The Far Side – By Gary Larson | Hacker News Reader

The Far Side – By Gary Larson

thefarside.com

445 pointskeepamovin153 comments

Growing up my best friend and I loved The Far Side. In many ways it was the basis to the quirky humor we both shared, and would continue to explore throughout our youth. In elementary school we had countless Far Side books between us, and by middle school a few shirts too (I remember having "Midvale School for the Gifted").

Well he turned 40 just a few weeks ago, and I needed to find a present. I don't know why, as The Far Side hadn't crossed my conscious in quite some time, but I thought "I'll get him 'The Chickens are Restless'". After some quick searching, he ended up with the Complete Works containing every thing from The Far Side.

Wrapped, he didn't have a clue what I'd got him or why it was so damn heavy. The first glance as he opened in and realized what it was instantly brought a smile to his face. It's amazing how small things bring people together, and The Far Side will always be one of them for my best friend and I. I'm sure there will be some new comics we'd missed and there will be some new chuckles.

My mother used to drag me to the Hallmark store as a kid and she'd spend unreasonable amounts of time chatting with the workers and browsing who knows what. I think this was before I had a Gameboy and my only salvation was reading those Farside books. I both enjoyed them and was seriously creeped out by them. They also had Calvin and Hobbes which I adored.

The creepiness is something nobody ever seems to mention about The Far Side and that's my biggest lasting impression of the comics. They're deeply unsettling and have a weird uncanny valley feeling to me.

That's not to say they're bad. But something about them always has a tinge of horror to me.

Well a lot of it is quite dark. One of my favorites being the jet pilots asking each other why there’s a mountain goat in the clouds.

This reminds me of the sub Reddit /r/twosentencehorror.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoSentenceHorror/>.

Mine, too.

Oh, yes - lots of unsettling, dark, and creepy. But within a kid-safe, G-rated context. And they're generally very cautionary (vs. any sort of pro-violence stuff).

And with how good humans suddenly become at learning, when they see someone else make a mistake and immediately suffer the consequences...I'd even call The Far Side educational.

Surreal humour and art seems to trigger a little of that disgust reflex that makes it feel darker than it might otherwise be, and it tends to have a dark tinge to start with. That Far Side is often just a little surreal can make this worse in an uncanny valley sort of way, also it often takes the sort of thing that might be a simple kid's joke¹ a step or few further which touches that “I'd have rather kept that bit of innocence, thanks” nerve.

It isn't really that dark often² IMO, but it pushes your buttons and your head makes it so. Many people like that, some really find it creepy.

[1] a simple joke for kids, not a joke for kids who can't get into Midvale!

[2] except, of course, when it is!

The day my kid got into the Far Side was a pretty good day.

Haven’t introduced him to the Pharcyde yet but soon.

The Far Side was part of my growing up too, my friends and I shared much laughter and silliness. Those comics influenced our sense of humor and worldview.

Worth noting is Gary Larson's original response to the WWW was an open letter asking fans not to post his cartoons online. Akin to the Bill Gates letter on copying software, but, perhaps, more understandable. This website is a reversal of that original position. He was thoughtful then, and is thoughtful now.

The original letter: https://www.portmann.com/farside/index.html?home.html

And the reversal: https://www.thefarside.com/about/48/a-letter-from-gary-larso...

... for cartoons, my favourite has always been:

[A cow, wearing jewellery and holding a martini glass, stands by the picture window of a well-appointed suburban home, while a bull sits in an armchair, watching TV, with a beer in his hoof]

Cow: "Wendell... I'm not content"

My favourite was only published in his hardcover book. Newspapers universally rejected it:

http://doubleplusundead.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/far-side...

I feel wicked laughing at this.

As did we all.

I've always been particularly fond of the humble farmer dooming the planet to destruction by earnestly grasping the hand-shaped alien's entire head for an introductory handshake.

https://twitter.com/faineg/status/1387409269620985863?lang=e...

The "wings stay on/wings fall off" switch is the one I keep having to dig up at work (alternating with "Why do we even have that lever?" from emperor's new groove.) And then there's "Cow Tools"...

“Now That Should Clear Up A Few Things Around Here” Just has to be the most applicable to software development, assuming that’s what most folks around here are into.

Or the prepper in his bunker without a can opener.

I think about the former almost every time I fly XD

All three of these are also frequently on my mind.

Inuit leaving an igloo: "Well, it's cold again." Kills me every time.

Haha this reminded me of the two guys in hell and the one whispers to the other “I hate this place”.

For me it's also a cow one: 'Car!'.

Someone close to me has the original of the “Car” cartoon. Gary gave it to him as a gift shortly after it was published. It is pen and ink and Letratone on paperboard and is about 18” wide.

For a year or two in the late 90s, the artwork went missing and was thought to have been stolen, but was eventually found to have been put in storage.

Wow, that is incredible. First that it wouldn't have pride of place somewhere (it's as if the gift wasn't properly appreciated), second that it would end up in storage and then that it was found again. If they need a safe place to store it give them my email ;)

I’ve always loved “Beware of Doug”

We had two Dougs in our 1980's office. One of them had the cartoon on the entrance to his cube.

[Men in pith helmets and khaki shorts trekking hip deep through water with their gear held over their heads.]

Piranha: Just nibble at first. … But when you hear them yell “Piranha!” - go for it.

A farmer on the path home from the chicken coop with a basket of eggs meets a hen carrying a baby.

my favourite was the horse parliament one. someone posted it to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/b6g2ti/i_love_it_wh...

So good! Thanks for sharing

although he still disables right-clicking on his site. So he's still putting some effort into the sisyphean "uphill slog"

That works until a hacker comes along and knows to hold shift before right-clicking.

No RSS feed either

Isn't that just the default these days?

Embedded in styrofoam shoes, Carl is sent to ‘sleep with the humans’.

A group of cows huddled around another cow eating a hamburger.

“I’d say we taste like chicken.”

About ten years ago I went back and forth a couple of email rounds with one of his aides trying to get permission to use one of his cartoons ('Old dog, new trick') in a presentation to ~200 people, but I couldn't justify the expense. I was bummed, but respect Larson's wishes too much to go freelance and just show the cartoon.

So many childhood memories reading Farside. Here’s my favourite: https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2...

Honestly, it's a real shame that it took so long for that reversal, because Far Side comics already had an almost perfect vibe for joining the early rise of internet meme culture, with the postmodernist elements they had in common. Hopefully for Larson things haven't moved on too far that he's totally missed that boat, because his comics absolutely deserve wider recognition among internet culture.

I think the expectation from the early days of the internet was that information could be contained, and the realization from recent years is that the expectation no longer holds. So creators either have to make their own contents accessible or someone else will do it anyways, possibly poorly. Gary Larson might have arrived at this realization relatively late, but I don't think he is the last one.

Witness all the artists who refused to put their music on iTunes or streaming. How'd that exclusive CD deal with Wal-Mart work out, Garth?

Garth actually had his own streaming service GhostTunes, which was created solely to only host his own music for streaming until he realized what a dumb idea that was.

Tbh seems like he knows his audience. Surely plenty of people still buy CDs for their car stereo rather than streaming Spotify or something, especially the kind of people who listen to country music.

I can respect those that tried to resist the onset of streaming, it really did/does screw over artists.

Garth has a net worth of like $300M so I guess it worked out pretty good

Pilot to co-pilot, "What's that goat doing up here in this cloud bank?"

"I'm not content" was especially relevant if you remember the old Darigold Dairies commercial: "Darigold...home of contented cows."

Driving through cow country it’s impossible not to think of all the far side comics involving them and ponder what’s really going on in their heads. XD

Contented cows were a very common dairy meme.

Still are.

As a kid in school, “Woah, wrong room” was my fav (says the alien who peeks into the classroom of small children).

God cooking the earth in the kitchen: and just to make it interesting…a sprinkling of jerks!

(Not that I think about this comic all the time interacting with you fine internet citizens)

I always recall turbulence.

I have several well-worn Far Side collections, including one with a lovely introduction by Jane Goodall, which has a funny story behind it [1]

Linking my favorite below [2]

> Donning his new canine decoder, Professor Schwarzman becomes the first human being on Earth to hear what barking dogs are actually saying.

[1] http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The%20Complete%20Far%...

[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNZar0hX0AQB98d?format=jpg&name=...

What a great story. Love that

This is also my favorite, which I have been able to laugh at for years.

that's funny, because some comedian stole the idea, and had all the dogs saying "Fuck you! Fuck you!"

I still always think of that when I hear dogs barking.

I'm a fan of the SMBC take on this one:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/springtime

I just found out that Larson started drawing comics again on a very irregular schedule: https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff

This is the best news ever. Gary Larson discovered Procreate! (Probably.) Hopefully he'll start churning out new stuff like crazy now.

The nudibranch beach got me.

Wow, The Far Side really brings back some cherished childhood memories. Larson is, IMO, one of the best to ever do it. His humor is really unique, and he's quite a thoughtful person as well, letting his work speak for itself. A relic of a bygone era.

One of my faves: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/oh-my-god-its-leonard-hes-stuf...

Gets me every time. I still have It came from the Far Side as well as Gallery and Gallery 2 on my bookshelf. Timeless.

If I had to pick a favorite, it'd be all of them. I only wish I had a thagomizer for the routine problems of work and day-to-day living.

Didn't "thagomizer" work its way into paleontologists' slang, since they really didn't have a word for it?

It's definitely a thing: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=thagomizer

I think it worked its way into the official vocabulary!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

Mine was School For the Gifted

I was drinking coffee when I saw "Early vegetarians returning from the kill". But not for long.

I have redecorated with my morning beverage on many occasions myself.

I think of that one every single time I try to use a door the wrong way.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/lord-we-thank-thee-the-far-...

Many years ago attending the first company technical seminar that one was taped to the door.

Sometime in the late '80s the local daily began carrying the Far Side and the very first one had Popeye on the witness stand saying, "I yam what I yam."

https://fifetli.blog/2019/01/15/midvale-school-for-the-gifte...

My parents gave me a mug with that on it for my birthday one year. I still have it.

Bummer of a birthmark

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/86/64/d6/8664d684518509081caf...

"Bummer of a birthmark, Hal" has made its way into my everyday lexicon. Most of my coworkers immediately got the reference. There is something about Far Side humor that appeals to people in tech beyond all the science and nerd jokes.

I have that comic (text included) on a t shirt. Sometimes people ask me about it, and I will explain it in an excruciating amount of detail for my entertainment. Sometimes they will try to out-do me and respond by pretending to be confused by my explanation, but my tolerance for playing the fool is incredibly high so I can keep it up for quite some time and they inevitably give up first.

I picture an octogenarian, bored on a park bench, with endless time, inquiring as you pass and you outlasting them.

I love the Far Side, glad to have it online. The two volume set has a featured spot on my bookshelf. And fun to see other commenters here share some of my favorites Far Sides.

What contemporary comics are people following? Two of my current daily views are:

Bizarro - clever puns + such, single frame: https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/bizarro/

Dark Side of the Horse - low key sublime: https://www.gocomics.com/darksideofthehorse/

Doctor Fun from the 1990s was very farsidish but geekier.

https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/archive.html -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Fun

Perry Bible Fellowship: https://pbfcomics.com/

One of the best known strips, and a fine joke about historical fiction (or maybe just history itself): https://pbfcomics.com/comics/now-showing/

“Yes… I believe there’s a question there in the back”

https://www.cardcow.com/images/set856/card00130_fr.jpg

I don't get it.

What's with this guy and indecipherable cow jokes?

Im pretty sure the joke is that the slide is literally just saying “this is a cow” and someone is confused enough to ask a question.

When I was an intern at a company that developed high-end software development tools, there was an intense project to build a new product suite...

So I posted the Far Side comic, about the office workers trapped by fire, atop the building of the Ace Ladder Co.

I can't find a non-copyright-violating copy on the Web, but the caption was: "Wait a minute! Say that again, Doris! ... You know, the part about `If only we had some means of climbing down.'"

(I'm lucky that my coworkers were so kind about my youthful tone-deafness.)

I've been reading the entire The Far Side (from the massive two book set) with my 10 y/o daughter. It's interesting to see how apparently the culture of the time of Gary Larson's upbringing imprinted itself on the strips. Reading 10 or so strips at a sitting makes it very apparent (along with making apparent Larson's go-to characters and tropes).

My daughter commented on there being few depictions of female scientists, academics, doctors, etc (instances if the archetypal The Far Side character in a lab coat) as an example. The strips that feature singles bar-type settings feel a little skeevy, too.

I'm not trying to say anything negative about the strips or Gary Larson. It's interesting to me to reflect on something I enjoyed in my childhood "showing its age", even as I enjoy it now.

Pop culture (and, good as it is, The Far Side is pop culture) always reflects current society to some degree. I would actually say that The Far Side (and Calvin and Hobbes) probably less directly reflects when they were drawn.

For a more obvious example, see Dilbert. Leaving aside all the other baggage, with few exceptions, it's really more about 1990s PacBell cubicle life than anything about the current era, certain common stereotypes notwithstanding.

I think society in The Far Side is built more out of, like, Looney Tunes cartoons and B movies from the 50s. Everybody is a stereotype: scientists in lab coats and glasses, "tough guys" in white t-shirts and pompadours, ladies with beehive hairdos. His cities, his houses, his restaurants, they all default to "stereotypically about 1955". It's easy to draw and it's easy to parse as a reader.

That's probably fair. It's much less part and parcel of the 60s/70s than a number of other strips are.

So much 'other baggage'. Ugh.

Reading Far Side as a child with a truly hyperactive imagination opened up worlds to me. I would see a panel and build up the world around it. This caveman has meat in a basket on his coffee table—does he also use fruit in place of meat? Is the butchers shop full of cold cuts of citrus? Maybe the florist simply sells twisted up intestines in bouquets? I bet they use meat-scented colognes and perfumes.

Basically, Far Side gave me the tools to daydream. Thank you, Gary!

Everybody has their Far Side favorite... here's mine: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/54184001740077889/

My father who was a professor in microbiology had this one on his office door: https://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/images/e...

I still use this phrase today when faced with a flood of information.

I've loved the far side since childhood and couldn't even begin to name a favorite. In a somewhat (though maybe darker and more cynical) similar vein, I also recommend checking out "Perry Bible Fellowship" and his comics. Google search leads right to the site where they're all posted.

Is there a name for a cartooning style where the creatures seem to always be drawn as wide as possible?

I remember a few animators for Sesame Street who did the same thing. It was always striking.

Larson seems to also give them tiny heads for maximum ridiculousness. :)

It make me think of that Aubrey Beardsley illustration of Ali Baba where he's got the curved lines running off the page suggesting these gi-normous flowing comfy pants:

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediu...

I'm not certain there's a name, but Larson was heavily influenced by the work of B. Kliban

Wow, if you told me that this[1] was a Far Side, I'd believe you.

1: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a8/8c/46/a88c46ca525d66d6444b55b3c...

Kliban was superior but also R to X-rated and transgressive af outside of his cat cartoons

Not cartooning exactly, but there is Boterismo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Botero

Nerd! ... Dang!

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/08/a0/c908a02a8dfa42db9973f743b...

Dang! ... Who ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs?

https://ifunny.co/picture/dang-who-ate-the-middle-out-of-the...

Two Far Side mentions (at least) for our moderator? And here I envisioned him as a much younger man.

Just FYI, if people remember having the day-by-day calendars back when, the dates have now repeated and they're selling them again.

My favorite: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/vgvol637/production/4b1d3f9eddb...

When I was in college and would go home for Christmas, my mom would buy me a new Far Side calendar for the coming year, and on my last day home my dad and I would invariably stay up late reading through it together. Great memories now that he's gone.

I am so happy that Cow Tools has become a meme.

My favorite is two bears, sitting a campfire, a hunter's clothing scatter around. One bear is telling the other "I love it when they play dead'.

Hey - I've been wondering about this for a while: Does anyone have an explanation of the Farside/AI crap that has been flooding Facebook for the past few months? Generally, the punchline is that animals are turning the tide on humans, and hunting them instead; husbands and wives hate each other; old men like creeping on young women while their wives gets mad.

The comics linked seem different.

I'm sure it's just your regular, everyday bid for eyeballs and clicks.

The linked comics are the "real thing", selections from a syndicated single-panel comic that ran in newspapers for years until the mid-90s. The gags tended to be pretty surreal.

> The comics linked seem different.

Whaaat? Say it ain't true! The AI crap isn't as good as the original? No! That's impossible!

Yeah, I can kind of explain that as much as anyone can I guess. Someone made a page called The Far Side as a content farm. Great nostalgic brand for Facebook's main demographics = easy engagement. There's only 4,337 actual The Far Side comics, so they also run typical "boomer humor" strips from about the same era or apparently make their own low-effort comics. Lots of content with lots of engagement means the algorithm is likely to show it in people's feeds even at the expense of posts from their friends and groups they joined.

Two pilots sitting on the back of a very large infant with its arms outstretched - "Let's get this baby off the ground"

Two pilots in their cockpit and you can see a mountain goat in the cockpit windshield.

It is captioned “What the hey?”

As Thak worked frantically to start a fire, Cro-Magnon Man, walking erect, approached the table and simply gave Theena a light.

Even the caveman names crack me up

Have you heard of Strigiphilus garylarsoni, a species of chewing louse found only on owls? Named after Gary Larson!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni

So many favorites, but I really loved his dark humor in ones like this

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/352406739585675000/

We still refer to cat food as 'cat fud' in my house.

Yes! I always write it like that on shopping lists now

https://twitter.com/jamiesmart/status/1691482826472828928

“Fud” means something very different in Scotland. It used to be a common derogatory term.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fud

It was also used microsoft to great effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt

Looks like it is related to futz, how I have heard it "don't futz around with that" with kind of means don't like at it because you'll break it.

Why? Anyone less gifted.

(It's very absurdist humor, but anyone into that should and MUST know about Larson, the person who did so much to damage the field by disappearing... willingly... etc. What a fly on the wall he wasn't, etc.)

My favorite is the one where the Lone Ranger makes a startling discovery in his later years. He is reading an old Native American dictionary where he finds out 'kimosabe' means the backend of a horse.

I deeply love the dog who is excited to be going to the vet to be tutored:

https://i.redd.it/wfapamqh3u471.jpg

Yakity Yak Yak Yak!

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/500532946070783132/

One of my favorite t-shirts was a "rusty makes his move" with dog breath spray - I wore it weekly until it had yellow pit stains and holes in it.

I grew up on Garfield when I was a child, then The Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin & Hobbes as a teen. Gen X really hit the jackpot back then!

Hmmm. I haven't had a Dove Bar in a while.

The Boneless Chicken Ranch

https://i.imgur.com/mGxfMnr.jpg

I wonder why a page like this thinks it needs cookie tracking, and thus the cookie banner. There are no ads, so what's the point?

Needs an API to pull the single cartoon of the day with a link to the full web site.

Assuming there is any real interest in expanding viewership.

I'm sorta working on this, but as an RSS feed, since there is a dedicated page per day, with 1-5 comics each day, for example https://www.thefarside.com/2024/01/31

They try to prevent basic scraping but I found a way around it using Selenium. Just haven't published it anywhere. The notice at the bottom has given me pause so I'm thinking of the best way to do this

> No images or other content displayed on this Website may be reproduced, digitized, stored in a retrieval system, made available via any computer or wireless networks, transmitted or circulated in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

They try to prevent basic scraping...

Well, this mentality is the problem.

Including an active link at the bottom of a single "daily" cartoon would likely be the best way to attract people to the site.

I certainly wouldn't object to this link and would just pass it along on my own web site. It would essentially be an open invitation to their web site that a lot of my users would accept.

i was very surprised to learn some years ago that gary larson is also a prolific author of crossword puzzles.

Love The Far Side. “Went to market” with the missing toe had me in tears when I first saw it!

I don't know why, but I was convinced that Gary Larson died like 15 years ago.

Apparently he retired when he was ~45.

A number of our fondest cartoonists checked out relatively early.

Doing this kind of work day-after-day must be pretty draining. (And is, based one a couple of political cartoonists I knew.)

One of my favourite The Far Side strips: "Inconvenience Stores"

"Whoa! Stuart blew his air sac!"

“Midvale School for the Gifted”

Everyone have their own favourite, for me it is: "Well, I've got good gnus and I've got bad gnus."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com