2009-10-21
Explanation
This comic is titled "Great Practical Joke #342: Get Millions of Horror Movie Nerds to Watch a Romantic Comedy." The top three panels show scenes from a movie playing on screen. In the first panel, a woman pleads with a zombie named Steve, insisting that deep down he remembers her as his high school sweetheart. In the second panel, the zombie relents, apologizing for trying to eat her and agreeing they should date. The third panel shifts to a completely different rom-com scenario where two accountants deliver a corny pun about never being able to "account for love." Below these movie panels, we see an audience of horrified-looking men sitting in a theater, clearly distressed by what they are watching.
The joke operates on the idea that horror fans could be lured into a theater expecting zombie gore, only to find themselves trapped in a saccharine romantic comedy. The zombie setup is bait, and the punchline is the shift to the accountant rom-com scene, which is so generically cheesy that the audience looks physically pained. It plays on the stereotype that horror enthusiasts would find a romantic comedy to be a fate worse than any on-screen monster.
The votey panel extends the joke with the zombie from the movie saying "He may be undead, but he'll never go unloved," delivering one more syrupy romantic line to further torment the horror-nerd audience.