Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This is a longer-form comic about mythology and storytelling. Two characters are discussing myths under a starry sky. One notes that "myths are more than stories -- they tell us how to live, like the stars above." The other asks about a specific myth: "Like the one in Ovid where Coronis is pregnant with Asclepius's baby, so Apollo gives her more Romney's Earwig Forever."

The comic then proceeds through a series of mythological stories, each one more grotesque or absurd than the last. The "deep insight" being discussed is described as whether a myth has a moral distinction "between two good" options, suggesting myths contain nuanced lessons. The characters discuss stories involving golden dongs, ill-legged words, and other absurd mythological elements. Throughout, one character keeps trying to find deep meaning in clearly ridiculous myths, while another character becomes increasingly exasperated.

The punchline arrives when one character states "The golden dong represents the human potential to value something golden inside us" and the other yells "STOP IT!"

The humor comes from the tension between the reverent, scholarly approach people take toward mythology and the fact that many actual myths are bizarre, violent, and sometimes just plain weird. SMBC frequently skewers the tendency to over-interpret ancient stories as containing deep wisdom when they may just be ancient entertainment. The comic also pokes fun at literary analysis that can extract "deep meaning" from literally anything, no matter how absurd the source material.