Prize
Explanation
The Joke
A distinguished, bearded man (resembling Alfred Nobel or a Nobel committee member) stands at a podium and announces a new category of Nobel Prize: one for "discoveries about the origins of war." The catch is that only one medal will ever be minted, and the only way to obtain it is by taking it from whoever currently has it.
The comic creates a deliciously self-referential paradox. A prize for understanding the origins of war can only be won through an act that is itself a microcosm of war -- seizing something valuable from someone else by force. The structure of the competition would inevitably generate exactly the kind of conflict it is meant to study, turning the academic pursuit of understanding warfare into an actual perpetual conflict over a shiny medal.
The Humor
The joke works because it collapses the distinction between studying something and doing it. Academics who research the origins of war would, in order to receive recognition for their work, have to engage in the very behavior they study. It is a pointed satire on how competition for academic prestige can itself become combative and territorial, but taken to a literal, absurd extreme. There is also a layer of irony in that Alfred Nobel, who established the prizes, made his fortune from the invention of dynamite -- a tool of war -- making a self-defeating war-prize feel oddly fitting for the Nobel brand.