The humor ofThe Far Sidecame from converting the familiar into the strange and surreal; the more universal an experience, the more artist Gary Larson could play on his readers' expectations to deliver an unexpected and uproarious joke, and there were few subjects he lampooned that were more widely recognizable than the trials and tribulations of growing up.
The Far Sidefeatured a number of cartoons about kids and childhood. Just like any set ofFar Sidecomics, some are laugh-out-loud funny, while others rank amongLarson’s most endlessly perplexing punchlines.
And of course, as with anything onThe Far Side, being a kid could be equal parts wondrous and terrifying; at their best,The Far Side’skid comics offer readers a nostalgic, childlike feeling of learning to navigate life– by throwing them in the deep end of an utterly bewildering experience.
10Peer Pressure Was No Joke On The Far Side (Should Johnny Do It?)
First Published: June 23, 2025
The act of two or more people cutting themselves and mingling their blood to make a pact goes back to antiquity, but many contemporary readers will associate it with adolescents and teenagers. Gary Larson riffs on that here with his “Strawbrothers” comic, in whichtwo young scarecrows attempt to coax a third into mixing their straw, telling him “don’t be chicken"as he stares off with one ofThe Far Side’sclassic expressions of horror.
This comic is certainly among Gary Larson’s more “out there” premises, but it works because it evokes a particular childhood experience, one that at least some readers will be able to relate to directly. If nothing else, in the abstract, it reminds readers of the discomfort of peer pressure, of feeling like one needs to do something they don’t want to to fit in.
9This Generation’s Worms Have It Too Easy (Is This The Far Side’s Best “Back In My Day” Joke?)
First Published: July 04, 2025
The Far Sidefeatured more than one “back in my day” jokes during its run, but this is perhaps the mostrepresentative 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 from a subsequent generation about how much harder they had it has become a societal meme, andThe Far Sidegives a hilarious rendition here.
15 Funniest Far Side Comics Starring Gary Larson’s Recurring ‘Arlene Carmichael’ Character (Including His Best Wordplay Joke)
Gary Larson’s Far Side doesn’t have many recurring characters, but when they do appear, they’re used for some of his best comics in the whole series.
“When I was your age,” an old worm in a rocking chair berates its grand-worms,“I had to crawl 14 inches to the surface and back. Every day!…Through hardpan, by thunder!“What is endearing about thisFar Sidecartoon is how fully-realized of a scene it is; that is, it fully transposes this human behavior onto a family of worms, adding extra emphasis to the punchline.
8The Far Side Explores The Origins Of Childhood Trauma (What Happened To Grandpa?)
First Published: July 18, 2025
This panel presents a different take on the “old man lecturing grandkids” trope – and in effect, embodies the idea that sometimes young people don’t realize they’re being traumatized until long after the fact. Here, a man’s head, with no body, sits in a recliner,three kids sitting on the floor in front of him, as his wife admonishes him to “tell the kids a pleasant story for once.”
“They don’t always have to hear the one about your head,” the woman tells “Henry,” making it clear his bodyless condition is the result of some mishap, and that he has subjected his grandchildren to the story many times over. Something they will surely have to process much later in life, perhaps by visiting one ofThe Far Side’smany talk therapists.
7What Dogs Are Really Thinking When Kids Play With Them (Is That Boy Biting His Tail?)
First Published: July 14, 2025
In this cartoon, two rambunctious young boys roughhouse with their host’s hound, who idly dreams of payback,in classicFar Sidefashion.As the dog’s owner says, “I bet your kids and Bruno would like to go outside,” the dog’s thought balloon depicts him burying the kids alive, kicking the final dirt over the hole he stuck them in, with only their glasses left on the surface.
What makes thisFar Sidecartoon remarkable is the way Gary Larson manages to skillfully 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 which Larson hilariously subverts, by revealing that those pets are always thinking on how to get even.
6The Far Side’s Perfect Joke At The Expense Of “Childhood Innocence” (Did This Young Ant Just Doom His Family?)
First Published: Jun 18, 2025
In this panel simply captioned “childhood innocence,” Gary Larson captures the spirit of the idea that kids can naively be too trusting – to a fault, at times. He does this by depicting a classic childhood scenario: a kid bringing home a stray animal. Except he makes the kid an ant, and the animal an anteater.
So,when the young ant shouts, “Mom! Dad! He followed me home! Can we keep him?” readers will emphasize with him, but also fully relate to the look of terror dawning in his parents' eyesas they look up at the catastrophe their child has unknowingly brought on the whole colony. This is precisely where the humor of the panel comes from, and it is an incrediblyeffectiveFar Sidecartoon as a result.
5The Far Side Pokes Fun At Growing Up Too Fast (How Did That Kid Get Served?)
First Published: June 05, 2025
Parents are always weary of their kids growing up too fast, while conversely, most people don’t take the time to appreciate their youth until well after it is spent. Gary Larson delightfully takes that to the extreme here, as part of a classicFar SideOld West reference.
The Far Side Complete Collection
Fans of the far side can’t pass up this master collection of Gary Larson’s finest work. Originally published in hardcover in 2003, this paperback set comes complete with a newly designed slipcase that will look great on any shelf. The Complete Far Side contains every Far Side cartoon ever published, which amounts to over 4,000, plus more than 1,100 that have never before appeared in a book and even some made after Larson retired.
“You must be the one they call The Kid,” a cowboy says to the infant next to him, who has spilled a beer across the saloon’s wooden-top bar; while this is, of course, a straightforward reference to Billy the Kid, Larson’s use of over-literalization here imbues the joke with a richer layer of subtext. This may not have been intentional on the artist’s part, but what matters is ultimately how the reader perceives the panel – and some will find this raises the specter of innocence lost too soon.
First Published: July 20, 2025
Here, Gary Larson plays on the idea that every suburban neighborhood has one house that parents tell their kids to avoid, for one reason or another. At the same time, this panel is aclassicFar Sidenursery rhyme riff, playing on the “lived in a shoe” motif –except in this town, all the houses are shoes, and the scary house on the block is a spiked boot with a jagged hole in the toe.
Usually, parents tell their kids to keep away from a house because of its occupant, but here, Gary Larson once again offers an excessively literal punchline, making it so that it is “old Mr. Weatherby’s place” itself that the kids should tread carefully around.
3Even On The Far Side, There Was No Ducking Bed Time (How Many Times Does Mama Duck Have To Tell Them?)
First Published: June 12, 2025
For kids of a certain age, there are few more contentious subjects than bedtime. Gary Larson uses hisfavoriteFar Sidetechnique – substituting animals for humans– in this cartoon to poke fun at this perennial battle of wills. In the panel,an irate duck parent busts into its ducklings room to demand once more that they “stand on one leg, turn [their] head straight, and go to sleep!”
These 3 Far Side Comics Combine to Explain Why Ducks Are Illegal in Gary Larson’s Surreal (But Hilarious) World
Published 12 years apart, these Far Side comics set up the idea that ducks are illegal in Gary Larson’s surreal world, then actually explained why!
The transposition of duck behavior onto a common human experience is enough to get a laugh out of readers, but thisFar Sidecartoon can once more have an unintended effect on the reader; at least momentarily, it could disassociate them from this familiar human routine, and make them consider in the abstract how strange it truly is.
2A Night Out For These Far Side Parents Ends In Tragedy (Where Did They Find This Babysitter?)
First Published: June 21, 2025
Many people will recall unpleasant babysitters from their childhoods, and here Gary Larson pushes that to its limit; once more drawing in a figure from classic fairy tales,Larson depicts an old witch being berated by two parents because instead of watching their kids, she “cooked and ate them both.”
Again,this Far Side comic extracts humorfrom the delicate balance between a lighthearted, playful joke and macabre humor. For readers, it might elicit memories of their own worst babysitters, or babysitting experiences, and might even lead them to reconsider what made those experiences negative in the first place.
1On The Far Side, Bed Bugs Meant Business (Why Didn’t Mom Check Under The Bed?)
First Published: July 02, 2025
“Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” is an iconic goodnight refrain, passed down through generations – but here, Gary Larson makes it more terrifying than ever,depicting the legs of a giant bug crawling out from beneath a kid’s bed as his mother flicks off the light and leaves him to his fate.
Adults know bedbugs as a nuisance, but to young children, this rhyme can instill legitimate unease – and thisFar Sidepanel captures the wildest extrapolations of a youthful imagination, wondering what exactly a bedbug could be, and whether it was coming for them. In this way, it represents one ofThe Far Side’smost memorable cartoons about childhood, as told fromGary Larson’s unique perspective.
The Far Side
The Far Side is a humorous comic series developed by Gary Larson. The series has been in production since 1979 and features a wide array of comic collections, calendars, art, and other miscellaneous items.
