Silent Hammer
Silent Hammer
[Black Hat is hammering something on a table.] Cueball: What— Black Hat: Silent hammer. I've made a set of silent tools. Cueball: Why? Hammer: woosh woosh woosh
Black Hat: Stealth carpentry. Breaking into a house at night and moving windows, adjusting walls, etc. [He takes his silent hammer over to a tool bench with other things on it. Two boxes underneath are labeled "Drills" and "Non-Drills."]
Black Hat, narrating: After a week or so of questioning his own sanity, the owner will stay up to watch the house at night. I'll make scratching noises in the walls, pipe in knockout gas, move him up to his bed, and never bother him again. [The events he's describing are shown in two mini-panels below.]
[Zoom in on Black Hat, with Cueball off-panel to the left.] Cueball, off-panel: Nice prank, I guess, but what's the point? Black Hat: Check out the owner's card, on the table. Cueball, off-panel: Chair of the American Skeptics Society? Oh, god. Black Hat: Yeah, this doesn't end well for him.

Black Hat has created a set of tools that work in complete silence so that he can go to the house of the chairman of the American Skeptics Society late at night, do some rearranging of walls and moving of windows, just to screw with him in typical Black Hat fashion. Imagine how surprised the person must be when they wake up and discover their whole house has been rearranged! A skeptic is someone who questions knowledge, facts and beliefs, especially of supernatural phenomena like the existence of poltergeists which Black Hat is trying to imitate with his rearranging and scratching noises.
The American Skeptics Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting skeptical and critical thinking in education and public discourse. The executive director and chief editor of the Skeptic Magazine , Michael Shermer , is a leading proponent of skepticism, and has written many books and articles debunking pseudoscience, fringe science, quack medicine, alien abductions, conspiracy theories and supernatural phenomena . The Skeptic Society website and Skeptic magazine feature a lot of material debunking anecdotal accounts of these phenomena, explaining how events like "hauntings" could have occurred without supernatural intervention.
One of the premises of modern skepticism is that the supernatural is not rejected out of hand; if someone came up with a proper scientific hypothesis that predicted something supernatural and that hypothesis was proven beyond reasonable doubt, a skeptic would accept that the supernatural thing in question was probably correct.
In the title text Cueball realizes that Black Hat has (probably intentionally) ruined his antique table by demonstrating his silent hammer.
Black Hat's tools are seen in two boxes labeled "Drills" and "Non-Drills", likely a reference to the phrase "this is not a drill", used to differentiate an emergency situation from a practice of procedure for such.
Note that this comic is numbered 666 (number) , which is often associated with supernatural things due to it being consider the "number of the beast" by some people.
[Black Hat is hammering something on a table.] Cueball: What— Black Hat: Silent hammer. I've made a set of silent tools. Cueball: Why? Hammer: woosh woosh woosh
Black Hat: Stealth carpentry. Breaking into a house at night and moving windows, adjusting walls, etc. [He takes his silent hammer over to a tool bench with other things on it. Two boxes underneath are labeled "Drills" and "Non-Drills."]
Black Hat, narrating: After a week or so of questioning his own sanity, the owner will stay up to watch the house at night. I'll make scratching noises in the walls, pipe in knockout gas, move him up to his bed, and never bother him again. [The events he's describing are shown in two mini-panels below.]
[Zoom in on Black Hat, with Cueball off-panel to the left.] Cueball, off-panel: Nice prank, I guess, but what's the point? Black Hat: Check out the owner's card, on the table. Cueball, off-panel: Chair of the American Skeptics Society? Oh, god. Black Hat: Yeah, this doesn't end well for him.
