2007-09-26

A man lies in a hospital bed with an IV line and a heart monitor; a woman sits beside him at a bedside table that holds a vase of flowers. She says excitedly, "Ted! You're awake! You've been in a coma for twenty years - I never left your side for a moment!" The man, just regaining consciousness, starts to say "W-where -" and then deadpans, "You must be REALLY boring." The joke: rather than being touched by her devotion, he's appalled that she had so little else going on that she could spend twenty years sitting next to a comatose man. In the votey aftercomic, drawn in a rough black-and-white sketch style, the same man in the bed grins and says, "Hey get a load of that nurse!" - immediately ogling a passing nurse, undercutting any sentiment of the moment.