2014-04-22
Explanation
The Joke
A man announces that "the evil universe is pushing into this one" and they must stop it. When asked what makes it evil, he explains: it is a universe of "hideous perfection" where everything is the result of mathematical law -- justice, compassion, love, and beauty are written into the physics itself. He describes its inhabitants as "weird automatons" that evolved from protoplasm into computing machines, dragging along cruelty and greed from their ancestors. He declares they must "deactivate them."
Then one of these "evil" beings appears -- a friendly-looking alien who awkwardly says "Oh, uh... so, hi. Uh, hello." The human says, "This must be awkward for you," and the alien replies, "Mostly it's just weird how a sack of atoms can talk."
The Humor
The comic inverts the typical "evil universe" trope from science fiction. The supposedly "evil" universe is actually a utopia where justice, compassion, and love are built into the fundamental laws of physics. The humans consider it "evil" precisely because it is perfect, revealing humanity's discomfort with or suspicion of genuine goodness.
The second layer of humor comes from the meeting itself. The alien is not menacing at all -- it is socially awkward and polite. Its final comment about being weirded out by "a sack of atoms" that can talk is a clever reversal: the alien finds our existence just as strange as we find theirs. The comic pokes fun at how humans might define anything sufficiently different from themselves as "evil," even if that thing is objectively better.
References
The comic plays on the "Mirror Universe" trope common in science fiction (most famously from Star Trek), where a parallel universe exists with an evil counterpart. Here, the trope is subverted by making the "evil" universe actually morally superior.