2013-07-17
Explanation
The comic opens with someone sharing the real-world fact that the American flags planted on the Moon during the Apollo missions have been bleached white by decades of solar radiation. A second person reacts with surprise, then urgently exclaims "Leave! I have to start working on something!" The final panel jumps forward 20 years, where this person has become a villain addressing the people of Earth, claiming that the Moon now flies the white flag of surrender, implying humanity has been conquered by the Moon (or, more likely, by this person using the Moon as their base of operations).
The humor comes from the absurd leap of logic: hearing a mundane scientific fact and immediately seeing it as an opportunity for supervillainy. The white flag is universally recognized as a symbol of surrender, so the bleached American flags on the Moon could technically be interpreted as Earth raising a white flag to the cosmos. The comic satirizes the kind of person who hears an interesting piece of trivia and immediately takes it to the most extreme possible conclusion.
The votey panel shows the white flag on the lunar surface, reinforcing the visual gag. The real science here is accurate: NASA confirmed that the flags on the Moon have indeed been bleached white by unfiltered ultraviolet radiation, since the Moon has no atmosphere to protect them.