2013-10-13
Explanation
This comic is a Halloween-themed strip featuring a parent and child at the door during trick-or-treating. In the first panel, someone at the door asks "Oooh! Are you dressed as Death, little man?" The child, dressed in a grim reaper costume, responds with an uncomfortably detailed and morbid explanation: "No, Death has no clothes. I have a cloak. I'm "Expectation of Death."" The child then elaborates further, asking if the person's headache is a hemorrhage, if their cough is an infection, and declaring that all the leftover candy they eat is going to give them a heart attack -- essentially embodying existential health anxiety rather than the Grim Reaper.
The child then menacingly says "Tickle tickle tickle!" while presumably poking or threatening the adult, which is both childlike and deeply unsettling given their costume persona. In the final panels at the Thanksgiving dinner table, the parent asks "How many houses did you go to this year?" and the child responds "One" -- implying the child's disturbing performance was so off-putting that they only managed to visit a single house before presumably being turned away or scaring everyone.
The votey panel shows a child in a reaper hood saying "Dead men need no Tootsie Rolls," which is a darkly funny extension of the "Expectation of Death" character -- the child is so committed to the bit that they are philosophizing about candy in morbid terms. The comic plays on the idea of a precocious child who takes Halloween costumes far too literally and intellectually, a recurring SMBC theme of children being uncomfortably smart or philosophical.