Villains
Explanation
The Joke
The comic traces the etymology of the word "villain," which comes from the Latin villanus, meaning "farmhand" or someone who works on a villa. Similarly, the word "vulgar" (from vulgus) originally referred to common people. A character points out that calling someone a "villain" historically meant saying "you're worse than the people who do my laundry" or "you're worse than the people who cook my food" -- revealing that the term was essentially aristocratic class snobbery baked into language.
The character then says he is not opposed to farmers or anything, but suggests that politicians should adopt this etymology when talking about actual villainy. The final panel shows a politician at a podium declaring: "This nation must support its hardworking supervillains!" -- conflating the original agrarian meaning of "villain" with the modern comic-book sense of "supervillain."
The Humor
The comedy works on multiple levels. First, there is the inherent absurdity of realizing that one of our strongest words for evil people originally just meant "farmworker," exposing centuries of classist assumptions embedded in everyday language. Second, the punchline takes the logical suggestion ("politicians should acknowledge the word's roots") and runs it in the wrong direction -- instead of rehabilitating the word "villain" to honor laborers, the politician reframes supervillains as hardworking members of society deserving government support. It satirizes how politicians can twist language and etymology to justify anything.
References
The etymology presented is historically accurate. "Villain" does derive from the Late Latin villanus (farm servant), tied to villa (country house). The word "vulgar" similarly comes from the Latin vulgus (the common people). Both words underwent pejoration over the centuries, shifting from neutral class descriptors to terms carrying strongly negative connotations -- a well-documented phenomenon in historical linguistics.