2011-05-26
Explanation
This comic is titled "The World's Greatest Pickpocket" and plays out as a wordless visual gag across four panels. A bald man with round glasses bumps into a man wearing a brown jacket and sunglasses in a crowd, saying "Pardon me, sir!" In the third panel, the man in the jacket appears to be missing something -- but instead of his wallet, his entire shirt and tie have been stolen right off his body. In the final panel, the man in the jacket is revealed to now be holding the bald pickpocket like a baby, with the pickpocket wearing nothing but his glasses, having apparently been stripped of his own clothes in a counter-pickpocketing move.
The humor comes from the absurd escalation of the pickpocket concept. Rather than stealing a wallet or watch, the "world's greatest pickpocket" steals entire articles of clothing off a person without them noticing. The joke then doubles down with the implication that the victim may have out-pickpocketed the pickpocket in return, stripping him down as well. It is a classic SMBC escalation gag, taking a familiar concept and pushing it to an absurd extreme.