2011-10-03
Explanation
This comic is a satire of political scandal culture, using a fictional product called "Sponch" as a stand-in. A man bursts into a room shouting, "Listen up everyone! The '''Sponch''' the government has been giving us to eat is not food -- it'''s people!" The crowd reacts with horror: "Sponch is not food! It'''s people!" and "PEEEEOOOOPLLLLLE!" -- a clear parody of the famous scene from the 1973 film Soylent Green.
However, the comic'''s real target is not the revelation itself but the political and media response that follows. The scene shifts to "Soon..." where we see a parade of predictable reactions: the White House issues a press release saying "mistakes were made" and those responsible will face repercussions. A Sponch industry representative gives evasive non-answers while claiming he had no idea what was going on. A Sponch Council spokesman denounces the administration'''s attempt to harm the industry and insists Sponch contains exactly the right nutrients for a healthy human body. A politician declares he is prepared to claim any level of incompetence to avoid culpability. Another politician pivots to folksy rhetoric about the hardworking people in the Sponch industry. A news anchor hopes they get to the bottom of the "Sponch question" before cutting to "a celebrity'''s nipple."
The joke is that even the most horrifying revelation imaginable -- that a food product is made of people -- would be processed through the same tedious machinery of political spin, industry lobbying, media distraction, and bureaucratic deflection that accompanies every real scandal. The votey panel shows the Sponch product itself, labeled with its ingredients circling it: Sulphur, Phosphorus, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Hydrogen -- which spells out SPONCH, and also happens to be the six elements that make up the human body. This is actually a real mnemonic used in biology (sometimes rendered as CHNOPS), confirming that Sponch is indeed made of people.