monster-2

A four-panel comic. Panel 1: A child lies in bed in a dark room and calls out, "Dad! There's a monster under my bed!" Panel 2: The dad, a bespectacled man, replies dryly, "Surely a monster, with its thousand dagger-like claws and millions of needle-sharp fangs, can get through a mattress." Panel 3: The dad reclines on the floor beside the bed, continuing, "Either there's no monster or he's biding his time. Waiting. Waiting until he can be sure you're vulnerab--oop, one sec, I gotta take this call." Panel 4: The dad walks away into a lit doorway, leaving the child alone in the dark room, saying into his phone, "Bob! Hey! Yeah I have an hour or so free!" The joke: after terrifying his kid with monster talk, the dad casually abandons him to take a phone call. Votey (aftercomic): A close-up of the dad on the phone, smiling, saying, "Yeah, I can put on noise-canceling headphones and go to the other side of the house, sure!"--cheerfully agreeing to make himself completely unreachable while his scared child is left behind.