it-doesn39t-look-good
Explanation
The Joke
A woman rushes into a room saying "Harriet, I need you to try something!" Another woman asks "What's up?" and is told "It's your entree. It doesn't look good." The setup makes it sound like a medical emergency -- "it doesn't look good" is the classic phrase doctors use to deliver bad news. In the next panels, a man says "I'm fine, it just doesn't look good" and "I just decided to grow a goatee on a dare," revealing that "doesn't look good" was meant literally about his physical appearance. The final panel shows other people saying "I think he should pull it off," maintaining the ambiguity between pulling off the goatee and "pulling off" the look.
The Humor
The entire comic is built on the deliberate exploitation of the phrase "it doesn't look good," which in common usage almost always implies a dire prognosis or serious problem. The comic sets up every visual and verbal cue to suggest something grave is happening, then deflates the tension by revealing it is literally about someone's unfortunate facial hair choice. The final line, "I think he should pull it off," adds another layer of double meaning -- it could mean physically removing the goatee or successfully carrying off the style. The humor comes from the contrast between the manufactured urgency and the trivial reality.