2010-07-23
Explanation
This comic reimagines the myth of Sisyphus, the figure from Greek mythology who was condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only for it to roll back down each time he neared the top. In the first panel, Sisyphus is pushing his boulder up the hill as usual. But then something unexpected happens: the boulder stays at the top. Sisyphus exclaims, "Holy crap! Usually it rolls right back down and I have to start over! But this time it didn't!"
With his eternal punishment suddenly over, Sisyphus faces an existential crisis: "Huh. So what do I do with my life? I guess I should get a job." He goes to a job interview, where the interviewer notes that his only experience is in boulder-rolling and tells him he will have to start at the bottom. The final panel shows a woman on Mount Olympus saying "You're such a dick, Zeus" -- implying that Zeus orchestrated this new humiliation deliberately. Being freed from the boulder was not a mercy; it was a crueler punishment, forcing Sisyphus into the modern indignity of job hunting with no marketable skills.
The votey panel shows Sisyphus after two weeks in a data entry job, saying "I miss my boulder..." This is a nod to Albert Camus's famous essay "The Myth of Sisyphus," in which Camus argued we must imagine Sisyphus happy -- finding meaning in the struggle itself. The comic suggests that mindless office work might actually be worse than the mythological punishment, and that there was a strange comfort and purpose in the boulder that a soul-crushing desk job cannot provide.