Column of humor in Magic’s DNA . Their art portfolio features cartoonish characters with exaggerated expressions, disproportionate bodies, breaks of the fourth wall, and, frankly, some pretty bee-zarre stuff. And, as Magic continued and started the Weatherlight saga, we would get a stream of quippy flavor text that anticipates the scripts of our favorite superhero movies.
Sure, everyone knows Magic is sort of funny (kind of). There’s been 4 or 5 un-sets, self-referential sets meant to be goofy, silly, and wild! Buy these packs of not-tournament legal cards and play very casual Magic that doesn’t really work with the rules! And, while there seems to be a bigger appetite for “funny” in Magic, there was a period where Magic didn’t want to be goofy but seen as serious, mature, and dark. Or at least edgy. This shift had serious consequences for Magic, and one creature type suffered as a casualty of Wizards relentless assault on jokes.
The “squirrel” type first appeared in 1997 in Weatherlight’s Liege of the Hollows, creating 1/1 squirrel tokens. While not utilized often, there were a couple more cards that made squirrel tokens such as Deranged Hermit in Urza’s Legacy and Squirrel Wrangler in Prophecy. Odyssey, released in 2001, saw the first printed squirrel cards with Krosan Beast (a cheeky nod to Might of Oaks) and Squirrel Mob.
These would be some of the last black border cards printed with the squirrel creature type, and it’s not hard to figure out why. The existence of “squirrels” as a creature type disrupts the suspension of disbelief. It’s hard to convince players that they’re powerful wizards who draw mana from the land to command the elements, enlist the aid of powerful demons, only to end up losing to infinite squirrels?
Those things from the park you saw eating a hot dog out of the trashcan? That demon you summoned is losing a fight to that squirrel. Insert 15 Squirrels vs. Emrakul Meme. While creature stats, power and toughness, are game mechanics, and we can only draw vague intimations of flavor from them and should not take them literally, the absurdity of the situation butts up against any suspension of disbelief. So, alongside a move to portray Magic in a more serious setting, Odyssey’s squirrel subtheme would be the last time the creature type would appear in tournament Magic. like Beebles, they would be relegated to supplementary product, mostly silver-border sets where the silliness of the cards could shine, with exceptions to Swawrmyard printed in Time Spiral in 2006 and Acorn Catapult printed in Commander 2011.
There’s an odd bit of Magic’s love for the self-referential with squirrels in silver bordered sets. Form of the Squirrel is a callback to Form of the Dragon, a card printed one year prior to it. It has a silver border, so there’s supposed to be a joke. What is it? Is it that the enchantment turns you into a squirrel, which isn’t as cool or useful compared to being turned into a dragon. Why is it funny that you’re turned into a squirrel? Because squirrels are funny, they’re so funny you’ll never see them again.
With this shift, comedy was banned from Magic. No longer were things allowed to be humorous, at least not in a way that would elicit a hearty guffaw. Instead, things were cold and metallic, or based in a culture and history far from what was traditionally shown on cards. If they were humorous, they were erudite facts whose punchlines were dependent on joyless trivia instead of a genuine joke.Their only refuge away from their silver-bordered cage would be an occasional appearance in the art of some card that wasn’t really about squirrels.
The Return of the Squirrel
Three things are certain in life: Death, Taxes, and Wizards going back on what they once said. They simply can’t help themselves, this time with the Modern Horizons sets taking the place of Unglued for self-referential cards printing Deep Forest Hermit, a reference to Deranged Hermit from Urza’s Saga. Helica Glider in Ikoria saw Magic’s first standard legal squirrel in many decades, and from there the squirrel-damn really bursts, with Modern Horizons 2 having a squirrel theme. Eventually, squirrels would take a steady footing in Magic with the release of Bloomburrow. Squirrels had finally returned to Magic in a way that, I’m sure marketing found sustainable. Magic was allowed to make jokes again, and balance was restored.
Let’s take a look at these furry denizens of farce, these huguenots of humor, these critters of camp:
Doesn’t really scream “funny”, does it? How about another one?
Less grim, but not exactly Saturday Night Live either.
Bloomburrow sanitized squirrels, stripping their absurdity away so that they would fit more holistically among the Magic’s multiverse. They’re no longer mere vessels for pump spells, goofy bits of matter that break suspension of disbelief in the game. There’s a whole squirrel society on Bloomburrow, they have mechanics that help identify their cards. They have a whole culture over there! They have context! And none of it is very funny. It’s mostly about things dying, and while death can be a subject for comedy, these squirrel cards aren’t a great vehicle for those jokes. Gone are those days of the silly cards of yore. We haven’t seen a beeble in decades (this is a lie) and they made our squirrels serious.
I, obviously, have a horse in this debate. It’s staked out at the races, ready to go, but I fear it’ll never get out of the starting gate. What is it, you, dear reader who I have never forgotten?
I mean, have you ever looked at Phelddagrif?
It’s sweet, and I love it, but this is a goofy looking hippo. A purple hippo with green wings was already small meme in the 2000‘s, now it’s an extremely dated one that has lost any possible context it once had. It’s absolutely bizarre, complete nonsense, just da-da. Phelddagrif’s subsequent printings didn’t get more serious either. This is a card that is steeped in old Magic nonsense, and I’m afraid that we won’t see this nonsense in a Magic set for quite a while.
And I would love to see this sort of thing again, but it feels rarer and rarer. Lorwyn: Eclipsed feels like an exception that proves the rule, where a lot of other sets feel like they are missing some of those strange oddities that were present in early Magic, like Phelddagrif, Brushwagg, and Vizzerdrix, and replaced with twee and inane cute mascots like heckin-good puppers and small blorbos. Yes, this is just me yelling at clouds but I feel like we’re getting further and further away from seeing Phelddagrif appear in Magic, and I’d like to stop writing these posts someday and lift the curse placed on me 20 years ago.
And there is hope. Magic isn’t without this nonsensical goofyness, this holds-up-spork non-sequiter hasn’t left, it moved next door.
Checking in with the Neighbors: The New Silver Border
Universes Beyond presents a lot of opportunities for Magic that can’t be taken in Magic creative sets. Sandy Cheeks returns to the original kookiness of Magic’s Squirrels. A Squirrel that is an astronaut underwater? That’s almost as unlikely as it being bigger than an oak tree! Things that would not fit Magic setting can be done through Universes Beyond. If you want reference to historical events in your Magic cards, you can do that with Universes Beyond.
And we won’t have to think about how Magic might converse with geo-political history, how depicting a “wild west” themed world as already empty might be a retelling of the American myth of Manifest Destiny, or how a plane centered around crime, corruption and “being bad guys” that lacks law enforcement presents an odd paradox. Instead, it’s reduced to a reference to another Intellectual property.
If you want celebrity appearances, you can do that with Universes Beyond:
And what these celebrities do and who they endorse is their business.
And if you want guns in Magic, you can do that with Universes Beyond:
It feels that Magic has the risk tolerance of how the public perceives Hollywood studios, banking on the imagination of previous worlds with their established lore. Sequels are less risky ventures, and Universes Beyond presents us with a parade of cardboard sequels. And humor is hard and doesn’t always land, if you’ve read this far you know that because I doubt you laughed once. Why bother trying when you can be the kid in the lunchroom reciting one liners from Anchorman.
So, if you want something goofy and offbeat in Magic, you can get that in Universes Beyond:
Leave a Reply