The story behind the cartoon
The well is the oldest futility machine: you lower the bucket on faith, you haul it back on hope, and the rope keeps going down into dark that never answers. Every civilization dug one, and every civilization learned the same lesson at the bottom of it — the earth gives back exactly what it has, and no amount of leaning over the edge changes the inventory.
Merv works the well the way he works everything: with total sincerity and a complete misunderstanding of the terms. He holds the bucket up like evidence, as if showing the well its own emptiness might shame it into producing. The bucket is bone dry. The rope is still unspooling. He has not yet noticed that the well is winning.
Issue, on the rim, has already completed the philosophy. She is not waiting for water, not investing in the outcome, not negotiating with the hole. The cat's position is the whole memento mori in one animal: sit beside the void, unimpressed, and let the anxious machines do the hauling.
The joke is the second rope: the bucket came up empty and the rope keeps going down anyway, as if the well might still have a second answer stored somewhere deeper. It does not. Merv will check — he always checks — and the well will keep its perfect record, one dry bucket at a time.
I'M BACK. DON'T FOLLOW ME.
THE STOLEN-FACE SMEAR
THE HOMEWORK SHUTTER
EXHIBIT A IS STILL RECORDING