destiny-3
Explanation
This comic plays on the time-travel trope where someone comes from the future to warn a person about their destiny. A visitor tells a young man, "I'm from the future. Listen, in 20 years you become a despot worse than any in history." The visitor explains that it is important the young man be "as unambitious as possible to spare the world from your evil genius." The young man solemnly agrees: "I will do my part."
The punchline comes in the next panel where we see the result: the young man is now lounging on a couch doing nothing, and the visitor says "And that's why... get a job, man, Jesus." The bottom text reveals this is actually "a time-travel comic about parents trying to get their adult son to do something with his life."
The joke subverts the dramatic time-travel setup in two ways. First, it reveals the entire "future despot" story was fabricated -- it's just parents trying an increasingly creative excuse to get their lazy adult child off the couch. Second, it lampoons the irony of the situation: the "prophecy" to be unambitious was taken as permission to be a couch potato, which is the exact problem the parents were trying to solve. The comic satirizes both the overworn time-travel trope and the real-world struggle of parents trying to motivate an unmotivated adult child.