gartok
Explanation
The Joke
The comic shows a prehistoric barbarian-like figure named Gartok addressing a group. He declares that when he turned to violence, his enemies' wives and children had been taken. His blade was fell and his might was terrible. He then says he established a rule that there would be no more violence against future generations -- women, children, and innocents would be protected.
In the final panel, the scene shifts to a modern context where someone asks: "How's your evolutionary psychology epic coming?" The writer responds: "I'm about to get to the part where he gets 8,000 calories for a woman with perfect facial symmetry." This reveals that the entire "Gartok" narrative is being written by a modern person, and the supposedly noble barbarian saga is actually a thinly veiled evolutionary psychology fantasy -- one that is about to take a deeply uncomfortable turn into pseudoscientific justifications for treating women as prizes measured by caloric exchange value and physical attractiveness metrics.
The Humor
The comic satirizes a specific genre of evolutionary psychology popularizing that romanticizes primitive human life while using it to justify modern biases about gender and attractiveness. The first panels set up what seems like a sincere heroic epic, complete with archaic language ("his blade was fell"), only for the reveal to show it is being written by a modern person whose narrative is heading toward a cringe-worthy conclusion about "trading calories for facial symmetry." The humor lies in the deflation -- the grand barbaric saga is really just a neckbeard's fantasy dressed up in academic language.
References
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach that attempts to explain human behavior as a product of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurring problems in ancestral environments. It has been widely criticized for producing "just-so stories" that retroactively justify existing social norms and prejudices, particularly around gender roles and mate selection, using unfalsifiable narratives about prehistoric life.