the-greatest-possible-superhero
Explanation
The Joke
A woman is crying for help from a villain, and a superhero called "The Utilitarian" arrives to save the day. Instead of simply defeating the villain and rescuing the woman, The Utilitarian takes a complex, calculated approach: he destroys the villain's frontal lobes and cauterizes the wound, rendering him unconscious. The hero explains that while the villain's higher functions are gone, his organs can still be harvested to save other lives.
The Utilitarian then tallies up the moral calculus: not only has he saved the woman (the purse-snatching victim), but he has saved the lives of five other people through the organ harvesting. He adds further moral credit because the villain was a criminal. The horrified woman protests, but The Utilitarian dismisses her objection, explaining that he is using "a technique called addition" -- reducing the entire moral question to simple arithmetic.
The Humor
The comic satirizes utilitarianism, the ethical philosophy that the morally correct action is the one that produces the greatest good for the greatest number. While utilitarianism sounds reasonable in the abstract, this comic takes it to an absurd extreme where a superhero performs what amounts to involuntary organ harvesting on a petty criminal, justifying gruesome acts through cold mathematical calculation. The joke is that strict utilitarian logic can lead to monstrous conclusions if applied without any other moral constraints.
The punchline -- "I'm using a technique called addition" -- is a perfect deadpan dismissal that reduces all of moral philosophy to basic arithmetic, mocking the way utilitarian thinkers can sometimes appear to treat deeply complex ethical questions as simple math problems.
References
Utilitarianism is a family of ethical theories most associated with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Bentham proposed a "felicific calculus" to literally quantify pleasure and pain in moral decision-making. The comic's organ-harvesting scenario is reminiscent of the classic philosophical thought experiment known as the "Transplant Problem," in which a doctor could save five patients by harvesting the organs of one healthy person -- a scenario frequently used to illustrate the counterintuitive or horrifying conclusions that strict act utilitarianism can produce.