Sometimes, you need to take a break from all of those words. Sometimes, you need some relief from trying to cram loads of character development into such a tiny space. Sometimes Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings. Even Chaucer did fart jokes.
Does any of that justify this strip? No, I didn’t think so.
I am still of the opinion that the meta-joka about seeing how long it would be until you did a fart joke counted as a fart joke, if only by the meaning of the joke itself. A meta-fart joke should count as a fart joke, as the joke does lead directly to the humor people see in farts rather than taking a tangent from that line.
Additionally, if that doesn’t count, this shouldn’t count. It’s also a meta fart joke, it simply happens to have occured within the JPEG section of the comic rather than the (in my opinion, inextricable) text/commentary section.
By the way: That was meant to be positive, not critical, and I regret with much shame that I allowed “joka” to slip through my self-editing.