car-seat
Original: car-seat on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title (top-left panel): How to Install a Car Seat
The comic is laid out as a step-by-step instructional diagram, in the clean line-art style of a product manual. A man performs each step.
Panel 1 (title panel): A man stands beside a sedan in a parking lot, holding a child's car seat.
Panel 2 caption: 1. Place seat into car.
Panel 3 caption: 2. Pull belt through slot.
Panel 4 caption: 3. Buckle belt
Panel 5 caption: 4. Exert 10 trillion newtons of force on shoulder strap.
Panel 6 caption: 5. Inner chamber of car seat collapses into thin sheets of pure neutronium.
Panel 7 caption: 6. Neutronium absorbs vacuum energy from fabric of spacetime, resulting in a singularity of infinite mass. (The illustration shows the surrounding landscape, car, and debris being sucked toward the car seat.)
Panel 8 caption: 7. Seat now stays in place without wobbling. (The man gives a satisfied thumbs-up beside the securely installed seat.)
Credits: Writing by Zach Weinersmith at smbc-comics.com. Art by Severin Piehl at tovecomic.com.
Votey:
Handwritten note: This is exactly how neutronium works.
The comic is laid out as a step-by-step instructional diagram, in the clean line-art style of a product manual. A man performs each step.
Panel 1 (title panel): A man stands beside a sedan in a parking lot, holding a child's car seat.
Panel 2 caption: 1. Place seat into car.
Panel 3 caption: 2. Pull belt through slot.
Panel 4 caption: 3. Buckle belt
Panel 5 caption: 4. Exert 10 trillion newtons of force on shoulder strap.
Panel 6 caption: 5. Inner chamber of car seat collapses into thin sheets of pure neutronium.
Panel 7 caption: 6. Neutronium absorbs vacuum energy from fabric of spacetime, resulting in a singularity of infinite mass. (The illustration shows the surrounding landscape, car, and debris being sucked toward the car seat.)
Panel 8 caption: 7. Seat now stays in place without wobbling. (The man gives a satisfied thumbs-up beside the securely installed seat.)
Credits: Writing by Zach Weinersmith at smbc-comics.com. Art by Severin Piehl at tovecomic.com.
Votey:
Handwritten note: This is exactly how neutronium works.
Alt text
An IKEA-style instructional diagram titled "How to Install a Car Seat," drawn in clean product-manual line art, showing a man completing numbered steps. Steps 1-3 are mundane: place the seat into the car, pull the seat belt through the slot, and buckle the belt. Then it escalates absurdly: Step 4, exert 10 trillion newtons of force on the shoulder strap; Step 5, the inner chamber of the car seat collapses into thin sheets of pure neutronium; Step 6, the neutronium absorbs vacuum energy from spacetime, creating a singularity of infinite mass that sucks the surrounding car, trees, and debris toward the seat; Step 7, the seat "now stays in place without wobbling," as the man gives a contented thumbs-up. The joke is that the comically over-engineered, physics-breaking installation process is presented as a routine how-to. Credits read: writing by Zach Weinersmith, art by Severin Piehl. The votey (bonus panel) is a handwritten note reading: "This is exactly how neutronium works."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.