Most premises for the Author’s comic strips fall into one of two categories: “geek joke or concept transposed into real life” or “how geeks handle life situations differently.” Amazingly, this particular strip’s premise fits into both of these categories. This “mashup” of two well known, battle-tested concepts is sure to delight the reader to the point of asthma-inducing fits of laughter.
Now, for an explanation. One of the most commonly used geek-recognition joke is a quote from the movie Spinal Tap: “these go to eleven.” The character, Nigel, is referencing the power of his amplifier, which has knobs that go to 11 rather than the standard 10. This movie-quote-turned-cliche is often used by geeks to describe how great or powerful something is in a humorous fashion. It can be related to the usage of the number 42, which is a reference to the book A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Cliches such as these are an easy and guaranteed way to cause a group of geeks to laugh hysterically.
The second part of this comic is an attempt to answer the question, “what if this fictional situation happened in real life, and how would geeks and non-geeks respond to it?” As we can see, the “normal person” responds with the common sense question that makes the joke funny. The engineer thinks of it more technically and becomes frustrated. The “smart engineer” capitalizes on the situation by offering to make a knob that goes to 12, a task that would require no work, for money.
