10 Far Side Comics That Are Minimalist Masterpieces

Close your eyes and think of The Far Side. Gary Larson’s minimalistic artistic style is imprinted in fans’ minds, and it is a vital part of what makes Larson’s work so iconic. He was a creative genius when it came to doing a lot with a little, from making the most of a single frame, to finding the funny side of silhouettes and stick figures.

Like its forerunner, and contemporary, Charles Schulz’ Peanuts, The Far Side is a minimalist masterpiece. Admittedly, The Far Side did get more expansive and inventive over time, and as such, the majority of the cartoons discussed here are drawn from the early years of Gary Larson’s career.

These Far Side cartoons helped make Larson famous, sealing his position as a notorious pop culture figure of the 1980s and ’90s. And today, they still represent the comic style that people think of first when they picture The Far Side.

10

The Far Side Flips The Script On A Classic Practical Joke

First Published: May 30, 1980

The Far Side was obsessed with clowns, and it also featured just about as many jokes about flowers. This cartoon is the intersection of those two points. It takes a classic piece of any good clown’s comedic arsenal, the boutonnière (or lapel flower) that squirts water, and inverts it entirely. Here, a jokester flower has a man tied to its stem; when a fellow flower gets too close, the man spits in its face.

It’s a simple joke, conveyed with a sparse illustration. The big comedic flourishes of this cartoon are the faces Gary Larson draws on the plants. It’s the barest bit of anthropomorphization, but it’s key to the joke; the clown flower is smiling, while the target of the practical joke is wincing as it takes a full barrage of water from the tiny human’s mouth.

9

The Far Side Was At Its Best When It Challenged Conventional Wisdom

First Published: June 6, 1980

As Qui-Gon Jinn famously put it in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: “there’s always a bigger fish.” Of course, versions of this folk wisdom go back centuries beyond that 1999 film. Case in point: 19 years earlier, The Far Side riffed on this idea, with Gary Larson going “yes, but what if…”

For all intents and purposes, this is a perfect Far Side panel. A tiny fish is about to be eaten by a larger fish, which is going to be devoured by an even bigger fish, but then in a Larsonian swerve, an overwhelming swarm of tinier fish is swooping in from behind, collectively forming the biggest mouth of them all. And Gary Larson does all this with the bare minimum of detail.

8

An Early “Blink And Miss It” Far Side Cartoon

First Published: July 19, 1980

For plenty of folks in the 1980s, opening up the newspaper’s funny pages and looking at the cartoons was effectively little different than scrolling Instagram today. They might just briefly glance at each comic, without necessarily scrutinizing them. Which is why The Far Side’s subtler jokes led it to develop a reputation for being inscrutable.

In this cartoon, a herd of kangaroos hops along, except for one, who is running to keep pace with its peers, and is depicted with a broken spring busting out of its front pouch. Here, the art is minimal, with the marsupials little more than outlines, but Gary Larson effectively maximizes the frame. Though the joke is dead center in the middle of the panel, the crowd of hopping kangaroos will draw most readers’ attention first.

7

The Far Side’s Smartest Jokes Didn’t Require Excessive Elaboration

First Published: November 22, 1980

As Shakespeare famously coined the phrase in Hamlet: “brevity is the soul of wit.” That’s definitely true for some of The Far Side’s wittiest cartoons. The Far Side definitely got more verbose, and more elaborate, as time went on, but Gary Larson’s greatest cartoons always tended to be the Far Sides where the illustrations spoke for themselves.

This is a memorable example. A shark surfaces and spits diving gear into the air. The reader understands the macabre punchline immediately: the shark devoured a scuba diver whole, and the gear was causing indigestion. The minimal rendering of the ocean and the shark make it so that the more detailed drawing of the gear stands out, in another example of Gary Larson’s ability to direct readers’ focus. in order to aide his joke’s delivery.

6

The Far Side Made Mourning A Matter Of Perspective

First Published: December 16, 1980

This is a forgotten classic Far Side joke. Its minimalist quality might be part of why it’s not more frequently cited as a fan-favorite, but it’s also essential to making the joke work. It also stands as one of the countless examples of Gary Larson’s status as a master of POV.

Here, a snake visits its lover’s grave, clutching a wilted flower in its jaws, eyes spouting tears. Except, that’s in the background of the panel, because this Far Side cartoon is framed from the end of the deceased snake’s very, very long grave. In this case, the perspective is the punchline, and the streamlined amount of detail in the illustration proved necessary to the bit.

5

The Far Side Thrived On Making Readers Do A Double-Take

First Published: December 30, 1980

We mentioned The Far Side’s original home before: newspaper funny pages. When The Far Side debuted back in 1980, the attention economy wasn’t quite the same overcrowded free market that it is 46 years later, but it operated on the same principle: grab readers’ attention and hold it for as long as possible, even if that’s only a few seconds.

The Far Side became a hit because it was attention-grabbing, even at its most minimalistic. Gary Larson became the master of the “double-take.” Look at this cartoon, for example: it takes a second for the reader to see the saw popping up from underneath the ice, about to plunge the ice fisher above into the freezing water. Yet when readers clock this crucial detail, it is likely to get a solid laugh.

4

Gary Larson Knew Some Far Side Jokes Couldn’t Be Overthought

First Published: May 30, 1981

This is another seriously underrated Far Side cartoon. Its simplicity is its beauty, but again, also perhaps the reason it tends to be overlooked. The cartoon depicts a man on wooden stilts, flailing as he tries to shoo away a woodpecker that is currently decimating one of his stilts. One way or another, it seems like this guy is destined for disaster.

It’s a virtuosic display of minimalism, and not just in its illustration. This is a Far Side panel with a minimalistic premise. Wooden stilts + Woodpecker = cartoon. Like with all the simplest, purest Far Side jokes, to elaborate any further on this would be to risk it losing its magic.

3

The Purest Expression Of The Far Side’s Comedic Formula

First Published: April 15, 1982

Dogs were among Gary Larson’s favorite subject, and he made this same joke several times over the years in different forms. The premise is a full flip of the man/dog dynamic. That is, here, two dogs take great pleasure in scratching an adult human male’s belly and making his leg kick uncontrollably.

It’s another simple premise, simply executed. With cartoons like this, The Far Side had this “inverse Americana” vein to it, where it turned classic 20th-century concepts and imagery upside down and inside out, while still retaining some warped semblance of its idyllic qualities. This is the peak example of that specific type of Far Side comic.

2

The Far Side’s Sketchiness Helped Its Surreal Humor Gain Widespread Appeal

First Published: May 21, 1982

This Far Side cartoon once again follows a simple premise, albeit much weirder than “dog pets man.” This time, Gary Larson envisions a “snake crosswalk,” where the sign reads “Slither/Don’t Slither,” with snakes of all shakes and sizes crowding both corners waiting to cross the street.

Here, Larson could’ve arguably gotten away with even less detail, but he chose to make a few of the snakes distinct for good measure. Still, their collective most distinguishable feature is their stick figure forked tongues. This is a panel that gets lost in the hustle and bustle of The Far Side’s legion of snake cartoons, but it stands out as one of Larson’s minimalist home runs.

1

Late Career Gary Larson Still Knew How To Do A Lot With A Little

First Published: August 27, 1992

For our final entry, let’s jump ahead a decade. In the third and final act of Gary Larson’s career, The Far Side got bolder in just about every way. More ambitious art, more complicated jokes; panels grew more stuffed with detail, and captions got longer. Yet Larson still knew how to serve up a perfectly minimalist Far Side from time to time.

In this panel, an indigenous hunter surveys an empty plain, but spots no game. That’s because he doesn’t look up. If he did, he’d find a lone buffalo perched on a branch above him, like a vulture. Is the joke silly? Yes. Will it leave some people thinking “that’s it?” Yes. But for people who “get” Gary Larson’s humor at its most sly and wry, it stands as another memorable minimalist Far Side classic.

Writer

Gary Larson

Colorist

Gary Larson