2013-01-07
Explanation
In this comic, a man warns his partner before sex that he has "very potent seed." She points out that he is wearing a condom and she is on birth control, but he insists "It doesn't matter!" He then launches into an increasingly absurd fantasy about his sperm being able to find the weakest point in the latex structure, drill through it, navigate to her uterus, and "locate as many ova as they can." When she asks if he can "just not finish," he declares that is "of no consequence" because his sperm have probably already made a "pre-emptive strike" and their "spies are everywhere." He urges her to warn her roommate to stay away, declaring "We've lost the battle but she can be spared!" She finally asks if he is having potency problems and dealing with them via an elaborate fantasy of sexual superpowers, and he flees saying "I must leave to protect you!"
The comic is built on an escalating absurdity where a man constructs an increasingly elaborate military-fantasy narrative about his own reproductive capabilities. The humor comes from the obvious subtext: as his partner eventually deduces, this grandiose fantasy about unstoppable super-sperm is almost certainly a cover for the exact opposite problem -- sexual dysfunction or impotence. The military language ("pre-emptive strike," "spies," "lost the battle," "she can be spared") reframes reproduction as warfare, which is both funny in its overblown seriousness and psychologically revealing about masculine anxiety around virility. His final retreat under the guise of "protecting" her is the perfect capper, as it allows him to escape the situation while maintaining his absurd fiction.