why-9
Explanation
This comic takes the common childhood behavior of self-hitting ("why are you hitting yourself?") and reframes it through the lens of philosophy and existentialism.
In the first panel, a large muscular man is hitting a smaller person while asking the classic bully's taunt: "Why you hittin' yourself, man? Why you hittin' yourself?" The smaller person protests: "I'm not! It's in the nature of things!"
In the second panel, the smaller person elaborates: "I was trying to bully you, okay?" And the large man responds: "Let's try. Gone everything they can before you use wet." (or similar -- the exact text is partially obscured).
The final panel shows a calmer scene. The humor here works by taking the childhood taunt "stop hitting yourself" -- where a bully grabs someone's hand and forces them to hit themselves -- and giving it a philosophical dimension. The victim claims the self-hitting is "in the nature of things," suggesting a deterministic worldview where free will doesn't exist and therefore he isn't really hitting himself; the nature of the universe is doing it. This transforms a simple bullying scenario into a philosophical debate about free will and determinism. The bully's confusion at receiving a metaphysical answer to what was meant to be a rhetorical taunt is the core of the humor.