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is the punchline:

• he chose poorly, resulting in the arrest of the members of the club?
• Or he joined the club (that's him getting arrested?) but the club was taken down because it poisoned too many of its members?
• Or...?

Looks to me like he chose poorly and is now ib the ambulance, probably dead given the sheet over him. The person being arrested is wearing robes, which supports this theory.

However, I agree it could be interpreted multiple ways.

Easter egg: The woman in the bottom left dumped her robes.

Some subtle hints in the picture. The biggest is someone is sick or dead in the ambulance, and they don't seem to be in a rush. There are three robes in the picture, two still being worn by arrested people, and one in the trash. Next to that is the lady talking to the police, and you may notice she has a ring on her finger, as does one of the members in the first picture. Also her stance on second look is clasping her hands, as if worried, so the only question left is why they didn't arrest before? Needed evidence via a wiretap?

It's not meant to be overanalyzed, but nice that there's little details there to validate what happened to some degree.

You mentioned the woman’s worried hands in the second panel, but I also noticed that same worried woman threw away her robes in the last panel to talk to the police.

It's not meant to be overanalyzed

The robe in the trash implies it definitely was made to be over-analyzed. Seems like part of the fun.

I noticed this too! I hadn’t seen that detail in the past but it adds another layer to the comic

Oh wow, I didn't notice the ring! Yeah makes sense that she phoned it in but only after it was too late for the initiate

Also her stance on second look is clasping her handsPlot twist alternative theory: she's actually a mole and the ring is a hidden cam (notice she's slightly pointing it at the meeting; also notice she's actually the only one wearing a ring, the other members don't seem to have a ring).Or, she's a double agent, snitching the group to the police so the leader gets jailed, the cult is declared over, only for her to silently restart the cult as the new leader.Another theory: notice how there were originally four cloaked figure, but there's only three cloaks in the sequence. The two explicitly cloaked are bald and wear glasses, and so does the woman who discarded her robes. There's no other bald person wearing prescription glasses other than the policeman clicking the handcuffs into the kneeled down cloaked figure, something tells me he's the leader because he's seemingly calmer than the other being walked to the police car (who's visibly sweating out of anxiousness)... Or is this seeming calmness from the leader actually the knowledge that the cop with prescription glass is a member of the cult, who's playing cop to somehow benefit/alleviate to the cult and/or to the leader.In any case, I loved this "Cicada 3301" spirit imbued into this comic strip. It brings me memories...!pbf@discuss.online

something tells me he's the leader because he's seemingly calmer than the other being walked to the police car (who's visibly sweating out of anxiousness)

He's sweating because he's not a part of the cult. He got ambushed and forced into the robes at the last second.
Notice that during the initiation, only two cloaked figures have glowy eyes - the woman and the leader. The eyes are their spectacles reflecting light. The other two cult members don't wear glasses and seem to have escaped the police, one by forcing his robe on the poor bespectacled guy being arrested.

Oh no, I only saw three cloaks for some reason. I feel like Picard now. What the hell is going on here? The glasses mess up my original thoughts and now I'm not sure who is who outside of the woman.