2012-05-06
Explanation
This is a single-panel comic showing a father and his young daughter admiring a snow fort she has built. The fort is elaborate -- it includes a snowman positioned behind a snow brick wall, and the snowman appears to be holding a weapon, like a soldier defending a fortification. The caption reads: "The front has chambers of sodium-enriched ice, so when spring comes bullet holes will appear!"
The joke is that this little girl has engineered her snow fort with a disturbing level of military sophistication. She has embedded pockets of salt (sodium) into the ice at specific points. Since salt causes ice to melt faster, when spring arrives and the fort begins to thaw, the salt-enriched areas will melt first, creating holes that look like bullet holes. The humor comes from the contrast between the innocent childhood activity of building a snowman and the child'''s disturbingly detailed knowledge of how to simulate battle damage. The father'''s expression suggests he is both impressed and mildly concerned.
The votey panel shows the girl'''s blueprint: a diagram labeled "Plan" of the snowman with annotations indicating different salt concentrations at different body levels -- "medium salt" at the head, "high salt" at the torso, and "low salt" at the base -- further emphasizing the unsettling precision of her engineering.