Ranking Gary Larson’s Ten Greatest Far Side Comics

What is the measure of greatness for comic strips? Daily newspaper comics are limiting art forms with only a few panels or even just one panel to deliver a joke. Because of this brevity, people often trivialize the medium as funny papers meant to lift your spirits after reading real news.

Yet comic strips achieve much more than that. Characters like Snoopy and Garfield form part of cultural fabric. Comic strips achieve greatness, which raises the question of what makes a comic strip great.

The first instinct leans toward something deep. Comic strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes ventured outside of comedy to examine the world thoughtfully. Other comic strips do not go deep. For Garfield, greatness comes down to a clever and relatable gag. For Prince Valiant, which specialized in detailed and picturesque images, greatness relates to visual appeal.

What is the measure of greatness for Gary Larson’s The Far Side?

The Far Side avoided deep and life-affirming themes. Gary Larson’s art lacked conventional beauty, featuring grotesque characters to enhance comedy. It is tempting to associate greatness with comic strips that made massive impacts, such as the Stegosaurus strip that resulted in a new name for a dinosaur bone, but Gary Larson never intended to end up in science books.

Gary Larson tried to make the funniest joke each day with The Far Side. He omitted recurring characters because the focus remained on the joke rather than the individuals. Greatness for The Far Side is measured by the effectiveness and cleverness of the joke. Making readers laugh was the purpose of the work.

Ten Far Side comics represent Gary Larson’s best work, not because they made headlines or offered profound life lessons, but because they are clever and funny.

10
Find Peter

Gary Larson trusted his audience. Some punchlines were broad and simple in the best way, while other comics resembled comedic scavenger hunts. This panel offers a joke that pays off only after you find the correct cubicle to examine.

9
A deconstructionist masterpiece

Gary Larson occasionally broke the fourth wall by using a comic panel to deconstruct the art of comic strips. This comic features characters who are specifically crudely drawn because the joke revolves around sketchy-looking characters. Pay close attention to catch the humor.

8
And the complete opposite kind of masterpiece

A Far Side comic did not require subtlety to achieve greatness. This entry relies on overkill. A man is clearly killed with a bowling pin, and the joke is that inept police officers remain baffled despite standing among hundreds of bowling pins.

7
A clever twist

The Far Side often put new spins on old concepts. The Peter Pan joke serves as a good example, but the Pinocchio joke is even funnier. Pinocchio spends his entire story wanting to be a real boy, so Gary Larson places him in a situation where he suddenly would not want that.

6
More deconstruction

Gary Larson subverted newspaper activity panels like spot-the-differences and hidden images. This Far Side mocks hidden image comics by placing poorly hidden appliances in a forest. The punchline claims the forest contains 127 appliances, which it clearly does not.

5
Find the punchline

This panel acts as another scavenger hunt for the punchline. The eye first sees the giant fly woman, moves to the woman being painted by the artist, and finally notices what rests on the artist’s glasses.

4
Reconstruct the punchline

This comic takes the hidden punchline concept further. It takes a few seconds to realize the joke is that a window washer was present before the woman opened the window.

3
Snakes

Gary Larson tackled existential silliness in funny ways. The idea that God created snakes the same way a child makes shapes with Play-Doh cleverly trivializes existence.

2
Love triangle

Like the bowling pin comic, the cleverness of this joke stems from the complete lack of cleverness in the characters.

1
Smoking dinosaurs

This famous Far Side comic is beloved because it showcases many classic Gary Larson traits in one place. Gary Larson loved comics featuring dinosaurs and dark, morbid jokes. The image of dinosaurs smoking cigarettes is lowbrow on the surface, but the idea that they went extinct from smoking is clever. This makes it Gary Larson’s best Far Side comic because it captures his entire style in a single rectangle.

Source: Polygon