2010-09-12
Explanation
This comic retells the Greek myth of Pandora's Box with a skeptical twist. Zeus gives Pandora a box that he claims contains "all the ills that befall mankind." Pandora, being rational, points out that you cannot put abstract concepts like "ills" in a box because they are not physical objects. She opens the box to demonstrate that it is empty, at which point Zeus yells "BOOM! I warned you! Totally warned you!"
In the final panel, when someone asks Zeus why there is suffering in the world, he dismisses it by saying "Dumb woman opened a box." The comic satirizes the original myth's logic by having Pandora be the reasonable one -- correctly noting that the premise makes no sense -- while Zeus acts like a con artist who set up an unfalsifiable trap. No matter what Pandora did, Zeus could blame her. The comic highlights how the original myth functions as a "blame the woman" narrative (paralleling Eve in Genesis), with the divine authority figure rigging the scenario so that curiosity and skepticism are punished.