Gary Larson’s comicThe Far Sidestarted pushing boundaries from the moment it entered publication at the dawn of 1980. While macabre humor always had its place in American pop culture,Larson’s daily cartoon broke new ground with the borderline subversive way it casually made fun of dark subject matter like death, violence, and more.
The Far Sidequickly established this as its niche, and ultimately, Gary Larson’s “edgy” humor helped make the comic a success.
Yet things could have gone the other way, especially in the formative years ofThe Far Side.The panels presented here, for example,could have gotten Larson canceledbefore his career could take off.
10The Far Side Made Jokes About Violence Early And Often Throughout Its Run
First Published: July 18, 2025
The Far Sidedebuted at the start of 1980, and within weeks it had already had its first murder scene. This dark cartoonfeatures a man whose murder of his wife is unraveled by an unexpected witness: their pet parrot, who mimics its deceased owner’s dying words, directly implicating her husband.
Larson’s publisher knew this from the jump, and gambled on newspaper readers possessing an appetite for this kind of comedy.
Jokes like this quickly establishedGary Larson’s willingness to tread into controversial territory.Larson’s publisher knew this from the jump, and gambled on newspaper readers possessing an appetite for this kind of comedy. ThoughFar Sidejokes like this one garnered their share of criticism, ultimately, betting on audiences to laugh at death and mayhem paid off.
9The Far Side’s Version Of William Tell Shows A Comedic Disregard For Human Life
First Published: July 05, 2025
“But what if he hits the apple?” a concernedworm says to its cohort in thisFar Sidecartoon, as they poke their heads out of the apple precariously positioned on the top of William Tell’s son’s head, who sweats profusely, and nervously, waiting for his father to take his famous bow-and-arrow shot.
Of course, this cartoon’s joke is a reference to a classic folk tale, and so Gary Larson can’t rightly be faulted for child endangerment in the pursuit of laughs.Yet the way the cartoon eschews concern for its human characters in favor of insects set a precedent that might have rubbed some readers the wrong way.
8The Far Side Reveals The Grim Fate Of Old McDonald In This Classic Comic
First Published: July 17, 2025
This is a simple, yet slightly shockingFar Sidecartoon, featuring a horse and a bull stomping Old McDonald to death, while a pig looks on in excitement. This is accompanied by acaption quoting the line from the classic song, “Old McDonald had a farm, eeyi-eeyi-yo,” with “had” italicized to emphasize the farmer’s demise.
With this, Gary Larson seemed to say that not only were none of his characters safe, but no piece of pop culture was too sacred to lampoon.
This is an early example ofThe Far Side’sfascination with farm animals behaving badly,but also the cartoon’s knack for twisting the familiar into something strange, and at times, deadly.
7The Far Side’s First Foray Into Its Most Taboo Topic
First Published: June 22, 2025
AmongGary Larson’s most taboo topicsare his jokes that make light of characters taking their own lives. Even more thanThe Far Side’sjokes about torture, these are perhaps the panels that test the boundaries of good taste the most. “I was just talking to him yesterday,” a woman sobs,as police investigators look at her houseplant, which has hung itself.
The Far Side Complete Collection
Jokes like this are jarring even today, and would have been that much more unexpected in the local newspapers in 1980. It stands as one ofThe Far Side’smost grim punchlines, ranking among those that make it surprising thatThe Far Sidedidn’t get canceled before it had a chance to achieve national notoriety.
6The Far Side’s Most Obvious Murderer Meets Its Most Oblivious Cop
First Published: August 14, 2025
This first-yearFar Sidecartoon prefigures the kind of bleak humor that would become a staple of Coen Brothers movies starting later in the decade. In the panel,a motorcycle cop pulls a woman over for “a broken tail light,” but is seemingly oblivious to the body that is blatantly sticking out of the trunkof her car.
The visual gag is shocking, while the officer’s nonchalance and seeming total lack of awareness are silly, creating the dissonance thatThe Far Side’shumor thrived on.The joke is at once obvious and a classicLarsonian “What the?” head-shaker;the absurdity might be the appeal, but even fans who “get” the humor still have to process it.
5The Far Side Takes Things Too Far With Its Human/Porcupine Love Affair
First Published: July 25, 2025
The Far Sidefeatured its share of askew and awry romances, but this stands out among the most remarkable examples of Gary Larson’s willingness to depict humans and animals romantically involved. In this case, Larson illustratesa break-up scene, in which a porcupine and a human woman realize they’re not compatible.
The reason? Because the woman is covered in intense, painful-looking welts from cuddling up to the prickly creature.The implication is that they’ve had an amorous encounter already, a concept that has given generations ofFar Sidereaders the ick in a way only a select few other panels have truly managed.
4Another Interspecies Relationship Goes Off The Rails In This Far Side Cartoon
First Published: June 14, 2025
This is anotherFar Sidecartoon featuring an interspecies relationship, once again featuring a human woman and a male animal; here,an elephant’s wife expresses regret at her marriage, angrily declaring that “mother was right…I should have never married outside my own species,“as her husband sits in front of the TV drinking beer.
Of course, whatThe Far Side’spublishers, and most of its early readers, understood that substituting an elephant for a human man was a way to findabsurd humor in an otherwise ordinary marital dispute.Larson presents a familiar dynamic with an outrageous twist, with the clash between the two resulting in laugh-out-loud comedy.
3The Far Side Wasn’t Afraid To Make Fun Of Life Or Death Situations
First Published: Jun 04, 2025
Making an execution funny is a feather in any comedian’s cap, andGary Larson managed to do it with multipleFar Sidecomics. This is an iconic early example, one which is unequivocally funny, but not without a note of dramatic tension,in the form of the condemned man’s anticipation and dread as he waits for the chair to spark to life.
It is a very dark joke, but it also representsThe Far Side’sability to capture multiple emotions at play in a single, static moment, which became a core part of the cartoon’s appeal.
“Just click it up and down a few times,” one executioner says to the other, as they attempt to figure out the malfunction.It is a very dark joke, but it also representsThe Far Side’sability to capture multiple emotions at play in a single, static moment, which became a core part of the cartoon’s appeal.
2The Far Side Caught A Lot Of Flack For Its Jokes About Torture
First Published: July 05, 2025
Of the different controversial topicsThe Far Sidepoked fun at, few generated more reader backlash than the panels Gary Larson set in dungeons, featuring torturers and torture victims.Even Amnesty International went so far as to rebukeThe Far Sidefor this at one point,though this didn’t deter Larson from continuing to make these jokes.
That is because the radical divergence between the reality of torture and the ludicrous way that Larson depicted dungeons is the thrust of the humor in these cartoons, such as this one,in which a torturer tours his parents around his workplace.Again, the key is comedic dissonance, with the grim setting clashing with the silly tone of theseFar Sidecartoons.
1The Far Side’s Nuclear War Jokes Reflected A Real Fear…Too Real For Some
First Published: July 05, 2025
Gary Larson grew up terrified of nuclear war,and by the timeThe Far Sidestarted, the potential for an atomic exchange between the world’s Cold War superpowers, the U.S. and Soviet Union, was still very much a grim possibility.Consequently, Larson transformed his, and many people’s anxieties about nuclear catastrophe into comedy.
In this panel, for example,ants survey the aftermath of Armageddon.Larson would return to this joke in severalFar Sidecomics throughout the years, highlighting the inherent absurdity of nuclear weapons using of a non-human POV. Still, for some people, this subject might have been too serious to joke about, but not forThe Far Sideor its fans.
