What, exactly, is the measure of greatness when it comes to comic strips? The daily newspaper comic is a very limiting art form, with only a few panels — and sometimes even just one panel — to express a joke or a sentiment. Because of its brevity, it’s easy to trivialize the medium as simply the “funny papers,” a daily, disposable art form designed to pick you up after reading through the obituaries.
Yet, we’ve seen it do so much more than that. Characters like Snoopy and Garfield have become part of the fabric of our culture, which means comic strips are capable of greatness. And since greatness is possible, what, then, makes a comic strip great?
The first instinct is to go for something “deep.” Comic strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes occasionally ventured outside of comedy to examine the world and say something thoughtful about it. But that’s not the case for other comic strips that don’t go deep. For Garfield, I’d argue greatness would come down to a really clever, relatable gag. For something like Prince Valiant, which specialized in highly detailed, picturesque images, I imagine greatness would relate to visual appeal.
So what would the measure of greatness be for Gary Larson’s The Far Side?
The Far Side didn’t do deep and life-affirming stuff. Nor was Larson’s comic beautiful in any conventional sense, as his characters were often grotesque to enhance the comedy. It’s tempting to associate greatness with the comic strips that made the biggest impact, like the Stegosaurus strip that resulted in a new name for a dinosaur bone, but Larson’s work never set out to end up in science books.
I’d argue that what Gary Larson was doing with The Far Side was trying to make the funniest joke each day. That’s why he didn’t use recurring characters — it wasn’t about characters so much as the joke. Thus I’d argue, for The Far Side, greatness should be measured by the effectiveness and cleverness of the joke. Making us laugh was the purpose of The Far Side, so I can’t think of a better means by which to measure them.
So here are 10 Far Side comics that I think are Larson’s best, not because they made headlines or they said something profound about life, but because they’re just really clever and funny.
10
Find Peter
One of the highlights of Larson’s work was just how much he trusted his audience. Sometimes the punchlines were broad and dumb — in the best way — and sometimes his comics were like a comedic scavenger hunt. This is a great example of a joke that only pays off when you figure out which cubicle you’re supposed to look in.
9
A deconstructionist masterpiece
Gary Larson didn’t do it often, but sometimes he used The Far Side to break the fourth wall with the reader — he would use a comic panel to deconstruct the art of comic strips. For example, this comic is about “sketchy” looking characters, so it features characters that are especially crudely drawn. It’s really clever, but you’ve got to pay fairly close attention to get it.
8
And the complete opposite kind of masterpiece
But a Far Side didn’t require subtlety to be great. For this one, it’s funny because of the overkill. It’s obvious the man was killed with a bowling pin, and the joke is that it’s still a mystery for these idiot cops, despite the fact they are surrounded by hundreds of bowling pins.
7
A clever twist
Oftentimes, The Far Side would find a way to put a brand new spin on something very old. The Peter Pan example up top is a good one, but I’d argue this one about Pinocchio is even funnier. Pinocchio’s whole thing is that he wants to be a real boy, so what’s a situation where he suddenly wouldn’t want that?
6
More deconstruction
Here’s another example of Larson subverting the medium, even if it’s not exactly his own medium. Along with their daily comic strips, newspapers often featured activity panels, like “spot the differences” and “hidden images.” In this Far Side, Larson is mocking hidden images comics by showing a bunch of badly hidden appliances in a forest. The punchline is the best part, as it says there are 127 appliances here, which there obviously aren’t.
5
Find the punchline
This is another great example of a scavenger hunt for the punchline. The first thing your eye sees is the giant fly woman, then you go to the woman the artist is painting. Finally, you see what’s on the artist’s glasses.
4
Reconstruct the punchline
This comic takes the “find the punchline” thing even further. Here, it takes a few seconds before you realize that the joke is that there was a window washer, before the woman opened the window.
3
Snakes
While Larson never really went deep on the meaning of existence, he sometimes tackled the silliness of it all in really funny ways. The idea that God made snakes the same way a kid does with Play-Doh is such a clever idea that sort of trivializes all of existence.
2
Love triangle
Like the bowling pin comic, this joke’s cleverness comes from the characters’ lack of cleverness.
1
Smoking dinosaurs
This is a really famous Far Side, but not because it changed dinosaur history. It’s beloved because it shows off a lot of wonderful Larson traits all in one place. Larson loved comics with dinosaurs. He also loved to make really dark, morbid jokes. On its surface, the image of dinosaurs smoking cigarettes is hilariously lowbrow, but the idea that they went extinct from smoking is incredibly clever. That’s why this is Larson’s best-ever Far Side, because it’s a whole lot of Larson all in one little rectangle.