hindenburg
Explanation
The Joke
The comic presents a time-travel scenario: a character announces that they have invented a time machine, but it can only travel to one fixed point in history. When asked which point, the character says "May 6, 1937" -- the date of the Hindenburg disaster. The other character responds, "You were right, this is better," implying that the time traveler had previously proposed this idea and someone had been skeptical. The joke is from a series of comics sponsored by or related to the book "Soonish" by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith.
The humor is that instead of choosing a momentous date that could change history for the better (preventing wars, saving lives, advancing science), the time traveler has chosen to visit the Hindenburg disaster -- a famous catastrophe that, while dramatic, is a peculiarly specific and arguably frivolous choice. The implication is that the time traveler is more interested in spectacle than in any noble purpose, and their companion has come around to this shallow enthusiasm.
The Humor
The comedy derives from the anticlimax: time travel is one of the grandest conceits in science fiction, usually associated with saving the world or altering the course of history. Here, it is reduced to disaster tourism. The second character's response ("You were right, this is better") suggests they initially had grander ambitions but have been won over to the idea that simply watching the Hindenburg burn is the superior use of this technology. It is a joke about human nature -- given infinite possibility, we would choose spectacle over substance.
References
- The Hindenburg disaster occurred on May 6, 1937, when the German airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while attempting to dock at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey. The disaster was famously captured on film and in the iconic radio broadcast by Herbert Morrison ("Oh, the humanity!").
- "Soonish" is a 2017 book by Zach Weinersmith (the creator of SMBC) and Kelly Weinersmith about emerging technologies.