📌 Humor Inspiration Files: The Far Side
I must have read, and re-read, these books a zillion times
A series where I delve into some of my early humor influences. See Sesame Street here.
One thing about being a 1980s kid is that newspapers were EVERYWHERE, in such quantities that we constantly looked for creative new ways to “use” them. My pet bird helped us get through one section a week, but as a kid, there was only one section worth saving to actually read,1 and it was The Funnies.
For those newer to this Earth, the Funnies was the comics section, aka “the funny pages2.” The Sunday Funnies was the only fully four-color section in the entire paper. (National News and Sports got a four-color first page and then suffered in black and white for the remainder.) Overall, the Funnies were pretty bad. I don’t mean offensive, though some definitely were—but I mean here so uninteresting that a VERY bored kid regularly skipped at least half of the offerings; I, myself, went straight to Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side3. However, as good as Calvin & Hobbes was (and it was so good!), the only one I ever actually cut out with scissors to save was The Far Side.
The Far Side was interesting in that it was a one-panel comic, and usually ran next to Family Circle, which was, on Sunday, often also a one-panel comic—albeit one with a very different vibe. The rest, at least as far as I remember, were strips. And yet, outside of the aforementioned C&H, my only reliable laugh came from one stand-alone panel that Gary Larson served up. I wish I could share some of them here, but he’s (understandably) NOT a fan of fans displaying his comics; still, you can see many of my favorites on his website. Particular favorites of mine included “Beware of Doug” (my Dad’s name) and “Standing Cows - Car!” both of which still make me giggle as a fortysomething, despite having seen them hundreds (if not thousands) of times.
What I Remember Especially Loving:
A well-built
worlduniverse. Gary Larson’s universe (there were a lot of aliens) was a bit Richard Scarry-ish in there wasn’t a main character who we followed in every panel; instead, it was a sort of bizarro alternative universe that ran the third rail between everyday and uncanny. We recognized the situation, but it was always served through a slant that created the need for a double-take, like when the Farmer’s wife, carrying a basket of eggs, passes a chicken carrying a human baby from the house.Grounded absurdity. I love this description of the comic, courtesy of Wikipedia: “Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life.” However!, if I have one gripe with this description, it doesn’t consider how bizarre the natural universe really is and how The Far Side adeptly used scientific fact to underpin many of its punchlines. The comics are not just absurd—they were realistically and understandably absurd4.
Speaking of impending disasters... Life isn’t fair—indeed, it’s doubly so for kids. I felt a certain funny, dark resilience built into the “impeding bizarre disasters” that would befall the many “whistling as they approach a corner with something unseen and improbable waiting” of The Far Side? It’s a glass-half-full thing: you COULD perceive pre-disaster, happily doing their thing characters as hapless doofuses, but I preferred (and still do) to think of them instead as sages, enjoying what they can while they can. As the Voltaire attribution goes, “Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sign in the lifeboats.”
Breaking the fourth wall. While it didn’t happen all the time, I did especially enjoy the times the cartoon characters seemed to be self-aware that we were spectators—such as the little inner-tube lemming looking right at us in his famous Lemmings panel, or when, “Suddenly, two bystanders stuck their heads in the cartoon, and ruined one of the funniest cartoons ever.”
Clever humor that taught me some things—especially when I didn’t get the joke. I specifically remember looking up “remora” in the dictionary to try to puzzle out the “heartbreak of remoras” punchline of one shark-based cartoon panel, and I’m not gonna lie; I learned a little bit about genuine art history from his Weiner Dog Art collection (see cover below).
Off-kilter (at best) and often quite dark humor. To be fair to Gary, he wasn’t making these for kids—but as a kid, I truly appreciated the naughty feeling of guffawing at something I knew was usually not officially “on” the kid’s menu, such as the dog who was trying to get a cat into the dryer by scrawling ‘CAT FUD’ onto the open door or an artiste using his muses in way-too-hands-on a methodology.
I celebrate the entire Far Side canon, but this was my favorite of the Far Side books. It combines three of my favorite things: dachshunds, art, and an extremely off-kilter sense of humor. Proudly weird. I didn’t know of this speech then as a kid (how would I?), but I enjoyed reading Gary Larson’s 1990 commencement speech at Washington State University recently as an adult. I gasped when I got to this part:
“…I remember back in junior high and high school when we used to have these talent shows. What really fascinated me about these shows was not the students who were genuinely talented, but the ones who got up there and made absolute fools of themselves. It was the equivalent of standing up in front of the entire student body and saying, "Look everybody, I am a nerd." Now, I realize those kids were pretty cool in a way because they were risk-takers themselves. They did something a little weird. It seems to me we're all in a talent show of sorts. I mean there is some point in your life that somewhere, sometime, you will have to stand up in front of a stranger and do your act.” — Gary Larson
You will be, I think, unsurprised to learn that I was precisely that kind of “look everybody” nerd. And thank God, because I think that’s part of how I got the little bit of a tough skin I do have (and probably still need more of).
Did my strange sense of humor get forged by The Far Side, or did I especially appreciate it because it was already my jam, even as a kid? I’m going to guess, a little bit of both. As that Zen master Dogen quote goes, “If you walk in the mist, you get wet.”
Your "standing up and doing her act in front of strangers" friend,
Elayne
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Weirdly, I did read Lewis Grizzard’s column sometimes! (RIP, Lewis.) When I did read that one, I usually read Doonesbury, which also lived in the Editorial section.
In the South, “see you in the funny pages” was a common expression; it meant (roughly), “it’s been nice chatting; see you around again soon.”
Others I remember laughing at included Garfield, Mother Goose and Grimm, Bloom County, and Cathy. I usually skimmed Peanuts, Family Circus, and Marmaduke, though most of the time, I thought they were a little boring. As far as I was concerned, soap opera-y ones that seemed to revel in their lack of humor, like Prince Valient and Little Orphan Annie, could stuff themselves.
One notable exception: Cow Tools definitely leans hard into absurdity for absurdity’s sake.