2010-12-04
Explanation
This comic is built around the concept of a spoonerism, a verbal error in which the initial sounds of two words are accidentally swapped. A man tells his friend he was fired from his job at a pet store because of a spoonerism. When his friend asks how that could possibly get someone fired, the man explains the situation: he was showing a small but tough puppy to an elderly woman and meant to say "capable runt."
The final panel shows the flashback where the man is desperately shouting "I meant capable runt! Capable runt!" to the horrified elderly customer. The humor comes from the implied spoonerism, which the reader is left to work out: swapping the initial sounds of "capable" and "runt" produces an extremely vulgar phrase. The comic never states the offensive version directly, making the reader complicit in constructing the punchline.