Zach Weinersmith's Capsule Reviews
Explanation
The Joke
The comic presents capsule reviews of books, movies, or ideas — but instead of conventional criticism, each review applies the lens of a different academic discipline. An economist reviews a romance movie in terms of market efficiency. A physicist reviews a cookbook by analyzing thermodynamics. A philosopher reviews a children's book by questioning its ontological assumptions.
The Humor
The joke is that every discipline has a worldview so totalizing that its practitioners can't help but see everything through it. The humor is in the mismatch between the subject matter (a romance movie, a cookbook) and the analytical framework being applied to it (economics, physics, philosophy). Each review is technically valid within its framework, which is what makes it funny.
Context
This is one of many SMBC comics built on the joke that academic training creates permanent cognitive distortion. The reviews aren't wrong — they're just operating in the wrong domain, which is itself a comment on how specialization can become a kind of intellectual tunnel vision.