Gary Larson’s 10 Best ‘Far Side’ Comics, Ranked
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Sometimes, all it takes is a single panel to tell a story. That's the allure of The Far Side comics. Created by Gary Larson, the popular comic strip originally ran from 1980 until 1995. With more than 4,000 comics in that span, each one contains a single panel paired with a short caption. From talking animals to everyday objects doing the absurd, Larson mastered the bizarre and poignant.
Though there are thousands to choose from, selecting the greatest Larson strips is a near-impossible feat. Far Side fans likely have their own individual list, but we have compiled a group of 10. They not only span his original run, but also offer a wide variety of storytelling. From the macabre to the hilarious, with some darkness for good measure, these strips are among the very best.
10 Moon Those Saxon Dogs
At first glance, the October 25, 1988, panel looked like a harmless Far Side panel, but when you looked closer, there they were! Butts. The panel depicts a medieval castle guard named Borg stretched away from a watchtower with four arrows stuck in his bare buttocks. Why does he have them in his behind? Well, as the other guard explains, "So then I says to Borg, 'So long as we're under siege, one of us ought to moon those Saxon dogs.'" A foolish stunt led to an unfortunate outcome, but for Larson, it made history.
Larson noted in The Complete Far Side that this panel held the unique distinction of featuring a bare butt in mainstream funny pages. Regardless of the honor, the comic offered the perfect visual gag paired with a nonchalant explanation. By applying a juvenile insult like mooning to a brutal medieval moment, it showcased a historical anachronism. Mooning has been a long-running insult, but tossing it into a medieval story makes it timeless. Thanks to this strip, readers fully understand the hilarious and painful consequences of awful advice.
9 Peter Pan
Larson has been no stranger to dropping beloved and iconic characters into his panels. In 1994, one of the most infamous iterations featured the boy who never grew up, Peter Pan. Well, according to Larson, he eventually did. The scene, set in an office, notes that, 30 years later, Peter Pan had "no regrets about marrying Wendy, buying a home, and having two kids," but his mind did wander back to his life in Never-Never-Land. The visual joke alludes to trying to spot Peter Pan in a cubicle, noting what it truly means to grow up.
Seeing Peter Pan working a mundane, soul-crushing 9-to-5 office job shatters the illusion that our childlike whimsy is everlasting. Perhaps a bit dark for some, this panel notes that he resigned himself to the idea that he would be an eternal boy, forced to a dreary office in corporate life. Larson showcases his brilliance by tapping into our own secret desire to stay young at heart while noting that it's simply implausible.
8 The Real Duck
Arriving around the time when we were still playing the shooter video game Duck Hunt, Larson put the duck in the driver's seat in this humorously dark panel. In the February 10, 1988, comic, a duck, or at least an illusion of one, taunts Mr. Frischberg in a hall of mirrors. Having already shot a mirror panel, the duck says, "But which of us is the real duck, Mr. Frischberg, and not just an illusion?" By turning the hunter into the prey, this comic showcases psychological torment as its punchline.
The comic stands out for brilliantly flipping the dynamic between human hunter and animal prey; Larson instills an eerie, hyper-intelligent awareness that makes the duck a brilliant menace. This time, the hunted is luring the hunter into a trap. Rather than making it drastically dark, a funhouse mirror maze adds a touch of irony. In the writing, Larson smartly uses an ellipsis to bring a dramatic pause into the conversation in an almost supervillain mastermind kind of way.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another.
⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World)
💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth)
⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away)
🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier)
01
What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one.
02
How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends.
03
What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years.
04
How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room.
05
Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget.
06
What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree.
07
What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer.
08
What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom.
Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week.
Harry Potter
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped.
- This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be.
- The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love.
- The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again.
Lord of the Rings
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
- This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
- Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
- Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument.
Star Wars
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
- Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution.
- The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
- You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time.
Star Trek
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
- The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
- Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
- You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it.
7 Penguin vs. Banana
For Larson, it's true: a picture tells a thousand words. The Far Side had a simple formula: a single image with a caption. But sometimes, Larson skipped the words to let the image speak for itself. Such was the case for his June 8, 1994, strip. In this wordless single-panel gag, Larson depicts a bewildered penguin lying on a vast snowscape next to a banana peel. For a creature that must navigate a life on icy terrain, it was an oddly placed yellow banana peel that did him in.
The penguin vs. banana story is a masterpiece of wordless, absurdist humor. Through pure simplicity, he relies on a classic, physical slapstick joke, but elevates it by placing it in the completely wrong locale. The frozen tundra is not home to a tropical fruit, prompting the curious gaze of a penguin with zero context for its existence. The panel is obviously open to interpretation. There could be an argument that the penguin didn't slip on the banana peel, but sits next to it simply out of confusion. However you interpret it, Larson allows your mind to wander.
6 God Makes the Snake
Every so often, Larson would use religion for humor. Such was the case on January 11, 1991, with God Makes the Snake. The cartoon shows God at a workbench in the sky working with large mounds of clay. In the process, he rolls the chunks between his hands into long, cylindrical pieces. As he completes them, he sets them aside and jovially says, "Boy...these things are a cinch!" And thus, this, according to Larson, is how God made snakes. The comic marries Larson's love of the animal kingdom's absurdities with lighthearted commentary on God.
The joke of the strip plays on the juxtaposition of an all-powerful creator responsible for creating life, getting a tad "lazy" in the process. Compared to other intricate creatures, the snake is a total breeze. There's a bit of relatability in the story, as anyone who has ever had their hands on clay or even Play-Doh has created the same object and amusingly called it a day. Larson subverts the grandeur of creation by undercutting great theological weight. The punchline strips away the formality of the divine as God is simply looking for an easy day at the office.
5 Car!
Long before Toy Story allowed us to imagine what toys do when we leave the room, Larson pondered what happens with cows in a field before and after we drive by them. In the January 6, 1984, comic, the absurdist gag features a group of cows secretly acting human when no one is watching. When the spotter cow alerts the herd that a cow is approaching, the entire herd immediately drops down to all fours to "act natural."
Car! is one of Larson's best, as it showcases his fascination and wonder at secret animal behavior. Now, this is a bit of an outlier in his comics, as this was a rare occurrence in which Larson uses three panels for his anecdote. In turn, it tells a tiny, perfect story. The punchline turns human perception on its head: cows are not four-legged creatures, but rather engaged in an elaborate scheme to fool us all. Thanks to Larson, if we spot a cow, we might keep our heads on a swivel to see if his theory is correct!
4 Missile Prank
Another wordless wonder, Larson finds humor in a dark setting in which the punchline could literally go boom! In the June 6, 1983 panel, Larson draws a scientist holding a paper bag behind a fellow colleague's head as he hammers nails into a giant missile. With no text aside from what is drawn on the chalkboard, the comic relies on the immediate visual contrast between the sheer danger of taping metal nails into a weapon and the impending harmless "bang" of a paper bag, a move that could theoretically trigger devastation.
The panel's juxtaposition merges mundane, juvenile pranks with a high-stakes, cataclysmic environment. The wordless, visual irony is proof that sometimes no caption is needed to tell an entire story. Larson is a master of timing because this panel captures the split-second before total calamity, allowing the imagination to decide what truly happens next: the prank is fulfilled, or he's foiled right before. It may be simple on the surface, but perhaps Larson is heeding a warning to all office pranks, regardless of what one's office might be.
3 Anatidaephobia
As previously noted, Larson loves featuring ducks in his comics. But what happens if one has a fear of ducks? You get the October 5, 1988, strip Anatidaephobia. Defined as "the fictional fear that somewhere, somehow a duck is watching you," the strip features an office worker at his desk, looking paranoid and stressed out. Well, his fear is realized when he peers out a window and sees a duck staring directly at him. Thus, the absurd fear is rightly justified.
Inventing the term for the strip, Larson playfully pokes at the fears that drive much of his work. The joke became so infamous that it slowly played into pop culture. Many individuals may feel that their fears aren't warranted, so Larson allows his work to justify their fears that phobias are genuine, even if they are as silly as fear of ducks.
2 What's-His-Name?
What may look like an innocent panel has much more hidden within. One of Larson's recurring strips featured a tiny island where anything and everything might occur. In the January 15, 1990 comic, a single palm tree stands on the island, where a husband and wife are marooned. They are joined by another man — a noticeably attractive man sitting on the opposite side of the tree. The husband then accuses his wife of having an affair. And yes, he's referring to the other man, whom he calls "what's-his-name."
The punchline works on multiple levels. Predominantly, it's the silly fact that somehow the wife managed to have an affair on this tiny island with the third person stranded, which the husband completely missed. Second, it exposes the social awkwardness that comes from the fact that the husband simply never learned, nor attempted to learn, this other man's name, despite being marooned for a long time. The domestic drama set on sand is the best of the multitude of island gimmicks.
1 Smoking Dinosaurs
There's likely no more iconic Far Side comic strip than the smoking dinosaurs. Debuting on December 15, 1982, the panel is simple: three dinosaurs sneak around behind a rock to smoke cigarettes. As the caption reads: "The real reason dinosaurs became extinct." Looking like teenagers knowingly doing the wrong thing, Larson subverts the Big Bang Theory or the Ice Age by noting the dangers of cigarettes, all the way back in the '80s.
By commenting on modern human vices through a prehistoric lens, the absurd revisionist history is matched by perfect visual storytelling. By phrasing it as the "real" reason, Larson subtly implies that science may be hiding a prehistoric cover-up, or simply that smoking is bad. From a humorous visual perspective, watching the tiny-armed creatures use a cigarette is ridiculously hilarious. One of the dinosaurs has to assist his pal! Though many Far Side images have circulated in the mainstream, this is near the tippy top.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.