glass-slippers
Explanation
The Joke
This comic reimagines the Cinderella story at the moment when the prince arrives with the glass slipper to find the woman whose foot fits it. The prince announces "My god, the glass slipper fits! You're the magical woman!" But instead of a romantic climax, the scene takes a practical turn. Cinderella (or whoever the woman is) notes that the prince does not seem to care about her appearance -- just her feet. The prince's aide observes that the glass slippers have made her feet "already a little gross from sweat."
The final panel pushes further into uncomfortable realism: someone notes the slipper is "squishing" when the callouses are moved around, and suggests the prince should "stick with my one glass slipper" rather than dealing with the reality of wearing rigid glass footwear. The fairy-tale romance collapses under the weight of basic podiatric reality.
The Humor
The comedy comes from subjecting a beloved fairy-tale trope to realistic physical scrutiny. Glass slippers would, in reality, be terrible footwear -- they would not breathe, they would cause sweating and blisters, and they would be rigid and painful. The prince's identification method (finding the woman whose foot fits a specific shoe) is also absurd when you think about it: many women presumably share similar shoe sizes. By focusing on these practical details, the comic deflates the romance of Cinderella in the same way SMBC frequently deflates myths and fairy tales. The gross physical details (sweat, callouses, squishing sounds) provide visceral comedy that contrasts sharply with the fairy-tale setting.
References
- The fairy tale of Cinderella, particularly the Charles Perrault version featuring glass slippers ("pantoufles de verre"), in which the prince uses the lost slipper to identify his mystery princess.