2010-09-02
Explanation
This comic depicts Superman lying on a therapist's couch. The therapist says, "You're here to talk about trust issues? Ha! Okay. I thought for sure it was fear of heights. I mean... imagine you're flying and your powers conk out for like two minutes. SPLAT!" The caption below reads, "Superman now works as an accountant."
The humor lies in the therapist's spectacular failure at his job. Rather than helping Superman with his stated concern (trust issues), the therapist inadvertently introduces an entirely new phobia -- the terrifying possibility that his flying powers could randomly fail mid-flight, sending him plummeting to his death. The therapist's casual, almost gleeful description of this scenario ("SPLAT!") is so psychologically damaging that the punchline tells us Superman gave up superheroism entirely and became an accountant, presumably the safest and most grounded profession imaginable. It is a joke about therapeutic malpractice taken to a superheroic extreme.