2009-10-14
Explanation
This comic imagines what humanity would do if given ten minutes before alien destruction. Aliens hovering over a city in flying saucers announce: "Humans! You have ten minutes until we destroy the Earth. You have that much time to make peace with your God, say goodbye to loved ones, or whichever activities you find most pleasurable." The second panel shows the alien ship firing lasers at Earth, only for the beams to bounce back and hit the aliens.
The final panel shows a newscaster reporting on the aftermath: "And, in a surprising turn of events, Altarian lasers are apparently reflected by the combination of sex lube and fried cheese." The joke is that when given ten minutes to do whatever they find "most pleasurable," humanity collectively chose sex and eating fried food -- and those indulgences, combined across the entire planet, accidentally created a defense shield that defeated the alien invasion. It is a darkly optimistic take on human hedonism saving the species.
The votey panel is a meta-joke from the cartoonist, reading: "The typo I almost made: 'fried lube and sex cheese.'" This is a simple behind-the-scenes gag about how close Zach Weinersmith came to accidentally swapping the adjectives, creating an even more disturbing mental image.