2014-08-27
Explanation
The Joke
A man tells his wife that he is not sure dinner is going to turn out great, and asks her to go out to the guests and "tamp down expectations." In the next panel, she is standing before the dinner guests and announces: "Steve is making mushroom lasagna. The living shall envy the dead."
The Humor
The humor comes from the extreme escalation. The husband simply asked his wife to lower the guests' expectations about dinner. Instead of gently saying something like "dinner might be a bit simple tonight," she delivers a hilariously apocalyptic pronouncement — "the living shall envy the dead" — which is a phrase typically associated with biblical catastrophe or horrific warfare, not a mediocre mushroom lasagna. The comedy is in the massive gap between the mundane situation (a slightly disappointing dinner) and the melodramatic language used to describe it.