2011-01-07
Explanation
The comic opens with the declaration: "We were tired of bullies." A bully is shown tormenting someone, saying "Some day..." The narration continues: "We rounded them up and sent them to Mars, so they would no longer bother us." A spacecraft is shown departing Earth. But then: "Little did we know... that in their fury they would focus inward and develop new science." The bullies on Mars are shown working on complex equations and physics. "Before we knew it, they discovered a way to remotely detonate any nuclear device." A bully is shown with a remote detonator, grinning menacingly.
"At which point, the result was inevitable." The scene shifts to the White House, where the bully president contacts Earth'''s president via screen, taunting: "Hey, President DORK, why you annihilating yourself?" Earth'''s president protests "I'''m not!" The bully repeats with increasing intensity: "Why you annihilating yourself?" as the Earth president continues to insist "I'''m not!" -- and then the final panel shows Earth being destroyed in a nuclear explosion, as the bully literally makes the president "annihilate himself" by detonating his own nuclear weapons.
The joke transposes the classic schoolyard bully move -- grabbing someone'''s hand and hitting them with it while saying "Why are you hitting yourself?" -- onto a global geopolitical scale. The bullies, when given their own planet and motivated by spite, channel their aggression into scientific achievement, which is itself a darkly funny inversion of the usual narrative that adversity breeds innovation. The votey panel completes the joke: someone asks "Did the nerds have any last words?" and the answer is a pathetically fitting "Come on, stop it, come on" -- exactly what a nerd would say while being forced to hit themselves.