Pale Blue Dot
Pale Blue Dot
[Cueball stands in front of a large gray picture of the Pale Blue Dot . (There is no evidence that there is any blue in this comic). He holds up a stick with one hand towards it. He is interrupted by several hecklers from off-panel.] Cueball: Consider this Pale Blue Dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. Everyone you love, every human being who ever was, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived out their lives on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. All our- Heckler 1 (off panel): I think that's a stuck pixel. We're the speck on the left. Cueball: ...Ok, this Pale Blue Dot is everything you- Heckler 2 (off panel): No, you were right before. That one is earth. Cueball: Look, it doesn't matter! Heckler 3 (off panel): I knew it! Heckler 4 (off panel): I think this is just a lens cap picture.

The Pale Blue Dot is a picture of the Earth taken in the year 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe at a distance about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). It was part of the Family Portrait , a series of images of the entire Solar System from beyond it.
The picture was taken at the request of Carl Sagan , a well known space scientist at that time. In 1994 Sagan wrote the book " Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space " inspired by this picture. In the book, Sagan waxed eloquent about the picture in a widely quoted passage. The complete passage can be found in Wikiquote , and you can hear Carl Sagan himself reciting it in this YouTube video .
Cueball quotes from a condensed version of this passage until he is interrupted by several Hecklers who begins  an argument over which speck in the picture is actually the Earth. Then, when Cueball cries out in exasperation that it doesn't matter, one heckler takes it the wrong way and points out that he just said that the picture doesn't matter. This pokes fun at the fact that the Pale Blue Dot picture has very little to no visual attractiveness, apart from the intellectual interest relying on the viewer's knowledge that the central speck is actually our home planet, Earth, seen from a very great distance.
The first two sentences of the title text are also a quotation from Sagan's paean to the Pale Blue Dot picture, but then the text veers humorously into non-scientific mysticism that starkly contrasts with the attitude and intent of the original work.
The title text evokes Cosmicism , a philosophy developed and exemplified by the fictional Cthulhu Mythos . This Mythos is expounded in fantasy/horror works of H.P. Lovecraft and, later, August Derleth, and features a cosmology in which humanity is depicted as inconsequential within a greater existence that is unknowable and frightening. Cosmicism asserts that humanity is doomed to death and destruction through the workings of vastly more powerful supernatural forces way beyond our understanding. There are many instances in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft of factions that embrace the destruction of humanity and actively work towards bringing about that end through the invocation of the unknowable and powerful forces that supporters of Cosmicism believe surround everything.
The text also references Ba'al , originally a Semitic deity that has been since associated with demonic or otherwise evil forces. The name Ba'al, and other variants of the same, has been included in many other fictional works often as a villain or antagonist. For example, the fictional System Lord Ba'al from the television show Stargate . The title text supplants all of the supernatural forces associated with Cosmicism in the works of other authors with Ba'al. Cueball, who continues his discourse in the title text, may be acting as a Cosmicist and is calling on a Congress, to which he is speaking, to fund the space exploration program as a means to join with Ba'al, the Eater of Souls. The fact that a Ba'al cultist would be speaking in front of a government body in such a manner is absurd [ citation needed ] and thus hilarious.
Ba'al, the Eater of Souls (sometimes as Ba'al the soul eater) has been mentioned later in 1419: On the Phone and 1638: Backslashes .
[Cueball stands in front of a large gray picture of the Pale Blue Dot . (There is no evidence that there is any blue in this comic). He holds up a stick with one hand towards it. He is interrupted by several hecklers from off-panel.] Cueball: Consider this Pale Blue Dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. Everyone you love, every human being who ever was, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived out their lives on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. All our- Heckler 1 (off panel): I think that's a stuck pixel. We're the speck on the left. Cueball: ...Ok, this Pale Blue Dot is everything you- Heckler 2 (off panel): No, you were right before. That one is earth. Cueball: Look, it doesn't matter! Heckler 3 (off panel): I knew it! Heckler 4 (off panel): I think this is just a lens cap picture.
