Gahan Wilson’s 1969 cartoon drops one of his trademark absurd surprises into an operating room, where a jack-in-the-box suddenly springs up from the surgical table. The joke works because the setting is so clinical and serious, while the bright yellow toy is completely out of place.
That contrast between the ordinary and the bizarre was central to Wilson’s humor. His cartoons often took familiar situations like hospitals, offices, suburban homes, or family life and pushed them just far enough into the macabre or surreal to make them both funny and unsettling.
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