When I was a kid, someone told me the end of The Giver was ambiguous, which surprised me. I had just assumed Jonah died--because the book had a medal on the cover, and I knew grown-ups liked stories where sad stuff happens at the end for no reason.
This comic is the follow-up to 2056: Horror Movies, released a month earlier. While the first was about giving voice to Randall's inability to enjoy horror movies, this comic takes Randall's previous position and exaggerates it. White Hat and Cueball (as Randall) discuss the appeal of horror movies and tragic plots. Cueball expresses his dissatisfaction with stories that focus on evoking negative feelings. As an example he mentions how he disliked the ending of Titanic where Jack sacrifices his life in order to save Rose. White Hat does not seem to share Cueball's point of view on successful storytelling and sarcastically promises to send feedback to the movie director James Cameron as well as the 16th century playwright and writer William Shakespeare, whose most famous works include tragedies like Romeo and Juliet.
In the title text Cueball (as Randall?) discusses the ending of the science fiction novel The Giver where the fate of the main character Jonas (misspelt here as "Jonah") had been left ambiguous. The joke is a stereotype that the Newbery Medal, a children's literature award, is only given to books with tragic endings. However, the protagonist lives, as there are three more titles in the series, two of which have the main character as a side character. However, those three books are rather obscure.
This was the first of two comics in a row to reference a specific movie genre. (This one references horror movies, and the next one, 2077: Heist, references heist movies.)