2013-03-01
Explanation
This comic is an extended satirical history of a moon colony. It begins with the moon being opened for colonists, but at prohibitively expensive costs ($10,000,000/month plus 7 years of labor for a one-bedroom apartment). The early colonists come from various backgrounds, often people in search of fresh starts. The comic traces how the colony's population evolves: it attracts socially awkward misfits (people whose main achievement is winning bottlecap contests), then conditions deteriorate as the colony becomes increasingly dysfunctional.
As the colony degrades, a new form of governance emerges -- "lunar anarchy" -- where citizens elect leaders through reality-TV-style competitions rather than democratic processes. The military eventually takes over, and the colony devolves into corporate-sponsored fast food disputes and petty conflicts. The Earthlings eventually attempt to conquer the moon colony, but find the colonists so pathetic and disgusting that they eventually just leave.
The punchline comes when the abandoned colonists, free from Earth's influence, decide to start fresh and build "a nation based on equality and honor." But a final character notes that this sounds boring, and the humans will end up repeating their mistakes because "these people are so pathetic." The comic is a sprawling satire of colonialism, utopian projects, and human nature -- arguing that any new society will inevitably reproduce the same dysfunction as the old one, because the problem was never the location but the people themselves. It also parodies the romanticized narrative of frontier settlement that characterizes discussions of space colonization.