Standing
At the top there is a Triangle-person reaching for a star. They are supported below by a pyramid of smaller Triangle-people, of different shapes - some bent from the weight on their shoulders, some quirky, some jagged.
Subtitle says: ‘Humankind: standing on the shoulders of giants’, but giants is corssed out and replaced with ’the ordinary’.
There is a well-known saying about human progress happening because we are “standing on the shoulders of giants”. It’s about each new generation of inventors relying on the achievements of past thinkers to see further and further.
This comic however wants to acknowledge that for each famous thinker there is a legion of unknown supporters without which the progress could not be made at all.
This is not just scientists lurking in the shadows of history, forgotten for example due to the Matilda effect. This is also the servants, maids, craftspeople, peasants and relatives who worked in the obscurity to keep the pantry stocked, the house warm, the bed made.
Humankind is actually built on the toil of the unnamed.