heroism
Explanation
This comic deconstructs the fantasy hero trope using statistics. A mentor figure tells a young would-be hero that the "standard method" for producing a hero requires being born with the right genetics for strength and endurance, being lucky enough to eat well during development, having parents who can pay for training, and having everything go right with no injuries. The mentor concludes that statistically, it would be better to come up with an "expected heroism" score and train whoever is in "the largest sample" -- essentially, ordinary people.
The final panel jumps to "later," showing a bard telling the decidedly unheroic tale of "Egbert," who "drew a fairly large bow, but... he was weak of knees and fat of ass." The comic satirizes the survivorship bias inherent in hero narratives -- we only hear about the rare individuals for whom everything went right, ignoring the vast majority who failed. By applying statistical thinking to fantasy tropes, it suggests that a rational civilization would mass-train mediocre heroes rather than gambling on finding one perfect champion. The bathetic description of Egbert's saga drives home how much less romantic the statistically optimal approach would be.