ea
Explanation
This comic is about how the casual greeting "How's it going?" has become meaningless in a world of constant crises.
The first section, labeled "In the past," shows two stick figures exchanging the standard pleasantry: "How's it going?" / "Going okay." This is the traditional, unremarkable social script.
The second section, labeled "Currently," shows the same exchange but with a more honest answer: "How's it going?" / "Going okay other than the various cataclysms." This reflects the modern experience of living through overlapping global crises (pandemic, climate change, political upheaval, etc.) where "okay" always needs a giant asterisk.
The third section, labeled "Proposal for the future," shows a solution: "From now on, I'm appending 'EA' to the end of the question. The 'EA' is gonna stand for 'excluding apocalypses.'" The other person agrees: "Okay." The final exchange demonstrates the new system: "How's it going, EA?" / "Going okay."
The humor lies in the recognition that the polite social greeting "How's it going?" has become almost impossible to answer honestly, because the honest answer almost always involves acknowledging enormous, ongoing catastrophes that are too heavy for casual conversation. The comic proposes a practical linguistic patch: by adding "EA" (excluding apocalypses), both parties agree to bracket the existential dread and just talk about their personal, day-to-day lives. It is a joke about how social niceties have to evolve to accommodate the fact that the background state of the world has become persistently terrible.