Unlike many of the Author’s works which rely upon homographic puns, today’s work relies on a visual pun. Both the seismograph (used for measuring earthquakes) and a polygraph (used for measuring a variety of body reactions) are popularly depicted using the same classical “needles dragging on paper” mechanism to form a line chart.M-BM-9
The author uses this visual similarity—backed by his mainstay, the chart—to convey the juxtaposition of a polygraph as a way to detect earthquakes. A male in a position of power dominates another male connected to an outrageously large and curiously upright polygraph in an attempt to discern if “there is an earthquake happening?!”
A clever Reader might spend more time considering this comic and ask, “Why would the man sitting be a better authority than the man standing on this subject? Presumably both would feel an earthquake?” Your Curator advises you against considering this question any more deeply; there is simply no redeeming value—humorous or otherwise—to that line of questioning.
M-BM-9 Television and movies depict these devices as mechanically based, but modern systems are unsurprisingly wholly computerized.
