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Comment by 7thaccount | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Mine, too.

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

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

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!

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.

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