Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic is titled "How Introductory Physics Problems Are Written" and satirizes the notoriously convoluted and tedious nature of physics textbook problems. It shows an original problem about a steel wall with water on one side, asking students to calculate where the axis should be so it doesn't tip over -- and then requiring them to repeat the exercise for an absurd list of materials (copper, ice, oak, osmium, neutronium, solid xenon held together by magic) and liquids (mercury, liquid nitrogen, blood, petroleum, molten lead).

Two professors look at this problem and decide it's "a bit dry" and could use some "fun." Their solution is to rewrite the problem as: "A SUPERMAN with the properties of a steel wall has water on one side" -- keeping the exact same tedious calculations but adding the word "Superman" to make it supposedly more engaging. The joke mocks how physics textbooks try to make problems more appealing by adding superficial real-world or pop-culture framing while keeping the underlying busywork exactly the same.