In recent months, I’ve been examining the best-ever quotes from various newspaper comic strips, and in that time I’ve determined that every comic strip requires its own approach. For Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, I went with something heartfelt and inspirational because those comics and characters really have inspired people. For Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, I investigated something more philosophical, as the best of those comics make the audience contemplate human nature and the world around them. But for Gary Larson’s The Far Side, well, the task is monumentally different.
Larson didn’t do deep. He didn’t do inspirational. Many of his cartoons required you to think, but not because they were thoughtful in the lofty sense. They required thought because Larson’s work was brilliant, and you sometimes had to figure out what the punchline was. For example, this comic strip where an artist is painting a woman as a half-fly creature. You likely see the woman or the painting first, and you wonder why the artist is painting her that way. Only after inspecting the comic more closely do you see the dead fly on his glasses. Larson’s work often requires the reader to investigate something, but usually not in any kind of overly deep way.
The Far Side was — and remains — brilliant, but it’s not the kind of thing that makes you ponder life’s big questions. Larson channeled his genius into joke-telling, and that’s what made The Far Side so sharply funny. As such, determining Larson’s best-ever Far Side quote shouldn’t be some insightful, inspirational, or thoughtful journey — even though I did try going that way at first.
I thought maybe the quote should come from a comic about God, as several Far Side comics feature God as a character. But after reading a whole bunch of Larson’s God comics, I determined that God actually isn’t all that deep or interesting. Sometimes he’s just kind of a jerk.
Then I thought to look up comics about death, thinking that maybe Larson had something profound to say on the subject. Given Larson’s signature macabre style of humor, death is featured frequently in The Far Side, but nothing seemed all that weighty or important. I finally abandoned this approach when I found a comic where a snake hanged himself with his own body.
The Far Side was never meant to be “deep”
That’s when I gave up on going deep and decided to just find something funny. But there are thousands of Far Side comics, and Larson’s humor varied. Sometimes he was dark, sometimes he was silly, sometimes he deconstructed a well-known saying or song or other pop culture reference. So I tried to find a quote that did all — or at least most of — what Larson was known for. Also, I wanted a quote where the visual wasn’t required to get the joke. Larson’s work was highly visual, and with generally just one panel, it often had the visual as the setup and the caption as the punchline. If I was looking for the best ever Far Side comic, it would be one where the visual and the caption work in concert. But while trying to find the best-ever quote, I wanted something where the image was not required.
For a little while I thought about going with “Welcome to hell… here’s your accordion,” from a comic which shows Heaven and Hell. In Heaven, you’re given a harp, but in Hell you’re given an accordion. I liked this because it’s very dark and silly, and it’s the kind of thing you’d only find in The Far Side. Eventually though I softened on it because the visual is still the stronger element in this one. The line comes off as basically a funny non-sequitur without the visual. To get the whole joke about how accordions are terrible instruments, you really need the contrast.
After abandoning that comic, I found this one from 1992 and realized it was the perfect fit. The image shows a mime under a falling tree and the caption reads:
“Question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?”
I think this is the one because it’s funny, because it’s dark, because it’s silly, and because it takes a well-known idiom — the tree falling in the woods question — and turns it into a punchline. That may not do everything that Larson did, but it’s a lot of his very best qualities all in one place.
And, unlike the vast majority of Far Side comics, it’s more about the words than the image. Larson’s gags were almost always visual, or at least relying on a visual component to get his jokes across. For this comic, I’d argue that you don’t need the visual at all. Sure, the drawing is funny, but in no way is it required. Also, this quote is entirely lacking in emotional or philosophical depth, which is precisely what you want when you’re reading The Far Side.