2011-01-03
Explanation
A woman named Charlotte is lying in bed with her husband Johnny, who says he has a confession to make. She dismisses it, saying it'''s too late for anything to bother her. She runs through the standard fears -- was it another woman? A crime he committed? He says no to both. He then reveals: "Every night for the last 20 years, I took a picture of my testicles on your forehead while you were asleep. This morning, I made a flipbook and put it on the internet." Charlotte bursts out laughing ("HAHAHAHA HAHAHA!") and exclaims, "You have 21,182 new messages!" -- suggesting the flipbook has gone viral. The final panel jumps to "60 years ago," showing someone asking the young man, "Are you mad because I said women are better comedians than men?" and him replying, "No, I already forgot about that. Get some sleep, baby."
The joke plays with the idea of a long-game prank driven by petty spite. The husband spent 20 years meticulously photographing his testicles on his sleeping wife'''s forehead -- not for any rational reason, but apparently as an absurdly elaborate response to his wife'''s comment decades ago that women are funnier than men. The punchline is that his insistence that he "already forgot about that" is undercut by the fact that he clearly never forgot and spent two decades crafting the most ridiculous rebuttal possible. The wife'''s delighted laughter when the internet loves it adds another layer -- she'''s not even mad, which makes his decades of effort even more absurdly pointless.
The votey panel shows the cartoonist (Zach Weinersmith) saying "Don'''t blame me. Kelly said it was funny" -- a meta-joke where the author deflects responsibility for the crude humor onto his wife Kelly, which itself echoes the comic'''s theme of gender and comedy.