2014-04-16
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is titled "The Saddest Part of Adulthood" and shows a graph with "Age" on the x-axis and "Desire to Draw a Really Badass Sword" on the y-axis. The graph shows a curve that peaks in youth/adolescence, then plummets during adulthood, with a few small, diminishing spikes in later years.
The Humor
The joke captures a universal but rarely articulated truth about growing up: as children and teenagers, many people (especially boys) spent significant time drawing elaborate swords, often with flames, intricate hilts, and other embellishments. This activity felt deeply important and satisfying at the time. As adulthood arrives, this desire drops off dramatically -- replaced by jobs, responsibilities, and the social awareness that spending an afternoon drawing cool swords is not considered a productive adult activity. The small periodic spikes in later life represent moments when the old urge briefly resurfaces (perhaps while doodling in a boring meeting, or seeing a fantasy movie), before adult self-consciousness tamps it back down. The comic frames this loss not as a trivial quirk of growing up but as "the saddest part of adulthood," giving exaggerated emotional weight to something utterly mundane, which is itself the core of the humor.