The humor of The Far Side it came from converting the familiar into the strange and surreal; the more universal the experience, the more artist Gary Larson could tap into his readers’ expectations to tell an unexpected, uproarious joke, and there were few subjects he satirized that were more widely recognizable than the trials and tribulations of growing up.
The Far Side presented a series of cartoons about children and childhood. Just like any set of Far Side comics, some are very funny, while others are among Larson’s most endlessly baffling jokes.
And of course, as with anything in The Far SideBeing a child can be equal parts wonderful and scary; at your best, The Far Side Children’s comics offer readers a nostalgic, childlike feeling of learning to navigate life – throwing them into the depths of a totally disconcerting experience.
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Peer pressure was no joke on the other side (Should Johnny do that?)
First published: February 4, 1994
The act of two or more people cutting each other and mixing their blood to make a pact dates back to antiquity, but many contemporary readers will associate it with teenagers and teenagers. Gary Larson talks about this here with his comic “Strawbrothers”, in which two young scarecrows try to convince a third to mix the straw, telling him “don’t be a coward“ as he looks out with one of the The Far Side classic expressions of horror.
This graphic novel is certainly among Gary Larson’s most “out there” premises, but it works because it evokes a particular childhood experience that at least some readers will be able to directly identify with. If anything, in the abstract, it reminds readers of the discomfort of peer pressure, of feeling like you have to do something you don’t want to do in order to fit in.
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This generation’s worms are too easy (is that the best joke in The Far Side’s “Back In My Day”)?
First published: February 3, 1994
The Far Side featured more than one “back in my day” joke during its run, but this one is perhaps the most representative of Gary Larson’s humor because of the way he fully commits to imagining what the worm equivalent of this behavior would be. The idea of an older person lecturing someone in the subsequent generation about how difficult it was for him became a social meme, and The Far Side gives a hilarious version here.
“When I was your age,“an old worm in a rocking chair scolds his big worms, “I had to crawl 35 centimeters to the surface and back. Every day!…Through the hardpan, through the thunder!“ What’s captivating about that? Far Side cartoonish is how fully realized a scene is; that is, it completely transposes this human behavior to a family of worms, adding extra emphasis to the joke.
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The Far Side explores the origins of childhood trauma (what happened to grandpa?)
First published: January 10, 1987
This panel presents a different take on the “old man lecturing his grandchildren” trope – and actually embodies the idea that sometimes young people don’t realize they’re being traumatized until long after the fact. Here, a man’s head, disembodied, sits in a recliner, three children sitting on the floor in front of him, while his wife warns him: “tell children a pleasant story for the first time.”
“They don’t always need to hear the one over their head”, the woman says to “Henry”, making it clear that his disembodied condition is the result of some accident, and that he has subjected his grandchildren to the story many times. Something they will certainly have to process much later in life, perhaps by visiting one of the The Far Side many psychotherapists.
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What Dogs Really Think When Kids Play With Them (Is That Boy Biting His Tail?)
First published: September 11, 1986
In this cartoon, two undisciplined boys fight with their host’s hunting dog, who lazily dreams of revenge, in the classic Far Side fashion. As the dog owner says: “I bet your kids and Bruno would like to hang out,“the dog’s thought bubble shows him burying the children alivekicking the last dirt over the hole he put them in, leaving only the glasses on the surface.
What makes this Far Side What’s remarkable about cartoons is the way Gary Larson manages to deftly balance the wholesome and the macabre. Many readers will remember those cousins, or neighborhood kids, who antagonized the family pet — not maliciously, but still — making this a “slice of life” moment that Larson hilariously subverts by revealing that these animals pets are always thinking about how to get revenge. .
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The other side’s perfect joke at the expense of “childish innocence” (did this young ant just doom her family?)
First published: August 15, 1985
In this panel simply captioned “childish innocence“Gary Larson captures the spirit of the idea that children can naively be very trusting – sometimes too much. He does this by portraying a classic childhood scenario: a child bringing home a stray animal. Except he turns the child into a ant, and the animal is an anteater.
Then, when the young ant screams: “Mother! Father! He followed me home! Can we keep it?“Readers will empathize with him, but will also fully identify with the look of terror that appears in his parents’ eyes as they look at the catastrophe their son unknowingly caused to the entire colony. This is precisely where the panel’s humor comes from, and it’s an incredibly effective way Far Side as a result, cartoon.
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The other side scoffs at having grown up too quickly (how was that child cared for?)
First published: April 22, 1983
Parents are always tired of their children growing up too quickly, while on the other hand, most people don’t take the time to appreciate their youth until well after it has passed. Gary Larson delightfully takes this to the extreme here, as part of a classic Far Side Old West reference.
“You must be the one they call The Kid,“, says a cowboy to the baby next to him, who spilled a beer on the wooden bar counter; While this is, of course, a direct reference to Billy the Kid, Larson’s use of excessive literalization here imbues the joke with a richer layer of subtext. This may not have been intentional on the artist’s part, but ultimately what matters is how the reader perceives the panel – and some will feel this raises the specter of innocence lost too soon.
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On the other hand, appearances weren’t always as deceiving as you might think (is Mr. Weatherby bad news?)
First published: July 12, 1982
Here, Gary Larson plays with the idea that every suburban neighborhood has a house that parents tell their children to avoid, for one reason or another. At the same time, this panel is a classic Far Side lullaby riff, playing on the “lived in a shoe“reason – Except in this town, all the houses are shoes, and the creepy house on the block is a spiked boot with a jagged hole in the toe.
Typically, parents tell their children to stay away from a house because of its occupant, but here, Gary Larson once again delivers an overly literal joke, making it “old Mr. Weatherby’s house“in itself that children should tread carefully.
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Even on the other side, there was no time to dodge (how many times does mother duck have to tell them?)
First published: April 19, 1982
For children of a certain age, there are few topics more controversial than bedtime. Gary Larson uses his favorite Far Side technique – replacing humans with animals – in this cartoon to mock this eternal battle of wills. On the dashboard, An irate duck father invades the ducklings’ room to demand once again that they “stand on one leg, turn [their] head straight and go to sleep!”
The transposition of the ducks’ behavior into a common human experience is enough to make readers laugh, but this Far Side the cartoon may once again have an undesirable effect on the reader; at least momentarily, it could dissociate them from this familiar human routine and make them abstractly consider how strange it really is.
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A Night Out for These Estranged Parents Ends in Tragedy (Where Did They Find That Babysitter?)
First published: March 24, 1982
Many people will remember nasty babysitters from their childhood, and here Gary Larson takes that to the limit; once again drawing a figure from classic fairy tales, Larson portrays an old witch being scolded by two parents because, instead of taking care of her children, she “I cooked and ate both.”
Once again, this Far Side comic strip draws its humor from the delicate balance between a light-hearted, playful joke and macabre humor. For readers, this may stir up memories of their worst babysitting, or babysitting experiences, and may even cause them to reconsider what made those experiences negative in the first place.
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On the other hand, bed bugs meant business (why didn’t mom check under the bed?)
First published: January 30, 1980
“Sleep well, don’t let the bedbugs bite“is an iconic goodnight refrain, passed down from generation to generation – but here, Gary Larson makes it scarier than ever, depicting the legs of a giant insect crawling under a child’s bed as his mother turns off the light and leaves him to his fate.
Adults consider bedbugs a nuisance, but for young children this rhyme can cause legitimate discomfort – and that Far Side The panel captures the wildest extrapolations of a young imagination, wondering what exactly a bedbug could be and whether it was coming for them. In this way, it represents one of the The Far Side most memorable cartoons about childhood, told from Gary Larson’s unique perspective.