2013-04-08
Explanation
This comic is a sweet but ultimately self-defeating bedtime scene between a father and his young son. The father, reading a book to the boy at bedtime, tells him he wants him to imagine and dream big, "like I did as a boy." He paints vivid pictures of adventure: being a South Seas pirate, an astronaut saving the world, an explorer hunting for secrets. The father says he wants his son to do all of that -- and then delivers the punchline: "in a way that doesn't result in phone calls to me."
The final panel reveals the consequences of his encouragement. Someone is calling the father to report: "Your kid re-enacted the Battle of Hastings again," and the father weakly offers, "So... points for creativity?" The caller responds: "You owe us two swingsets and a window." The joke captures the universal parenting tension between wanting your child to have a vivid, adventurous imagination and dealing with the real-world property damage that ensues when a kid takes those instructions literally.
The votey panel shows the father yelling at his son, "Imagination is cancelled!" -- the logical endpoint of a parent who encouraged creativity only to discover that childhood imagination plus real-world execution equals chaos. It's a funny reversal of the heartfelt message from the main comic.