I’m the kind of person who obsesses over details like this. Now, in reality, I know it’s just a silly little joke in a silly comic.

On a deeper level, maybe the artist wasn’t confident in their own ability to draw a prison, and have the reader understand. Even though I think it’s blatently obvious even without that part.

But the REAL fun begins when you try to explain that detail from within the context of the story world they live in.

I like to think there was a time when they were building this prison that construction workers kept getting asked what they were building. It looked huge, and they thought “oh, maybe it’s a MASSIVE library! Look how big the foundation alone is! They could make it 20 floors tall, and have specialized departments of learning.”

And another person asked if it would be a multiplex cinema with 40 screens.

Someone else asked if it would be a hospital.

Then another guy asked how to get to main st. He was just passing through town, and got lost.

Still though, it began interupting their day so often that they put up that sign as they built it. Then when they were done, the state wouldn’t pay anything extra to remove the sign, and so it stayed up after completion.

This construction crew is the only one in town. And so they did this on every building they build. Just down the road is a modernized McDonalds. The grey buildings that don’t look like anything. In the front, in addition to the company provided logo and signage, is also “This is a McDonalds” on the side that faces the road.

This is how my brain is. Creating little backstories for mundane details, that I know aren’t true. Sometimes I’ll see a penny on the ground. “I wonder how this got here…”