2010-01-01
Explanation
This comic satirizes the alternative medicine and herbal supplement industry. In the main panel, a group of businessmen sit around a conference table with a jar labeled "Placebo" in front of them. One man laments that the product needs a new name because nobody wants to buy something that, by definition, does nothing. Another man excitedly says he has an idea. The punchline is revealed below: the jar has simply been relabeled "Herbal Placebo," implying that adding the word "herbal" is enough to make a product that admittedly does nothing seem appealing to consumers.
The joke is a pointed critique of the herbal supplement market, suggesting that many such products are essentially placebos with better marketing. By literally just adding the word "herbal" to a product called "Placebo," Weinersmith highlights how branding and natural-sounding language can make people eager to buy something with no actual medicinal value. It plays on the well-documented consumer bias toward products labeled as "natural" or "herbal."
The votey panel extends the joke further with the tagline "Now with homeopathy baked right in!" This is an additional dig at homeopathy, which skeptics argue is essentially water or sugar pills with no active ingredients -- making it the perfect companion to a product that is openly a placebo. The humor comes from the absurd honesty of combining two things that critics say do nothing and marketing them together.