Wow. I haven't won a comic contest since #182. There are two main reasons for this:
1. I'm not funny.
2. I haven't been visiting this site much in the intervening years.
Let's focus on the second one.
The theme of this competition is long absences. Vacations, sabbaticals, studying abroad, prison sentences, enrollment in the witness protection program, etc., etc. There's a lot of potential here. So start exploiting it! Enter early and often.
The absences may be long, but you have a mere four days to write your comics about them. Expect judging to commence sometime Friday afternoon or evening; that is, 100 hours or so from the timestamp on this post.