symbols
Explanation
The Joke
The comic depicts a historical scene in which one person receives a stone tablet covered in strange markings. When asked "What's this?", the messenger explains that "Aram" sent it -- the symbols are a route to sounds which form words and sentences. In other words, someone has just invented the alphabet and written language.
The recipient is impressed, noting it will have many uses, but then innocently asks why Aram didn't just come deliver the message in person. The joke is completed by the votey/fun fact panel at the bottom, which reads: "The first alphabet was invented to avoid a face-to-face breakup."
So the entire invention of written language -- one of humanity's greatest achievements -- was motivated not by record-keeping, commerce, or literature, but by someone who wanted to break up with their partner without having to do it in person. The tablet is essentially history's first breakup text.
The Humor
The humor works on multiple levels. First, there is the anachronistic absurdity of attributing one of civilization's most important inventions to a petty, cowardly personal motive. Second, it is a commentary on modern communication habits -- people today frequently use text messages to avoid difficult face-to-face conversations, especially breakups. By projecting this very modern social behavior back to the literal invention of writing, Weinersmith suggests that humans have always been conflict-averse and that technology has always been used as a social buffer.
References
The comic alludes to the historical development of early alphabets in the ancient Near East (around 1800-1050 BCE), such as the Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician scripts, which evolved from earlier pictographic systems into symbols representing sounds. The name "Aram" may be a nod to the Aramaic script, one of the historically significant alphabets of the ancient world.