2009-11-21
Explanation
This comic is about a dying man's wish to reconcile with his estranged son through an unusual memorial plan. In the first panel, an elderly man lies in bed holding a photo, telling his wife that his one regret is that their son always felt he thought too much of "impermanent things." In the second panel, the couple looks at a brochure together, and the man explains that when he dies, he wants to use a process where they cremate you and turn the carbon into a diamond -- a real service that exists. The jeweler asks what cut he would like, and the man ominously answers: "Lens." The final panel shows their son being hit by a focused beam of light burning through him, revealing that the father had the diamond cut into a lens shape so it could be used to focus sunlight like a magnifying glass and set his son on fire.
The humor is deeply dark. The father's stated regret about valuing "impermanent things" initially sounds like a touching deathbed confession about materialism. But his solution -- turning himself into a diamond (the ultimate symbol of permanence and material wealth) and then using it as a weapon against his son -- reveals that he hasn't learned anything at all. Instead of reconciling, he has found a way to attack his son from beyond the grave, literally burning him with concentrated sunlight through his own cremated remains.
The votey shows the old man peering through the diamond lens and simply saying "Sorry!" -- a hilariously inadequate apology given that he is actively using his own posthumous diamond body to incinerate his child.