Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Stone

2021-10-29 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Stone
Votey panel for Stone
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic riffs on the Medusa myth. A figure (resembling Medusa or a similar mythological being) dramatically announces a curse: "Tremble! I shall tell you the secret! I will wash your arms into stone and gravel, into lifeless legs, grinding yourself into an enormous gray figure of rock, so that none may look upon me safely!"

In the next panel, a small red figure (the intended victim) responds with excitement rather than terror: "This is gonna look so cool, man. It's done."

The final panel shows the figure transformed into a dramatic stone statue, surrounded by onlookers. Rather than being horrified, the victim treated being turned to stone as an opportunity to become an awesome-looking statue -- essentially performance art. The joke subverts the horror of the Medusa myth by presenting petrification not as a curse but as a desirable aesthetic transformation, mocking the modern impulse to value appearances and spectacle over substance.

View History (1) Original Comic
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