2014-12-24
Explanation
The Joke
A child calls out to his dad, saying there is a monster under his bed. The father goes to investigate and finds what appears to be a dark, amorphous creature. The monster speaks, saying it wants the father to "join it... become one with it." The father begins to be drawn in, describing it as "so happy in here... so peaceful, no sorrow, no struggle, no growing old." The child calls out "Daddy?" and the father, now absorbed, declares "There is no daddy now," causing the child to scream in terror. In the final panels, the child asks his mom if he can sleep with her tonight, and she wearily responds "Again?" -- implying the father pulls this stunt regularly. The last panel shows the father lying under the bed in the dark, grinning, revealing that he was faking the whole thing to scare his child.
The Humor
The comic starts as a classic horror setup -- a monster under the bed -- but the twist is that the "monster" is actually the dad, who is deliberately pretending to be consumed by a dark entity to terrify his own child for his own amusement. The child is genuinely horrified, the mom is exhausted from dealing with this recurring prank, and the dad is gleefully hiding under the bed. The humor comes from the subversion of the protective-father trope: instead of reassuring his child that there is no monster, the dad becomes the monster. The mom's tired "Again?" confirms this is not a one-time event but an established pattern of terrible parenting played for laughs.