Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

The comic opens with a dramatic breakup scene: a man is on his knees pleading "But Sally! I can change! Please don't leave me! Please, I love--" and Sally walks away saying "Bye!" In the next panel, a colorful fairy-like character appears and introduces herself: "I'm the heartbreak fairy!" She tells the man she has "a big stinger" for him and is going to "stab you right in the chest."

The man, still on the ground in despair, responds: "Don't worry, I'll never heal." The heartbreak fairy pauses, then asks "May I stab you anyway?" to which the man replies: "Can't break what's already broken." The fairy flies off dejectedly, unable to inflict heartbreak on someone who is already thoroughly heartbroken.

The Humor

The comedy comes from the subversion of the fairy tale trope. The "heartbreak fairy" is a dark parody of figures like the tooth fairy -- a magical being who shows up to perform a specific function. But the fairy's job is rendered completely pointless because the man has already reached maximum heartbreak on his own. The fairy with her stinger is entirely redundant. There is also a layer of humor in the man's melodramatic self-pity being so extreme that it actually defeats a supernatural entity. His wallowing is so thorough that even a magical creature specifically designed to cause heartbreak cannot add to his suffering. The comic takes the familiar pain of a breakup and literalizes it in an absurd way, making it both funnier and oddly sympathetic.