
Carl Fink sends this in: “I’ve never read Notes from the Underground, but this SMBC is a complete mystery to me. Dad is underground? 18 hours of reading books aloud comforts a dying man? What is going on?”
Mouseover text: “Suddenly regretting that I didn’t just draw a word for word graphic novel of the entire book twice.”
Bonus panel:

It’s a dad joke. You know, kid says “I’m hungry,” and dad says “Hi, hungry. I’m Dad.” In panel 2, the book starts “I am a sick man.” Dad starts panel 5 “Hi a sick man” and includes the whole book before introducing himself.
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There’s a popular dad joke that that goes something like this:
Child: “I’m tired!”
Father: “Hi, Tired, I’m dad!”
This is a twist on it, albeit one that doesn’t work because “I am a sick man” doesn’t have the ambiguity of “I am sick.”
I don’t know which is worse: That the father used his final words to tell a pretty common joke, or that he did it wrong.
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The dad joke here is that the dying dead is taking the entirety of Notes from Underground (except for the initial “I am”) to be his son’s name.
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Sorry, the dying dad, not dying dead.
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I think I (52) am the wrong generation for this type of ‘dad joke’. My dad’s jokes were of the ‘Irishman walks into a bar’, ‘traveling salesman and farmer’s daughter’ or ‘shaggy dog’/’excruciatingly long setup, leading to corny pun’ variety.
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My sister and I would insist “I’m serious!” and the Dad reply was “Hello, Serious, I’m Robot” — which was extra puzzling at first since we were unfamiliar with the compound name “Sears, Roebuck”.
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I didn’t get that the guy was dying, but now I see the clue: “Notes from the Underground”
Mitch4, I love that “Serious Robot” pun. No, really! Also, it reminds me of their competitor, which my grandfather always called “Monkey Ward.”
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It’s definitely a dad joke. “I’m a sick man” “Hi a sick man, I’m Dad!” The man is dying and he wants to perform the ultimate set up for a dad joke, 18 hours long. At the same time he may be making a pun on “I’m dead.” When he says “I’m Dad!”
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