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’d kick Odie the dog off a table.
Meanwhile, The Far Side was doing jokes about hangings and murder — death was a regular punchline. Along with that, Larson also liked to make light of whatever came after death. Occasionally he’d make a joke about Heaven, but he seems to have found Hell far more amusing, with many comic strips taking place in the underworld — or in some specific version of it — making Satan a recurring figure in his comic strips. 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, doesn’t 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. “First of all, this is going straight back — and I’ll just have a little chat with whoever placed the order,” says Satan. 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 clearly lives up to her word.
I can understand the Devil’s annoyance. Pizza is one of the greatest pleasures on Earth, which means that pizza is absolutely disqualified from being served in Hell, even though there’s a perfect-looking pizza oven literally 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 common phrase “ride off into the sunset” by depicting a burnt-up cowboy that 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 mere tourist destination. In it, a man is showing off slides from his vacation, which include a picture of his wife standing with the Devil. Especially fun here is how happy the Devil is, while the man’s wife looks bored by the encounter.
3
Splitsville
While Hell showed up in several Far Side comics, it wasn’t always the same Hell, or at least it didn’t appear to be. Several comic strips depicted very specific, different forms of Hell, each of which was specifically designed to torture a particular resident of the underworld. For example, this comic from 1990 has the caption “Bowler’s Hell.” It shows the bowler having made an impossible-to-hit split, with the Devil saying “Whoa! Another split?… What a bummer!” Clearly, 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, more Earthly Far Side comic, a different conductor is horrified by the sound of a banjo in his orchestra as he shouts “Stop! Stop! What’s that sound? What’s that sound?”
Still, it seems that, 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 seriously 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 their arch-nemesis: mailmen. Originally, I’d assumed that this comic strip was a parody of the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven, a truly beautiful animated film directed by Don Bluth. But the years don’t add up as this comic strip comes from 1986 while All Dogs Go to Heaven is from 1989.
And while I’m not the kind of person to get into a theological debate between any two parties, I think Don Bluth is right about where dogs go in the afterlife, whereas Larson is totally wrong about any dog going to hell.