2013-03-16
Explanation
This comic juxtaposes the famous poem "They Flee from Me" by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, a 16th-century English poet, with an absurd sci-fi scenario. In the first panel, a man dressed in Tudor-era clothing recites the opening lines of Wyatt's poem: "They flee from me that sometimes did me seek, / With naked foot stalking in my chamber. / I have seen them gentle, tame and meek, / That now are wild and do not remember." A small figure below covers their ears in distress. The second panel reveals the punchline: the reason people are fleeing is that Sir Thomas Wyatt is now piloting a giant robot exoskeleton, which is shown firing lasers at fleeing people.
The humor comes from recontextualizing a classic poem about lost love and the fickleness of former lovers. Wyatt's original poem is a melancholy meditation on how people who once sought his company now avoid him. The comic provides a hilariously literal and perfectly reasonable explanation for why "they flee from me" -- it's not heartbreak or changing affections, it's because the poet is stomping around in a giant mech suit shooting laser beams. The joke works by taking the poetic metaphor of abandonment and giving it an absurdly concrete cause that makes the poem's speaker seem oblivious rather than wistful.