2011-02-20
Explanation
This comic is titled "Complex Emotional Situations by Shape" and presents three increasingly chaotic diagrams. It begins with "The Love Triangle," a simple three-person arrangement where each person has feelings directed at another. Next is "The Hate Rhombus," a four-person shape with arrows of animosity going in various directions. Finally, it shows "The Lust Infinigon," an enormous, tangled web of dozens of people with arrows pointing everywhere in a virtually incomprehensible mess.
The humor escalates through the geometric progression of romantic and emotional entanglements. The "love triangle" is a well-known cliche, and the "hate rhombus" is a funny escalation that adds both a person and a different emotion. The "lust infinigon" takes the concept to its absurd conclusion, suggesting that lust creates far more convoluted interpersonal webs than love or hate. The visual chaos of the final diagram, with its countless arrows and faces, is the punchline -- it is literally too tangled to follow, much like real-life romantic drama.