hundred
Explanation
The comic is titled "Discovery" and presents the premise: "Book titles are way better if you add 'a hundred' any time the word 'a' appears."
It then shows three modified book covers as examples:
- "To Kill a Hundred Mockingbirds" (from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird")
- "A Hundred Rooms of One's Own" (from Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own")
- "Death of a Hundred Salesmen" (from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman")
The humor is straightforward wordplay. By mechanically replacing every instance of the article "a" with "a hundred," the titles of classic works of literature and drama are transformed into absurdly grandiose or violent versions of themselves. "To Kill a Mockingbird," a thoughtful novel about racial injustice, becomes a mass bird slaughter. "A Room of One's Own," Woolf's feminist essay about the need for personal space and independence, becomes an outrageously excessive demand for a hundred rooms. "Death of a Salesman," Miller's intimate tragedy about one man's failed American Dream, becomes a wholesale massacre of salespeople.
The joke works because the mechanical simplicity of the rule contrasts with how dramatically it changes the tone of each title, making profound works sound like pulpy action stories or absurdist comedies.