2009-12-08
Explanation
In this comic, two men rush to report to a military officer: "Sir! Sir! There's a problem with the guns we just shipped! They get extremely hot when fired!" The officer responds with a horrified "Oh dear God." The caption below reads: "There was a bit of a snag in the heat-seeking bullets program."
The joke is a logical absurdity about heat-seeking weaponry. If the guns themselves get extremely hot when fired, then heat-seeking bullets launched from those guns would turn around and target their own gun (and the person holding it), since the hottest nearby object would be the weapon that just discharged them. The phrase "a bit of a snag" is a classic British-style understatement for what would be a catastrophically dangerous design flaw -- weapons that seek out and destroy their own operators.
The votey panel shows the comic's author personified as a late-night figure, with the caption "T-two A.M.? Is that you?" and the response "Write earlier you stupid sh..." This is a self-deprecating meta-joke by Zach Weinersmith about his habit of writing comics extremely late at night, with the implication that the quality of the humor may correlate with how sleep-deprived he is when creating it.