women-and-children
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is set on April 14, 1912 -- the date the Titanic struck an iceberg. An officer on the ship shouts, "We're going to sink! Quick! Women and children off the boat first!" But the men on the lifeboat deck respond with increasingly selfish and cowardly behavior. One says "Gone! And bring out the bourbon!" Another shouts "Dudes! There's an iceberg in our path!" to which someone replies "Ram the berg! Ram the berg! Ram the berg!" The final panel shows a newspaper headline: "TITANIC SINKS -- FEW SURVIVORS."
The comic reimagines the Titanic disaster by flipping the famous "women and children first" chivalry narrative. Instead of noble self-sacrifice by the men aboard, the men immediately celebrate having the ship to themselves and proceed to make catastrophically bad decisions, like ramming the iceberg on purpose, leading to the ship sinking with few survivors.
The Humor
The comedy derives from subverting the heroic mythology of the Titanic disaster. The traditional narrative emphasizes the gallantry of men who gave up their lifeboat seats, but this comic imagines a far more realistic (and cynical) scenario: the moment the women and children leave, the men turn the ship into a fraternity party and make the worst possible decisions. The escalation from celebrating with bourbon to actively ramming the iceberg is a hilarious spiral of toxic masculine bravado. The dry newspaper headline at the end serves as a deadpan punchline to the chaos.
References
The comic references the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 14-15, 1912, after it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The phrase "women and children first" (also known as the Birkenhead drill) became famous partly through accounts of the Titanic disaster, where this protocol was reportedly followed during the evacuation, contributing to the disproportionately high survival rate among women and children.