triboelectric
Explanation
The Joke
The comic opens with a caption: "You ever wonder about the first person to discover the triboelectric effect?" The single large panel then depicts what this discovery might have looked like in ancient times. A wild-looking man stands on a hilltop, excitedly shouting to a group of bewildered onlookers: "Everyone! I've been rolling around in dead cats and now I can shoot tiny lightning bolts from my fingers!"
The humor is entirely in the image of this moment from the perspective of the witnesses -- a disheveled man covered in dead animal fur, claiming to have electrical powers.
The Humor
The triboelectric effect is the real physical phenomenon where certain materials become electrically charged after rubbing against each other -- the same principle behind static electricity from rubbing a balloon on your hair, or shuffling across carpet in socks. The ancient Greeks actually did discover that rubbing fur (including cat fur) on amber produced static electricity. The comic imagines this discovery as it would have appeared to bystanders: a person who, for reasons they cannot explain, has been rolling around in dead cats and now has a minor superpower. The joke works because scientific discoveries, when stripped of their later theoretical framework, often look like the behavior of an absolute maniac. The contrast between the mundane physics explanation and the visual of an ancient wild man ranting about dead cats and finger lightning is the core of the comedy.
References
The triboelectric effect was first documented by the ancient Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus around 600 BCE, who observed that rubbing amber (Greek: "elektron," the origin of the word "electricity") with animal fur caused it to attract small objects. The comic's scenario, while exaggerated, is rooted in this genuine historical origin of electrical science.