Sleeping Beauty
Explanation
The Joke
The comic retells the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty with a more realistic twist. The narration begins traditionally: "Long has she lain asleep, awaiting the kiss of a true prince." When the prince arrives and leans in, the sleeping princess wakes up and is immediately disgusted, asking when the last time was he brushed his teeth. The prince tries to explain, but she tells him to stop exhaling at her, describing his breath as smelling like "a rat died of leprosy in her neck." In the final panel, onlookers remark that they "should've thought this arrangement through more," while another exclaims "Holy Christ, he wasn't kidding" -- confirming the prince's terrible hygiene.
The Humor
The comedy comes from applying real-world logic to a fairy tale premise. In the classic Sleeping Beauty story, the prince's kiss is a romantic, magical moment. But in reality, a medieval prince who has been traveling on a quest would likely have terrible hygiene, and a person waking up to a stranger's face inches from theirs would not find it romantic at all. The escalating descriptions of how bad the prince smells provide the comedic momentum, and the final panel's confirmation from bystanders that the smell really is that bad provides the capping punchline. The comic is part of a broader tradition in SMBC and other comedic works of deconstructing fairy tales by injecting mundane reality.
References
The comic is a parody of the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," most famously told by Charles Perrault (1697) and the Brothers Grimm (as "Little Briar Rose," 1812), in which a princess is cursed to sleep until awakened by a prince's kiss.