He quite reasonably wonders, “What does Napoleon have to do with bisecting a soccer ball?”
Related
9 Comments
I’d hate to see what happens if a player gets a red card in this game….
“What does Napoleon have to do with bisecting a soccer ball?”
Napoleon is in a soccer uniform so I’d say he plays soccer.
Some variant of “I’m losing, so I’m taking my ball and going home”? Only it’s Napoleon, so he’s having the ball guillotined? (Was Napoleon big into guillotining? Or was that just immediately preceding him?)
So no answers, just more questions…
I really don’t care for execution humor,† but in this case it’s just a surreal extrapolation. The man wearing half a uniform has just finished a game of soccer (a.k.a. football), and from his frown it appears that the game did not go well. Rather than admit his (or his team’s) lack of skill, he has decided to inflict revenge upon the “real” culprit (the ball). If he were a businessman, he would return the ball to the store for a refund; or if he were a hunter, he would blow it away with a shotgun. However, since he is a 19th century French soldier, the obvious (“humane”) solution is to guillotine the offender. The primary humorous detail is the incongruity between the upper overcoat and the shorts, socks, and shoes.
P.S. † – Gags like this are an unpleasant reminder of the extreme inhumanity found in most archaic and unfortunately also many “modern” societies.
Kevin A is on the right track and Kilby hints at it: Napoleon is in half a soccer uniform so he needs half a soccer ball. And with all these old guillotines sitting around the solution is obvious.
@ S.M.B. – In that case, wouldn’t he need the bottom half of the ball, rather than the left half? :-)
Kilby – a valid concern. But the soccer ball being roughly spherical and therefore isomorphically equivalent from any aspect, that don’t matter worth a hill o’ beans.
@ S.M.B. – True for all practical purposes, but when pros are setting up for a penalty kick, you frequently still see them carefully rotate the ball to get it to the “perfect” orientation before setting it down on the spot. This may be superstition (now), but the reason for the habit probably relates to a perception that the area around the air valve is (or once was) slightly heavier than the rest of the ball.
P.S. Back in high school, we were actually taught to turn the volleyball “valve down” before serving, for precisely this reason. It was supposed to increase the “flutter” effect as the ball travelled through the air, but I doubt that any of us were good enough for it to matter at all.
larK, the guillotine was last used for capital punishment (literally) in 1977.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’d hate to see what happens if a player gets a red card in this game….
“What does Napoleon have to do with bisecting a soccer ball?”
Napoleon is in a soccer uniform so I’d say he plays soccer.
Some variant of “I’m losing, so I’m taking my ball and going home”? Only it’s Napoleon, so he’s having the ball guillotined? (Was Napoleon big into guillotining? Or was that just immediately preceding him?)
So no answers, just more questions…
I really don’t care for execution humor,† but in this case it’s just a surreal extrapolation. The man wearing half a uniform has just finished a game of soccer (a.k.a. football), and from his frown it appears that the game did not go well. Rather than admit his (or his team’s) lack of skill, he has decided to inflict revenge upon the “real” culprit (the ball). If he were a businessman, he would return the ball to the store for a refund; or if he were a hunter, he would blow it away with a shotgun. However, since he is a 19th century French soldier, the obvious (“humane”) solution is to guillotine the offender. The primary humorous detail is the incongruity between the upper overcoat and the shorts, socks, and shoes.
P.S. † – Gags like this are an unpleasant reminder of the extreme inhumanity found in most archaic and unfortunately also many “modern” societies.
Kevin A is on the right track and Kilby hints at it: Napoleon is in half a soccer uniform so he needs half a soccer ball. And with all these old guillotines sitting around the solution is obvious.
@ S.M.B. – In that case, wouldn’t he need the bottom half of the ball, rather than the left half? :-)
Kilby – a valid concern. But the soccer ball being roughly spherical and therefore isomorphically equivalent from any aspect, that don’t matter worth a hill o’ beans.
@ S.M.B. – True for all practical purposes, but when pros are setting up for a penalty kick, you frequently still see them carefully rotate the ball to get it to the “perfect” orientation before setting it down on the spot. This may be superstition (now), but the reason for the habit probably relates to a perception that the area around the air valve is (or once was) slightly heavier than the rest of the ball.
P.S. Back in high school, we were actually taught to turn the volleyball “valve down” before serving, for precisely this reason. It was supposed to increase the “flutter” effect as the ball travelled through the air, but I doubt that any of us were good enough for it to matter at all.
larK, the guillotine was last used for capital punishment (literally) in 1977.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/guillotine