It’s a slightly odd, somewhat lonely feeling to see something so universally beloved and popular and feel nothing.
School for the Gifted
Dog Translator
Peter Arno is also another good ink painting cartoonist, although his subject matter has generally aged much more poorly…
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/tagged/garfield%20minus%20...
Specifically on the London underground (or your local public transport) during morning rush hour, with a hangover. It's hard not to laugh out loud.
Still worth reading if you're a scruffy yank?
VIZ is crass, puerile in the extreme, casually (insert your red line here)-ist on many levels, and often repetitive. It uses common slang words, so somewhat culturally revealing. It's 'wrong' on many levels but done with style, albeit sometimes a repugnant style - So you inwardly 'gasp' in revulsion but outwardly stifle a giggle.
The fake small ads are often very very funny.
Lastly, like so many gags that use the 'shock' effect, the humour doesn't last forever; take a look at an early one on Archive...
I laughed out loud multiple times clicking on links in this very thread, reading comics I've read dozens (and dozens) of times before.
Generally, I agree with you. But I do remember coming across Parking Lot Is Full one night and having to stifle my laughing so I didn't wake up my wife who was sleeping next to me while I was reading it.
The test:
https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/390/the-chase
If given the choice, I would have the Viking ship with a kittens-in-a-basket flag.
Marry me.
It was an amazing therapy.
Don't feel that way. I can totally understand why some people wouldn't "get" (or I'd put it "appreciate") The Far Side. It's a very particular kind of humor, and it's fine that it's "not everyone's cup of tea". I, for example, absolutely loathe poetry. It's like the cilantro of literature of me, and I don't have the gene that makes it not taste like soap. ... Who cares!?!
I have this "joke" that I dearly love, that I've never met anyone who gets it. It is a bad joke, largely because nobody gets it. It doesn't imply something in me or something lacking in ... everyone else. Humor is just what you find in it. It is: "Well, I defended my thesis in comparative literature, but it seems like he's got a pretty healthy pulse to me..."
Definitely sounds like the kind of joke I'd like if I understood it.
"Is there a doctor on this plane???"
"Well yes, but I defended my thesis in comparative literature..."
Didn't come anywhere close to getting it on my own though!
And, if you want and if the Fates allow, you may have my favourite, completely unappreciated joke:
"A time traveller!" [wait a few seconds] "Knock knock."
“I can’t stand sitting, so I need a hand standing.”
Nobody ever finds that amusing but it kills me every time.
There is a famous one of 2 explorers in the jungle and the man is saying "Holy moly Loretta, not only is it still there, but look what it did to the end of my stick !"
So not really funny unless you can recall (or imagine) a moment when you had a bug on you and you ask someone to brush it off and you have that minute of like, did you get it or is it still there ? If that has actually happened to you, its a hilarious cartoon.
The humor "is" very weird, the normal flow is a strange image that is not funny and a simple caption that is also not funny. but coupled together there is something funny about the absurd connection that is made. sort of like a caption meme with better drawing. And honestly I think there are a lot of them that we just don't "get", too strange for comprehension, and we find this funny as well.
I think it's similar to the Cow Tools panel.
Specifically, the Far Side panel plays on the idea of the fact that cows would have a cow-centric view of the world and would likely develop tools that were alien to us. The other part of the 'joke' is that cows don't build tools (afaik). edit: I think the "3rd" part of the joke is that the tools look like shit, which is what you'd expect from even the most talented cows.
The humor of the space alien joke is similar in that it's pointing out the difficulty that everyone has in understanding how others (other people, other species, etc.) view and describe the world.
I don't, because I'm from the UK...
excellent meta-joke.
I don't think the joke itself is a bad idea. I remember The Simpsons doing the room full of monkeys on typewriters where one comes up with "it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times" which in a way is a similar joke, right? i.e. Not a good result, but funny because it's still much more than you'd ever expect in reality.
It is the infinite monkey theorem from the late 19th and early 20th century.
There's an additional layer to the Simpsons joke, with Burns dismissing what's really an incredible result (almost the opening line from A Tale of Two Cities) as useless just because of one small error. The Cow Tools equivalent might a farmer holding the saw, saying "This isn't even sharp."
Given that the monkey is sitting there smoking a cigarette, clearly stressed out, chained to the typewriter, I wonder if there's also a third or fourth layer to the Simpsons joke where the monkey represents the scriptwriter and Burns represents Fox. The equivalent for Cow Tools would be, er, Cow Comics, and it's just XKCD art quality comics on the Cow's table, and the farmer complains that the drawings aren't very good.
That said, you might not be as alone as you think. The far side has been the butt of many bits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfkynJ4hbI
>like the proverbial tiger and its stripes, I’m pretty much stuck with my sense of humor. Aren’t we all?
https://youtu.be/LjfkynJ4hbI?si=rMrpX7VChQMX23_I
(Obviously not the only one if not getting Far Side comics made the Simpsons!)
Yay humans.
The series finale is one of the greatest T.V. finales of all time.
I think you're dramatically underestimating how big it was during its run.