Probe
Explanation
The Joke
The comic opens with someone discussing the Pioneer Probes -- real spacecraft launched by NASA in the 1970s that carried a plaque with a diagram identifying Earth's location and showing two naked humans. A second person objects: "It's not cool. It's the wrong message! It's exactly what you would send if you wanted an alien to be part of a threesome!" They argue that the image of two naked humans with Earth's address is essentially an interstellar booty call.
The proposed solution? Replace the image of two naked people with a "creepy middle-aged couple" wearing Google merchandise. Someone else suggests sending a couple praying in church to make it look like a "devout, boring couple." The final panel delivers the kicker: "But what if they were going to give us... then we give them the heart of their leader," implying if aliens were going to visit anyway, we might as well make a power play.
The comic takes the real-life Pioneer plaque -- a serious attempt at interstellar communication -- and reinterprets it through a hilariously paranoid social lens. What scientists designed as a dignified representation of humanity, the characters read as a suggestive invitation.
The Humor
The primary comedic technique is recontextualization. The Pioneer plaque is one of the most famous artifacts of space exploration, and the comic forces you to look at it from an alien's hypothetical perspective: two naked beings with their home address. When framed that way, it does sound like the setup for an awkward encounter. The escalating absurdity of the proposed solutions -- from a frumpy Google-merch couple to devout churchgoers -- adds to the comedy, as each "fix" reveals more about human insecurities than about actual alien communication.
The final panel's dark twist -- offering up a leader's heart as a diplomatic gambit -- adds SMBC's characteristic escalation, taking the joke from social comedy to darkly absurd political satire.
References
The Pioneer plaques were real gold-anodized aluminum plaques placed aboard the Pioneer 10 (1972) and Pioneer 11 (1973) spacecraft, designed by Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, and Linda Salzman Sagan. They depicted a nude man and woman along with symbols intended to communicate the origin of the spacecraft. The plaques were controversial even at the time, with some critics objecting to the nudity and others to the depiction of gender roles.