2013-07-01
Explanation
This comic shows a couple lying in bed at night having a conversation. One partner asks, "Do you ever lay awake at night and wonder if the body inside me will never stop growing?" They then launch into an elaborate cosmic monologue about how their body will just grow and grow until it is bigger than the house, then bigger than the city. They speculate that perhaps this growth is just the reproductive impulse created by evolution and hardened by life -- that all humans are in the end just one big, unique, important, strange creation among all other life forms in the history of creation.
The monologue escalates further into truly cosmic territory: the speaker imagines bodies expanding until, locked in the most intimate connection, they collapse into a black hole in the consummate act of cosmic motherhood, sacrificing their bodies to give birth to an infinity of new universes. The other partner, clearly baffled, asks "You don'''t think about work, or Star Wars?" When told that pregnancy has clearly not hit them for real yet, the partner sheepishly admits they are just hungry.
The joke works by contrasting two very different responses to pregnancy. One partner has gone deep into existential and cosmological wonder about the process of creating new life, spinning it into a grand unified theory of the universe. The other partner is firmly grounded in mundane reality, thinking about work and Star Wars. The final punchline deflates everything when the cosmic-thinking partner reveals their profound musings may actually just be hunger pangs.
The votey panel shows the other partner happily exclaiming "Pew! Pew! Pew!" (laser sound effects), suggesting they are indeed thinking about Star Wars, providing a lighthearted contrast to the heavy philosophical monologue.