on-the-edge
Explanation
In this comic, someone exclaims "My God! Why is Ted running toward the aliens?!" Another person responds dismissively: "Dinko? They captured him? Oh great, then they'll kill us all. Then they'll kill us."
A third person explains: "No, he's been going to 'dangler' for 20 years. He was an alien abduction conspiracy theorist." The implication is that Ted has been a dedicated believer in alien abductions for decades, attending meetings or conventions ("dangler" sessions) about the topic.
When aliens actually do show up, Ted charges at the flying saucer. Someone protests "Twenty years?! But that's insane!" followed by a loud "BANG" as Ted apparently attacks or rams into the alien ship. The final panel, labeled "Ever After," shows a statue commemorating "Ted Jenkins, Savior of Humanity" with people cheering around it.
The joke plays on the trope of the conspiracy theorist who is dismissed as a crackpot for years but turns out to be vindicated in the end. The humor is that Ted's decades of paranoid obsession with alien abductions, which everyone around him considered insane and laughable, actually prepared him to be the one person ready to act when aliens genuinely arrived. His fellow citizens, who spent those years being reasonable and well-adjusted, were completely unprepared. The comic is a loving satire of the fantasy that every conspiracy theorist secretly harbors: that one day they will be proven right and hailed as a hero.