“Dad, you’re trending,” she said. “But… they’re changing it.”

But not the yellow, four-fingered, donut-loving Homer. He drew Homer slumped on the couch of a streaming service interface, his body made of glowing thumbnails. One eye was a TikTok logo, the other was a spinning wheel of fortune from a canceled game show. His hand reached not for a Duff Beer, but for a remote with only one button:

It was a comic store. Dusty. Empty. In the corner, a single reader sat on a milk crate, holding a battered issue of Radioactive Man . The reader was old—maybe forty-eight—with calloused fingers and tired eyes. He was smiling.

And in the silence, for six beautiful seconds, the scroll stopped.