Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic riffs on the classic "monkey's paw" or "malicious genie" trope, where a wish is granted but with an unintended and horrible twist -- except here, the twist backfires on the genie instead.

In the first panel, a man wishes to "live forever" from a large green genie on a beach. The genie laughs maliciously: "Ha! Hahaha! You forgot to wish to stay young forever! Now you will decay!" This sets up the expected trope: the foolish wisher forgot to specify eternal youth along with immortality, so he will age and deteriorate for all eternity, becoming an increasingly decrepit but undying husk. This is one of the oldest cautionary tales in mythology -- the myth of Tithonus, who was granted immortality by Zeus but not eternal youth, and eventually shriveled into a cicada.

The comic then cuts to "Hundreds of years later..." The genie tries to torment the now-skeletal immortal: "Hey! Start feeling ennui! You're the walking dead, scorned by the living!" But the skeleton is completely unbothered. Instead, he is sitting contentedly on a couch and announces: "Goth chicks are way into me now." The genie, flustered, says "Stop it!"

The punchline subverts the expected horror of the monkey's paw scenario. Instead of suffering from his decayed immortal existence, the skeleton has found a silver lining: the goth/alternative subculture, which aesthetically celebrates death, skulls, and the macabre, would find a literal walking skeleton extremely attractive. The genie's punishment requires the victim to feel miserable, but the skeleton has adapted and is thriving socially in ways the genie never anticipated.

The genie's frustrated "Stop it!" in the final panel is particularly funny because it reveals that the genie's power depends on the victim's psychological suffering. The curse is technically working perfectly -- the man has indeed decayed into a skeleton -- but it fails as a punishment because the victim refuses to be unhappy about it. The comic suggests that attitude and adaptability can defeat even supernatural malice.