2010-02-05
Explanation
This comic is a multi-panel story about a Jehovah'''s Witness going door-to-door. In the first panel, a young man in a suit knocks on a door and asks "Hi! May I tell you about the Lord, Jesus Christ?" The homeowner cheerfully responds "Sure! Come on in!" -- a response that any door-to-door proselytizer would find suspiciously enthusiastic. Inside, the visitor notices something odd about the house and says "What the-" before a trapdoor opens beneath him (with a "SLAM" sound effect). He then falls down an extremely long chute or shaft, screaming "AAAAAAAAHH" the entire way. In the final panel, a couple is lying in bed. One wakes up yelling "GYAH!" and the other asks "I had that same horrible dream! The one where you'''re a Jehovah'''s Witness?" and the first confirms "Y-yeah..."
The joke has a clever twist structure. The setup appears to be about someone who has built an elaborate trap for door-to-door religious missionaries. But the punchline reveals this was actually a nightmare being had by someone who dreamed they were a Jehovah'''s Witness -- and their partner has the same recurring nightmare. The implication is that the worst thing they can imagine is being one of those people who goes door-to-door, not the person who falls through a trapdoor.
The votey shows the cartoonist thinking "I'''m tired of comics that could ever fit in a book!" -- a self-referential joke about this comic'''s extremely tall, narrow format (due to the long falling panel), which would be impractical to reproduce in a printed book.