Okay, I think you missed something I saw as obvious if you're asking about "terms". It's "terms" as in "circumstances" or perhaps "contract". There's clearly a servant/master relationship between the two parties; the subservient pink-speaker doesn't want to "nine" and the dominant blue-speaker doesn't want to order it to do something it doesn't really want to do, as it wouldn't feel genuine. Of course, the servant wants to be ordered... The final "NEIN!" is, of course, pronounced as "nine" but means "no", a simultaneous acceptance and refusal of the order. The whole thing is a pun orgy (the "root" pun actually slipped past me earlier...), that builds up to a massive pun climax. And I daresay - although this may just be my inference - that the fact that I needed to make a rather BDSM-sounding description of it to explain it was something the original author intended. [Any further discussion comparing puzzles to sex is beyond the scope of this comment, and I am not expressing any opinion regarding such at this time nor should any be inferred.]

I believe that covers it all. If you disagree, then that's what I meant by "further subtlety"; I see in the comic a cohesive whole that makes sense to me, and if you think there's a missing element, I don't see it.

The "off-kilter" lines just separate the panels of the comic, and perhaps more importantly put the Sudoku grid into the background. I don't expect there to be any significance to them beyond that (I hadn't thought about it before). - ZM