2011-08-28
Explanation
This comic is an installment in SMBC's recurring "Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543" series. A supervillain announces he has combined the DNA of history's greatest conquerors -- Genghis Khan, Alexander of Macedon, Charlemagne, and Napoleon -- to create the ultimate supervillain. A scientist calmly explains that DNA does not work that way: you cannot simply combine DNA and guarantee the child will express all desired qualities, since you would also need to understand the environment and epigenome, which is essentially impossible.
When asked what the villain has actually been doing for ten years, the scientist bluntly replies that he has been mushing historically valuable bones into a paste and dunking the blob in an aquarium. The villain then asks how supervillains actually arise, and the scientist explains they emerge organically from countries with high inflation, low per capita income, and a bad Gini coefficient -- referencing real socioeconomic research on the conditions that breed authoritarian leaders. The villain does not even know what a Gini coefficient is, prompting the scientist to hand him a macroeconomics textbook. The comic humorously contrasts comic-book pseudoscience with the mundane reality that history's monsters are products of economic conditions, not genetic engineering.