All right, so it’s just not possible that he is learning this for the first time now. But it’s still a nice pun.
Let’s just allude to the story-pun that ends with “He’s a dead ringer for his brother”!
This Bizarro is from Andréa.
This DSOH from Andréa and others:
I only recently started sometimes reading One Big Happy, and evidently don’t yet have a good handle on the age and attitude of the intended audience. But these are all clear OYs on familiar sayings.
Is this Horace himself, doing some kind of costumed performance? Or an ancestor or other predecessor, who looked like that in his heyday?
And a definite meta-OY:
It’s a pun-joke we’ve heard before, but nicely executed, don’t you agree? Though not perfect — there’s no plotted reason for the appearance of the van.
Comics I Don't Understand 