2012-11-27
Explanation
This comic plays on the double meaning of the number 1001 in the title "1001 Jokes." A man holding a book complains, "I want my money back! This book is 99%% blank pages!" The other person responds, "Well, maybe you should'''ve paid more attention in math class." The joke is that 1001 in binary (base 2) equals 9 in decimal, so a book of "1001 jokes" actually contains only 9 jokes if the title is interpreted as a binary number. Since the book has only 9 jokes spread across many pages, most of the pages would indeed be blank, but the buyer'''s failure to recognize the binary title is the real gag.
The caption below the panel reinforces the joke: "If I ever write a book of 1001 jokes, I don'''t know what the first 8 will be, but the 9th will be '''the title of this book was in binary.'''" This meta-joke means the final joke in the book would be the reveal that the seemingly short book was the correct length all along, and the title was always in binary.
The votey panel extends the concept with a list of other titles reinterpreted in binary: "9 Arabian Nights, 5 Dalmations, 4 Years of Solitude, Ocean'''s 3, 2 Commandments." Each of these takes a famous title containing a number (1001 Arabian Nights, 101 Dalmatians, 100 Years of Solitude, Ocean'''s 11, 10 Commandments) and converts that number from binary to decimal, producing amusingly small results.