2012-04-18
Explanation
This comic imagines a future where humanity has fully mastered developmental biology, mapping human development from three months before birth to age 25. A scientist announces this breakthrough, and the comic then explores the inevitable consequences. The first thing men of the future demand is genital enhancement for their children, ignoring all other possible improvements the technology could offer. When a geneticist asks if they want to enhance anything else, noting their powers are limitless, the father simply doubles down on the same request.
The comic then escalates through a series of increasingly absurd stages. An arms race develops, with parents competing to give their children ever-larger anatomical endowments. A scene shows a man dismissing a woman'''s athletic and musical talents in favor of a single crude metric. Developmental science is strained to its limits as the bidding war reaches comically extreme proportions. Eventually, humanity devolves into nothing but "massive, shambling genitals" (shown in a censored panel). Unable to operate scientific machinery without opposable thumbs, this generation produces offspring without modifications, resulting in the unhappiest people who ever lived -- normal humans surrounded by the legacy of their parents''' absurd choices.
The final panels show two normal-looking people on a date, awkwardly making small talk about stamp collecting, with one nervously asking if the other is also a giant anatomical anomaly. The votey offers "apologies to: Parents, Mount Rushmore, People with feelings," suggesting the comic went too far in multiple directions, including apparently depicting a modified Mount Rushmore in one of the censored panels.