>Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.

I think they made the connection to dark comedy:

>this somewhat kawaii rendering of the Slotin experiment, along with the “I love science” phrasing, was a form of dark humor.

And later

>Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism — a defense against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world.

Oh yeah. My bad. I maintain the author reads as surprised though.