gods
Explanation
The comic shows two panels set in a forest. In the first panel, a small woodland creature (possibly a squirrel or mouse) addresses a tree: "Dear Tree, a Chicago man deals land and stocks and says I eat too and bad things happen to all creatures equally." The tree responds: "Because cruelty, rudeness, evil -- it's all in a god's rules and spread."
In the second panel, a different creature says: "Dear God, I'm gonna scratch that tree down, and the remaining survivors will not do the things I plan." The tree (or God) responds: "Dear God of animals, why do you do these things? You play games." A large, intimidating figure (possibly a bear or forest god) appears and declares: "None of your fucking business. That's why."
The comic is a riff on the theological problem of evil (theodicy) -- the question of why an all-powerful, all-good God would allow suffering. The forest setting transposes this into an animal kingdom context, where creatures address their questions about suffering to the natural world. The small creature tries to understand why bad things happen, and the answer it gets is essentially the "divine mystery" response: suffering exists because the gods have rules beyond mortal comprehension.
The punchline comes from the brutish god figure who, when pressed on why he allows cruelty and plays games with living things, simply responds: "None of your fucking business. That's why." This is a blunt, comedic distillation of certain theological positions that argue God's ways are inherently beyond human questioning -- but stripped of all the comforting theological language, it reveals how unsatisfying that answer actually is. The comic suggests that "God works in mysterious ways" is really just a polite version of "none of your business."