Six Darkly Funny Far Side Comics Starring the Devil

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, nothing in the comic strip section of the newspaper was quite as dark as The Far Side. In Peanuts, Lucy van Pelt pulling the football away from Charlie Brown as he was about to kick it is about as dark as things got. In Garfield, the lazy cat’s darkest running gag also revolved around a kick when he would kick Odie the dog off a table.

Meanwhile, The Far Side was doing jokes about hangings and murder. Death was a regular punchline. Larson also liked to make light of whatever came after death. Occasionally he made a joke about Heaven, but he found Hell far more amusing. Many comic strips took place in the underworld or in a specific version of it, making Satan a recurring figure. While few characters in The Far Side appeared more than once, the Devil himself made many appearances.

Here are six Far Side comic strips featuring the Devil, who, according to Gary Larson, does not seem to be that nice of a guy.

1 “We Deliver Anywhere”

In this comic from June 11, 1988, a pizza gets delivered to Hell and Satan is clearly unhappy about it. Satan says that this is going straight back and that he will have a little chat with whoever placed the order. The best little detail in the comic strip is the slogan on the pizza box. It says Jerry’s Pizza: We Deliver Anywhere and Jerry lives up to her word.

Pizza is one of the greatest pleasures on Earth, which means pizza is disqualified from being served in Hell, even though there is a perfect-looking pizza oven everywhere you look.

2 The very literal Gary Larson

A recurring source of humor in Gary Larson’s comic strip was to take a common phrase or idiom and interpret it as literally as possible. In one comic from 1992, he picked apart the phrase ride off into the sunset by depicting a burnt-up cowboy who had literally ridden into the sun. In another comic from 1985, he played on the phrase dressed to kill by showing two sharks in fancy evening attire.

In this comic from 1982, Larson dissected the phrase To Hell and back by turning Hell into a tourist destination. A man is showing off slides from his vacation, which include a picture of his wife standing with the Devil. The Devil looks happy, while the man’s wife looks bored by the encounter.

3 Splitsville

While Hell showed up in several Far Side comics, it was not always the same Hell. Several comic strips depicted very specific, different forms of Hell, each designed to torture a particular resident of the underworld. For example, this comic from 1990 has the caption Bowler’s Hell. It shows a bowler who has made an impossible-to-hit split, with the Devil saying that another split is quite a bummer. Endless splits like this would be the worst possible punishment for a bowler.

4 Gary Larson on banjos

If a bowler’s version of Hell is endless splits, a classical conductor’s version of Hell would have to be an orchestra filled only with banjos. Larson seemingly found banjos to be obnoxious instruments as a number of his comic strips feature them in a less-than-flattering light. In another Earthly Far Side comic, a different conductor is horrified by the sound of a banjo in his orchestra as he shouts for everyone to stop and asks what that sound is.

For Gary Larson’s musical tastes, banjos rank higher than accordions, which received even harsher treatment.

5 See?

This Far Side comic contrasts Heaven and Hell. In Heaven, you receive a harp when you die, but in Hell, the instrument given out to all new inhabitants is an accordion. I wonder if any accordion or banjo players were ever offended by Gary Larson’s repeated attacks on their instruments.

6 All dogs don’t go to Heaven?

In yet another specific version of Hell, dogs who have been sentenced to eternal damnation are forced to work as mailmen. I originally assumed that this comic strip was a parody of the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven, an animated film directed by Don Bluth. The years do not add up because this comic strip comes from 1986 while All Dogs Go to Heaven is from 1989.

I think Don Bluth is right about where dogs go in the afterlife, whereas Larson is totally wrong about any dog going to hell.

Source: Polygon