integral
Explanation
This comic uses calculus -- specifically the concept of integration -- as a metaphor for life experience. A father tries to explain integrals to his child: you draw a curve, look at the area under it, and in practice you just need to know the anti-derivative of the function. The child responds, "Oh, it's stupid."
The father then explains that integrals are actually quite elegant in theory, but in practice, outside of simple polynomials, "everything goes to hell." Functions that look nice can carry hidden singularities, and taking the integral of seemingly innocent functions can produce nightmarish results. He compares it to living in a world where everyone looks nice but carries switchblades -- you never know when a seemingly simple integral will blow up on you. The comic works on two levels: as a genuine (if exaggerated) complaint about the difficulty of integration in real mathematics, and as a broader metaphor for how systems that seem elegant in theory become monstrous in practice. The father's final lament -- "Why does the universe hate us?" -- captures the frustration of every calculus student who has encountered an integral that refuses to cooperate.