2013-04-27
Explanation
This comic plays on the gap between what seems like deep emotional mystery and a much more mundane reality. In the top panel, a woman asks her partner Jon why she sometimes finds him staring into the darkness at night. She asks, "What is it, Jon?" and he replies, "You wouldn't understand." She then asks if it is "a secret so dark that the shared knowledge would always be a wedge between us," and he responds, "Uh... yeah."
The bottom half of the comic reveals the truth via a graph. The y-axis is labeled "Desire to own all Star Wars collectibles" and the x-axis is "Age." The graph shows a large peak around ages 10-20, a decline through the 30s, and then increasingly sharp spikes in old age (around 50-70+). The joke is that Jon's brooding, mysterious behavior is not caused by some profound existential crisis, but by periodic overwhelming urges to buy Star Wars merchandise -- something he is too embarrassed to admit to his partner.
The votey panel shows a man solemnly declaring, "Every man carries a secret wound inside," reinforcing the comic's theme that men's supposedly deep inner turmoil is often something hilariously trivial, like an obsession with Star Wars collectibles.