Seven Far Side Comics Built on Terrible Puns

Some of the best comedy comes from incredibly dumb characters written by incredibly smart people. Homer Simpson has often been written by Harvard-educated writers on The Simpsons. Fry on Futurama fits the same mold. So do Michael Scott from The Office and basically every character on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

In comic strips, the best example is The Far Side. Gary Larson fills it with hopelessly stupid subjects, and that’s where much of the humor comes from. Larson also used the smart/dumb dynamic in a second way, through the occasional pun or deliberately lame bit of wordplay.

He often wrote jokes built on deep scientific knowledge. Others were subtle gags that worked like puzzles, where you had to look hard to find the punchline. Sometimes, though, he just took a turn of phrase and gave it a stupid spin.

I don’t know Larson’s motivations for these jokes beyond making people laugh. For me, they work as a Far Side palette cleanser. After a run of overly smart jokes, it’s a pleasure to watch Larson do something delightfully dumb. Here are seven great examples of a highbrow genius using the most lowbrow turns of phrase.

7. “Tar pits” does kind of sound like “carpets”

Tar pits form naturally when asphalt deposits mix with petroleum and create black, sludgy pools on the surface of the Earth. The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles are especially famous, known for the many paleontological studies done there and the specimens pulled from them.

So what does Gary Larson do with that? He notices that “tar pits” rhymes with “carpets” and draws a silly comic about people getting sucked into a carpet. It’s so dumb, yet so genius.

6. The opposite of convenience stores

A convenience store is a small business stocked with the items you need in a hurry. An inconvenience store is the same thing, except every item sits well out of reach.

5. So that’s where boneless chicken comes from

This hilarious sight gag is some of Larson’s best work. In the late 1990s, the Cartoon Network series Cow and Chicken featured a recurring character named Boneless Chicken, who had no bones. He was a very funny character, especially visually. But Larson came up with the exact same gag more than a decade earlier.

4. Do people still know who Carmen Miranda was?

In the 1940s, Carmen Miranda was a popular Hollywood star. The Portuguese-born Brazilian singer, dancer, and actress was known for memorable headpieces, many of them decorated with fruit. In the generations since, she’s mostly been remembered through the impressions Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters did of her.

In the late 1980s, more than 30 years after her death, Larson got in on the action in the most Gary Larson way possible. He drew a cow with fruit on its head named “Cowmen Miranda.”

3. Sketchy

This comic feels both very dumb and very smart. It’s dumb because it uses the word “sketchy” so literally. It’s smart because it kind of deconstructs the whole comic strip medium.

2. Have you seen these trains?

A long time ago, missing children, including runaways, were pictured on the sides of milk cartons. The word “runaway” gets paired with trains as often as with children. So Larson put runaway trains on milk cartons, too.

1. Gary Larson’s least-favorite Far Side comic

In his collection The Complete Far Side, Larson placed a note below this clown comic. It reads:

“Cartoonist’s note: Above is my own nominee for the worst cartoon I ever drew. (I still cringe.) — Gary Larson.”

I can see why he thought it was stupid. Still, there’s no way it’s any stupider than “La Brea Carpets.”

Source: Polygon