2010-02-02
Explanation
This comic imagines the behind-the-scenes process of God designing humans with the help of an angel. In the first panel, an angel presents God (depicted as a large golden figure) with a dossier on "Humans." God reviews it and says "Not bad!" but then asks: "Could we make them look more stupid when mating?" The angel is holding a document labeled "Human Sexuality." After a time skip ("Soon..."), the angel presents a revised version -- now labeled "Revised Human Sexuality" -- featuring a much more distressed-looking human face. God declares it "Perfect!" In the final panel, the angel asks how many IQ points this redesign cost the humans, and is told "Sixty-five." God replies: "Worth it."
The joke is that human sexual behavior, from an outside perspective, looks inherently ridiculous and undignified. The comic imagines this was not an accident of evolution but a deliberate design choice by a mischievous God who found it so amusing that He was willing to sacrifice 65 IQ points from the species just to make the act look sillier. This plays on the common comedic observation that sex is one of the most awkward-looking activities humans engage in.
The votey shows a handwritten note from Zach reading: "Dear Internet: I know IQ is a relative measure, but dammit, you know what I mean!" This is a preemptive response to pedantic readers who would point out that IQ is a normalized score relative to a population, so you cannot simply subtract a fixed number of "IQ points" from an entire species in the way the comic suggests.