10 Darkest Far Side Comics That Prove Gary Larson Had No Limits

Published Oct 18, 2026, 10:30 PM EDT

An experienced Editor representing Canada via ScreenRant's Team Anime, J.R. has been reading manga since the first printing of Shonen Jump in North America. This passion drove him to write about anime, manga, and manhwa since 2022, having recently served as Lead Anime Editor for ComicBook.com.

His favorite moments in media coverage include reviewing the series premieres of Zom 100 and Bleach: TYBW Part 2 back-to-back and briefly meeting Junji Ito at a VIZ gallery event in 2023.

Originating with the start of 1980 and running through the mid 1990s, Gary Larson's The Far Side ran frequently through surprisingly dark territory throughout its run. Much like its horror-themed comic strips, The Far Side was ready to go through macabre or taboo topics basically year-round. These can be attributed to Larson's upbringing, including being instilled with a dark sense of humor, and choosing not to shy away from it, but instead tell compelling, clever, and often hilarious visual stories with it.

The darkest comic strips featured in The Far Side frequently tackled timeless and troubling themes like homicide, suicide, and the violent ways in which even legumes, when given sentience, are turned into processed food products. Yet, despite everything described so far, the comic feels as far from edgy at all, leaning instead in the direction of absurdity. After all, this is a comic strip originally intended to be read in the daily newspaper, in between heavy headlines of the time like 1980s' multiple nuclear scares, so naturally, Larson snuck in more than a few nuclear apocalypse strips. The darkness of these strips may somewhat reflect the dreary real world, but The Far Side fully commits to creating an escape, and not an abyss, to brighten the reader's day.

10 The Fire Watch Has Ended

Published November 17, 1981

Perhaps the darkest thing about this strip from The Far Side is simply how much more upsetting this gets virtually every year. In the past 45 years, wildfires across North America have increased dramatically since this particular cartoon, so it's a tricky subject. But the irony of the fire watch tower in the middle of the forest burning to cinders, with no fire actually reaching the forest, was drawn as the unfortunate best case scenario of a blaze breaking out.

9 Johnson's Meat Packing

Published April 29, 1980

Complaining about long lines is a universal human experience, but anybody who's read Larson will also know his tendency to anthropomorphize animals, with a particular fondness for cattle. But with just a sliver of context, long lines become glaringly troubling as readers will quickly see the truth to what the characters are saying in this strip. This particular beef with long lines will, clearly, be quite short-lived.

8 Crunchy On The Outside

Published September 29, 1980

There's something charming about being so cavalier about a grisly fate in what would normally be considered a safe shelter in the cold. For these polar bears, they're finding the equivalent to a juicy treat in the wintery wastes, akin to biting into a savory chicken kiev, but frozen and with a filling that one can confidently believe is not butter.

7 Some Said 'Creamy,' Some Said 'Crunchy'

Published November 15, 1993

For fans of dark humor centered around food and beverages, Larson was able to tap into that energy and spin it as a campfire tale for two adorably terrified peanuts being told in almost mythological terms of the concept of peanut butter. It evokes memories of similar jokes with dark punchlines like "I like my women like I like my coffee: ground up and kept in the freezer" but with the added childlike reaction of terror making it feel so much more macabre.

Jarred peanut butter may seem like a perfectly tasty snack, but if peanuts could talk, they'd see this as no better than keeping human remains in formaldehyde. Luckily, any such protests from shelled peanuts like these will simply be dismissed as nutcases. The added choice of creamy and crunchy ties it all together rather perfectly, too.

6 Donner Party Memorial

Published February 9, 1990

This one's for the history buffs, but very basically, it is the true story of a group of American pioneers who were trapped by heavy blizzards of late 1846 and forced to endure a harsh winter going into 1847 in the Sierra Nevada. When game was too scarce, and they could no longer rely on eating other animals for the journey such as dog meat, as commonly reported to varying degrees of accuracy, they soon resorted to cannibalism. Larson saw this and decided that the perfect visual for his jokingly proposed memorial was a sandwich consisting just of two slices of bread and a human foot. It serves as a disarmingly funny way to digest (no pun intended) a dark piece of history trivia.

5 Another Scattering Of Cub Scout Attire

Published April 11, 1980

Playing to a particularly fun spin on dinosaur-themed Far Side cartoons, this one takes place in a museum with some rather malicious-looking skeletal remains on display. It warrants little more explanation other than that the T-Rex featured on the left almost certainly came alive and ate the group of children, before resuming its seemingly lifeless pose. It plays well to the overactive imagination of a kid staring at imposing prehistoric remains, reminding readers of Larson's documented childhood anxieties and his dark sense of humor inherited from his family.

4 The Wrong Way To Hang A Plant

Published April 16, 1980

Of all the darkest themes Larson tackled in The Far Side, some of the most upsetting can frequently be suicide and homicide on various scales. He tackles it in this particular case by recontextualizing an already-wilting plant's ultimate fate by having it hang itself. If not for the conventional pot, it'd almost look like a quirky hanging plant setup with the wrong sort of basket. But the officers on the scene haven't ruled out a homicide. In fact, they suspect the evidence was planted.

3 Smoking Kills

Published July 10, 1992

Whether intentional or not, Larson has at multiple points depicted the unhealthy habit of smoking as one of the biggest preventable sources of death among humans and other creatures. In this particular strip, he lumps the habit in alongside suicide methods of hanging and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, under the guise of ads for Camel cigarettes and some over-the-top ACME and Al's-branded paraphernalia. The worst part is it's in the middle of a traffic jam, so the nearby motorists are stuck staring at these car-mounted signs as they wait to get through the busy city.

2 Somebody Needs To Switch To Decaf

Published November 10, 1980

Everybody's heard the joke before, as it was one of the most irritating sitcom clichés that would only grow more annoying in the years since. But rather than a comical outburst or bout of anxiety, the butt of this joke is instead a totally disgruntled man gunning down guests at a social gathering. The joke's usage, in this case, completely disarms the situation, if not the gunman, by injecting a healthy degree of absurdity while doing nothing to fix the active shooter situation unfolding. It's perfectly dark humor at play, but understandably not for everyone, with 1980 being an absolute treasure trove for Far Side moments like this.

1 Laugh At Me, Will They?

Published June 10, 1991

Functioning as a spiritual prequel to 2019's Joker (not really, but play along) this cartoon depicts a clown fundamentally misunderstanding his training. It spins the "good man pushed too far" trope into the perfectly satirical direction, where a clown, whose job is to essentially use his antics to draw laughter, snaps and goes to buy a gun. It begs the question of what exactly he expected when he went to clown school, and was years ahead of its time in terms of violent clown imagery beyond outer space or DC Comics.