killing-hitler
Explanation
The Joke
The comic begins with the classic time-travel trope: "If I could go back in time, I'd kill baby Hitler." Someone objects that the consequences would be unpredictable, but the results turn out to be overwhelmingly positive -- world GDP is up 30%, happiness is up 15%, and the "handlebar mustache is worn with pride around the world."
This success leads to addiction. They begin killing more historical villains: Stalin, Genghis Khan, and "the guy who first put raisins in carrot cake." Each assassination improves the world further. They keep going -- Jack the Ripper, the first guy who put raisins in cookies. Eventually they hold an election and form a "Time Travel Party" that promises to keep killing historical bad guys.
But introducing politics into the process proves disastrous. Constituents demand that everything in the world get better at no cost, and they've already killed all the obvious villains. They begin targeting the "semi-Hitlers of history" -- like a college student whose messy habits force his roommates to do chores. They escalate to killing larger numbers of mildly bad people. Eventually humanity is winnowed down to an ever-smaller population. One person realizes they forgot to include a "thank you" card, which gives all surviving humans grounds to eliminate them for being inconsiderate. In the end, only one person remains -- who then receives a message from the future saying humanity got the worst possible outcome and asking to eliminate the last remaining threat: the time-travel concept itself. Galactic GDP is up 47%.
The Humor
The comic is a reductio ad absurdum of the popular "kill baby Hitler" thought experiment. It starts with the satisfying fantasy of fixing history through targeted violence, then shows how this power inevitably escalates. The slope from "kill Hitler" to "kill the guy who puts raisins in cookies" to "kill anyone who is even slightly inconsiderate" is a brilliant illustration of how moral standards inflate when you have unlimited power to enforce them. The political angle adds another layer -- once the power to eliminate historical "bad" people becomes democratized through elections, the definition of "bad" expands until essentially everyone qualifies. The comic satirizes both vigilante justice fantasies and political purity spirals.
The votey ("Their comics just kept getting longer!") is a self-referential joke by Zach Weinersmith about the length of this particular comic, which is indeed one of his longer strips.
References
- "Would you kill baby Hitler?" is a well-known philosophical thought experiment about the ethics of time travel and preemptive violence, which became a widespread internet meme.
- The comic references several real historical figures: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, and Jack the Ripper.
- Raisins in carrot cake and cookies is a common culinary complaint that Weinersmith elevates to a crime against humanity for comedic effect.