hades
Original: hades on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A robed god-like figure (the lord of the underworld) speaks to a bearded man (Sisyphus):
God: "You're being sent to Hades, where you will be forced to roll this giant boulder up a mountain for all eternity, pushing it around for eternity. Always finding that, in time, it has been knocked away and must again be raised again!"
Sisyphus: "Oh wow, like a zen garden?"
Panel 2:
God: "Gosh, that sounds so relaxing. A narrow, achievable task. Every day forever. I would be so happy."
Panel 3:
The two stand together; the boulder is between them.
God: "Things are pretty rough down there, huh."
Sisyphus: "It's bad. It's so bad."
Votey:
Sisyphus (off-panel speech, pointing up): "Do you have any boulders I could roll up and down... and down?"
A small figure climbs/scales a tall vertical structure.
A robed god-like figure (the lord of the underworld) speaks to a bearded man (Sisyphus):
God: "You're being sent to Hades, where you will be forced to roll this giant boulder up a mountain for all eternity, pushing it around for eternity. Always finding that, in time, it has been knocked away and must again be raised again!"
Sisyphus: "Oh wow, like a zen garden?"
Panel 2:
God: "Gosh, that sounds so relaxing. A narrow, achievable task. Every day forever. I would be so happy."
Panel 3:
The two stand together; the boulder is between them.
God: "Things are pretty rough down there, huh."
Sisyphus: "It's bad. It's so bad."
Votey:
Sisyphus (off-panel speech, pointing up): "Do you have any boulders I could roll up and down... and down?"
A small figure climbs/scales a tall vertical structure.
Alt text
A black-and-white SMBC comic riffing on the myth of Sisyphus. In the first panel a robed god of the underworld sternly informs a bearded man that he is being sent to Hades to roll a giant boulder up a mountain for all eternity, the boulder forever rolling back so it must be raised again. Instead of being horrified, the man replies cheerfully, "Oh wow, like a zen garden?" In the next panel the god muses that the task actually sounds relaxing—"a narrow, achievable task, every day forever—I would be so happy." In the final panel, standing together by the boulder, the god observes that things must be pretty rough back in the man's normal life, and the man agrees: "It's bad. It's so bad." The joke flips eternal punishment into something enviably simple compared to ordinary life. In the votey (bonus panel), a small figure scales a tall vertical structure while asking, "Do you have any boulders I could roll up and down... and down?"—eager for more of the supposed torment.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.