Hacker News Reader

Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

I loved reading Far Side as a kid. But my reaction to probably 10% of them was "I don't know if I am too dumb to get the joke or the joke is too dumb for me to recognize it as a joke."

View on HN

Another childhood fan here. After poring over all of the Galleries and the Anthology, my overall take was that if you don't get it, you're overthinking it (and thus, have become a part of the joke).

Speaking for myself, I definitely had some instances of the former. But I was relieved to learn years later than "Cow Tools" was an instance of the latter.

Hum, never seen that one until I just searched for it. Agreed, it's too dumb for me to get.

Anyway, here's the pic alone https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Cow_Tools_car...

And here's the wiki article it's in, with explanation, such as it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools

Unrelated, look up the wiki article for Thagomizer. It's funny and show life following art (Q: are Larson's comics art? A: yes.)

Edit: save you the effort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

I'd say, with the utmost respect for Larson, that this isn't so much one you're too dumb to get as it is a rare flub in his impressive oeuvre!

For me this comic combined with the general limitations of what he does are what make him second to Bill Watterson. Somehow Watterson managed to be much broader and yet as far as I know there's not a single flub in any of his Calvin & Hobbes comics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com