2012-06-02
Explanation
This comic depicts an aggressive negotiation between a literary agent and a publisher over a book deal. The two go back and forth with increasingly hostile demands, insults, and ultimatums -- "His writing is 60% of your sales," "I can do 250% and five more points on the back end," "How about fuck you, do we have a deal or not?" -- before finally settling on terms that include a petty $500 payment from the publisher's personal account. They shake hands with a sarcastic "Pleasure doing business with you."
The punchline is revealed in the final panel: the book they've been negotiating over is titled "A Critique of Commercialism." The irony is that a book criticizing commercial culture and the profit motive was itself produced through an intensely commercialized, cutthroat negotiation process driven entirely by money and ego. The comic highlights the inherent hypocrisy -- or at least the unavoidable irony -- of producing anti-capitalist or anti-commercial art within a capitalist system. The very people who bring such critiques to market are fully engaged in the commercial machinery they claim to critique.