The target audience for this cartoon is, admittedly, quite narrow. And even if you "get it," it's not really that funny. But since when has that ever stopped me from drawing? To understand this cartoon, you have to understand BOTH the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AND some relatively obscure features of the Java programming language.

Still confused? Let me explain.

Prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris brought some pages containing a transcription of characters copied from the golden plates, along with their translation into English, to Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia College. According to the account given by Martin Harris, Professor Anthon initially provided Harris a certificate attesting that the characters were authentic and the translation correct. But when he learned that Joseph Smith had obtained the plates from an angel from God, he tore up the certificate and asked Harris to bring the plates to him to translate. Harris told him that part of the plates were sealed, to which Anthon famously replied, I cannot read a sealed book. Many Latter-day Saints view this encounter as a fulfilment of a prophecy recorded in Isaiah 29:11.

Now a word about programming. A class is one of the fundamental data types of the Java programming language. It is very common for programmers to create new classes by extending existing classes. In general, any class may either be extended or used directly. However, there are special types of classes: abstract classes must be extended; final classes may not be extended, and sealed classes can be extended, but only in a very tightly controlled manner.

So in this cartoon, of course, I modified Professor Anthon's famous rebuttle, threw in an anachronistic laptop, and voilà, the cartoon was born. Now, knowing the backstory doesn't necessarily make the cartoon any funnier, but at least you understand where it came from.