2013-06-06
Explanation
This comic is a satirical retelling of the classic fairy tale "The Frog Prince" with a scientific twist. A princess encounters a frog who claims to be a cursed prince and asks her to kiss him so he will turn back. She does, and the narration then explains that the amount of energy required to transform a frog into a human would be so enormous that the princess and her entire kingdom would be annihilated in the process. The comic goes on to argue that if the princess had educated herself in basic physics, she would have known this transformation would essentially be a catastrophic explosion, and that the carbon shadow left behind would be her only legacy.
The final panel shows two characters debating whether princesses need to study math, with the comic clearly arguing in favor of scientific education. The joke is a classic SMBC move: taking a fairy tale premise and applying real-world physics to show how absurd (and dangerous) it would be. It satirizes the idea that princesses in fairy tales are passive and uneducated, suggesting that a basic understanding of thermodynamics and conservation of energy could have saved her life.
The votey shows the comic artist (Zach Weinersmith) thinking, "Note to self: never attempt to draw frogs again," a self-deprecating joke acknowledging that the frog drawings in this comic were not his finest artistic work.