martians
Explanation
The Joke
The comic depicts a first-contact scenario between humans and Martians. In the first panel, an astronaut welcomes the Martians and explains that during their 15-month journey, humanity has done a great deal of work designing bodies for the Martians (who are apparently incorporeal or need new physical forms), but without gravity constraints, the body has already started to "unmake itself."
In the subsequent panels, the situation deteriorates. The astronaut notes that the Martians all have normal-looking bodies "except in the pelvic region." He then asks, "Is this why you told us to bail out halfway through?" -- suggesting the Martians had warned them about complications. Another panel asks, "How many of you need antibiotics?" Finally, the last panel shows a dark screen with a small crowd silhouette and someone announcing: "Okay, let's stop talking about your bodies. Does anyone on the ship have any issues, questions, or...?" Someone responds: "The gravity button is broken."
The Humor
The comic takes the grand, optimistic premise of interplanetary first contact and systematically dismantles it with mundane, embarrassing problems. Instead of the awe-inspiring moment of two civilizations meeting, the encounter is bogged down by biological malfunctions, unexplained pelvic abnormalities, infections requiring antibiotics, and broken equipment. Each panel introduces another layer of failure, escalating from the mildly concerning ("the body unmakes itself") to the outright alarming ("how many of you need antibiotics?") to the catastrophic ("the gravity button is broken").
The humor is rooted in the contrast between the grandeur of what should be happening (humanity's greatest achievement) and the banal reality of what is actually happening (a series of embarrassing bodily and mechanical failures). It satirizes the optimism of space exploration narratives by suggesting that the human capacity for logistical mishaps would follow us to Mars and beyond. The deliberately vague "pelvic region" problems add an extra layer of uncomfortable comedy, leaving the reader's imagination to fill in the worst-case scenario.