2012-06-08
Explanation
In this comic, a man uses the classic romantic cliche "Baby, for you I would scale the highest mountain, swim the deepest ocean..." to profess his love. His partner, unimpressed by empty promises, calls his bluff by saying "Then prove it." The joke is that he actually does it -- a news headline announces that a man has scaled the highest mountain, swum the deepest ocean, and has been offered massive sponsorships and a television show as a result.
The punchline comes in the final panel, where the woman tells him she's "kinda seeing other people now." The humor lies in the irony that these grand romantic gestures, which were supposed to prove his devotion, took so long and made him so famous that the relationship fell apart in the meantime. It's a commentary on how romantic hyperbole is never meant to be taken literally -- and if someone actually followed through, the practical consequences (years of extreme adventuring) would undermine the very relationship the gestures were meant to support. The comic also slyly suggests that the woman's interest was never really about the feats themselves, and that no amount of achievement can substitute for simply being present in a relationship.