The Far Side’sreputation for dark humor is well-earned, but that wasn’t the only comedic mode creator Gary Larson was comfortable working in; actually,Larson deserves just as much praise for the goofy, silly, and often downright whimsicalFar Sidejokes he crafted over the years, in parallel to his notorious gags featuring death, chaos, and mayhem.
Gary Larson’s admitted goal withThe Far Sidewas always, first and foremost, to grab readers' attention. It is not unfair to say that dark, sometimes even borderline-shock humor does this more easily than the more lighthearted variety of punchline, yet a complete account of Larson’s work is not possible without looking at both.
The cartoons aggregated here serve to highlight the latter aspect ofLarson’s sense of humor, in the hopes of gaining some further insight, as readers, into what made an effectiveFar Sidejoke regardless of a particular panel’s tone, style, or content.
10Sometimes The Far Side Managed To Get By On Sheer Audacity
First Published: July 03, 2025
“It’s a known fact that the sheep that give us steel wool have no known natural enemies,” the caption for thisFar Sidefarm comicexplains, with the illustration depictinga trio of spikey, tough-looking sheep grazing in a pasture, with the one in the foreground even sporting an eye-parch to reinforce how tough it is.
In a way, Gary Larson’s silliest jokes have the exact same goal as his most shocking ones; a comic that got a reader to say “how did he even come up with that?” was a success, whatever path it took to get there. This should remind readers that while the “meaning” of aFar Sidecartoon isn’t totally irrelevent, in most cases it does take a back seat to the feeling the comic provokes, the experience of reading it andbeing left asking, “What the?”
9Whether Its Subject Was Life Or Death, The Far Side Was Always Playful
First Published: June 24, 2025
This is the only hint of death theFar Sidecomics collected here – and it is only an opossum playing dead, hanging by its tail from a tree and showing off its natural defense mechanism, allwhile two opossum children have a classic argument on the ground below, with one angrily telling the other, “my dad can act deader than your dad.”
10 Far Side Comics Only Gary Larson Superfans Know About
The Far Side ended in 1995, but there are actually a handful of deep-cut panels Gary Larson produced after that, which only die-hard fans know about.
In this cartoon,Gary Larson uses one of his most tried-and-true techniques, transposing familiar human behavior – kids arguing about whose father is stronger, smarter, or all around better – on to a non-human species. The silliness of the joke, from its premise to its execution on the page, is the defining virtue of thisFar Sidecartoon, which does everything that Larson’s most beloved panels do, only in a lighthearted rather than darkly comedic mode.
8Gary Larson Knew How To Make His Characters Stand Out In A Crowd
First Published: June 18, 2025
“Oooooo! Check it out, Edith! It’s a quadraceratops!” a triceratops having drink at a bar tells her friend, as a four-horned male walks into the establishment and orders a drink; this is a case of aFar Sidecartoon where the premise and the punchline are the same, but because the joke is seemingly so innocuous, it is less likely to stand out to fans ofGary Larson’s work the way his macabre comics do.
That is, as far as Larson’s sense of humor could be described as niche, this is one that is borderline too esoteric for readers to find as funny as the artist might have hoped. Yet it stands out as a prominent example of the more straightforward strain of jokes thatThe Far Sideoften contained, which provided a kind of balance to the more out-there, experimental, and edgy panels Gary Larson produced.
7The Far Side Contained Tons Of Genius Word Play – And Some Straight-Up Goofy Puns
First Published: August 05, 2025
Gary Larson is often called a master of wordplay, and rightfully so; his skill of linguistic humor was a driving force behindThe Far Side. Yet for every truly brilliant, even innovative play on words he concocted, there was a corresponding truly dumb pun, as in this panel, in whicha man is shown repairing a roof uses a pistol as a hammer, as a cowboy on the ground below shouts up: “they tell me you’re pretty handy with a gun.”
The Far Side Complete Collection
Of course,Far Sidefans will argue that the “dumbness” of the pun here is actually another dimension of its brilliance; that is to say, Gary Larson’s ability to capture the most inane passing fancy withThe Far Sideis among its most remarkable artistic feats. It also shows that Larson’s light humor is just as much a part of his work’s DNA as its dark opposite.
6The Rare Far Side Comic That Can Be Called A Family Affair
First Published: Jun 27, 2025
It’s reasonable to say that not everyFar Sidecartoon was one that the whole family could gather around and enjoy together; some of Gary Larson’s jokes were too obscure, while others were too abrasive, and altogether, different cartoons tended to appeal to different types of readers.
This joke, however, is not only whimsical, it is borderline wholesome. In the comic, Larson depictsa scorpion with a gaggle of its offspring hitching a ride on its back, with the punchline being the “baby on board” sign hanging from the stinger at the end of the creature’s tail.The omission of a captionallows this simple bit of imagery to stand on its own, rendering it almost sweet, at least byFar Sidestandards.
5This Far Side Cartoon Actually Depicts The Inverse Of Dying
First Published: June 22, 2025
Transformation is an underratedrecurring element of Gary Larson’s humor. Certainly, sometimes that transformation was death, but at least in thisFar Sidecartoon, it is the opposite, as the panel exploreswhat happens when birds drink from the Fountain of Youth – that is, they are reverted to eggs, scattered around the base of the fountain.
8 Classic Far Side Comics That Were Made For Conspiracy Theorists
These Far Side comics will make readers question everything, proving artist Gary Larson wasn’t a stranger to conspiratorial thinking.
Interestingly, experiencedFar Sidereaders could reasonably argue thatGary Larson could have cut the captionfrom this panel, and it still would have been effective. Instead, the question becomes “what does the caption add here?” and the most likely answer is that it clarifies the lighthearted intention of the punchline, though as with mostFar Sideopen-ended questions, that remains entirely open to speculation.
4A Moment Of Self-Reflection, In Madcap Far Side Fashion
First Published: June 25, 2025
In this hilariousFar Sidebird cartoon, a pair of ostriches are running at full-stride across a plain, when one catches a glimpse at the other in action and issuddenly struck with self-consciousness, shouting to its companion, “for crying out loud, Norman, look at you…I hope I don’t look half as goony when I run.”
It does, of course, which is the heart of the joke. It is arelatableFar Sidemoment, one that is totally absent of darkness or despair, at least as much as a joke about a rush of self-aware embarrassment can be, anyway. It is aFar Sidejoke that deserves more attention, without question, one that is only hampered by a lack of an overt, or shocking, hook.
3The Far Side Proposes A Fantastical Solution To An Ubiquitous Problem
First Published: July 28, 2025
When writing aboutThe Far Side, “cartoon” and “comic” are generally used interchangeably, yet this is an example of aFar Sidepanel that especiallyembodies the idea of “cartoonishness,” as Gary Larson depicts the “car key gnomes,” who creep into peoples' houses at night to steal and hide their keys.
10 Far Side Comics That Turn Living Rooms Into Literal Death Traps
For most people, the living room is a safe space, but for the denizens of the Far Side, it could be just as dangerous as being out in the wild.
This also representsThe Far Side’sstrain of observational humor, with the premise of this joke most likely having arisen from Larson losing his keys, then thinking about how many people have this same problem every day, then coming up with a silly, unreal solution for it. It is another relatableFar Sidepunchline, one that any reader can appreciate, and laugh at guilt-free. This wasn’t always something Gary Larson’s work offered, considering how weird and unsettling his work was just as frequently, and so it adds something incredibly valuable to his overall oeuvre.
2Sometimes The Far Side Really Was Just Clowning Around
First Published: August 10, 2025
The Far Sidewas full of clowns, figuratively, but also literally – and just as often as they were being led to the electric chair, they were doing something genuinely innocent in its clownishness. ThisFar Sidepanel is more along the lines of the latter, though there is enough ambiguity to the image, especially with the absence of a caption, that some readers could argue an edginess to the clown’s actions.
Here, a clown sits alone in a restaurant, trying to look innocent, after having just stuck a suction-cup dart to another patron’s bald head; though readers aren’t privy to the aftermath of this moment – i.e., the clown could have provoked a bar brawl, inadvertently or otherwise – the impression given by the illustration is that the clown is just having some lighthearted, playful fun, perhaps even trying to communicate in his “language,” so to speak.
1Even Snakes Can Learn To Dance In This Underrated Far Side Classic
First Published: August 08, 2025
With music blaring from a gramophone,these twoFar Sidesnakesare shown in the middle of a dance lesson, withthe one leading substituting “step, step, slither, step"for the human equivalent of “step, step, slide, step"in another one of Gary Larson’s classic jokes substituting animal characters for humans.
Any reader who has taken a dance lesson will immediately recognize, and likely relate to, the look of derision on the student snake’s face, with the overall effect of thisFar Sidecomic being to innocuously poke fun at a familiar contemporary experience. Though Gary Larson often had a wicked, dark sense of humor, the greatness ofThe Far Sideis that, in totality, it contained all points on the spectrum of light and dark humor.
