2011-05-16
Explanation
This comic is an unusually long, text-heavy strip presented as a series of letters exchanged between a fictional "Lord Bradsteen" and the "Superintendent of South Area Technical Services" (and later other bureaucratic entities). The correspondence follows an increasingly absurd bureaucratic chain in which Lord Bradsteen repeatedly asks a simple question -- apparently about having his non-terrestrial estate recognized or some related administrative matter -- and receives form letters, redirections, and procedural runarounds. Each response directs him to a different office or asks him to resubmit paperwork, while his requests grow more desperate and frustrated.
The comic satirizes the nightmare of dealing with bureaucracy, where a simple request gets lost in an endless loop of departments, forms, and procedural requirements. The letters grow increasingly absurd as the bureaucratic machine fails to address the actual issue while generating enormous amounts of correspondence. The humor comes from the contrast between the polite, formal tone of the letters and the total futility of the exchange. The strip ends with a newspaper headline reading "93 British Lords Go Mad in Same Month, Cause Unknown" -- revealing that this bureaucratic torture has driven dozens of lords to insanity.
The votey bonus panel shows two people looking at the comic, with one asking "Don'''t comics have pictures?" and the other responding "You are so out of touch." This is a meta-joke about the comic itself, which is almost entirely text with minimal illustration -- a self-aware acknowledgment by Weiner that he has pushed the boundaries of what constitutes a "comic" by creating what is essentially a short story in comic panel format.