2009-11-06
Explanation
This comic presents "The Ultimate Diet" as a presentation by a bespectacled man in a suit pointing at a sign. The diet has just one rule: "The only thing you can eat is other people on the Ultimate Diet." The caption below reads: "We managed to solve obesity and overpopulation in one move."
The joke is a darkly logical thought experiment. If dieters can only eat other dieters, then the diet is self-limiting in a very literal way -- participants will either starve (thus losing weight) or resort to cannibalism (reducing the population). Either way, both obesity and overpopulation are "solved." The humor comes from presenting this horrifying scenario with the dry, corporate tone of a diet infomercial, as if cannibalistic mutual consumption were just another lifestyle choice alongside keto or intermittent fasting.
The votey panel shows the inevitable endgame of this diet: a single enormously fat person lying on the ground saying, "There can be only one..." -- a reference to the movie Highlander. This implies that the diet eventually results in a single survivor who has consumed all the other participants and is now extremely obese, which means the diet has actually failed at solving obesity for the one remaining person. The Highlander reference adds a layer of absurd epic grandeur to what is essentially a cannibalism joke.