score
Explanation
This comic depicts a scene where one character offers another a chance to "score some novelty pens." The second character, dressed like a rugged smuggler or adventurer, reveals he smuggled the pens through the Darien Gap -- a notoriously dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama that real migrants risk their lives to cross.
The absurdity escalates: novelty pens aren't contraband, the "smuggler" crossed treacherous jungle with multicolor ballpoint pens in his rectum, and when asked if he'd sell a single pen for a penny, he insists "it's not about the price" and launches into what sounds like a dramatic backstory ("that's not the subject of the true story"). The scene parodies drug deal and smuggling movie tropes -- the tense exchange, the shady meetup, the dangerous backstory -- but applies them to the most mundane, worthless product imaginable: novelty pens.
The humor comes from the complete mismatch between the gravity of the smuggling operation and the triviality of the cargo. The character endured genuine life-threatening hardship to traffic items you can buy at any dollar store. It satirizes how crime narratives romanticize smuggling by showing how ridiculous the framework looks when the stakes are reduced to nothing.