10 Greatest Far Side Comics Of All Time, Ranked by Screen Rant Readers

Published Oct 12, 2026, 6:30 PM EDT

Robert Wood is a writer and editor based out of Cheshire, England. He is the author of 'The False Elephant: and 99 Other Unreasonably Short Stories' - 100 stories, each told in exactly 100 words.

Rob got into comics via Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man and the UK anthology 'The Mighty World of Marvel,' which was running Frank Miller's Daredevil, Classic Hulk and Contest of Champions II.

Prior to journalism, he worked in copywriting and copyedited for Oxford University Press. He is on X as @PinchTwigs and Instagram as roobwoodjourno.

Officially running in syndication from 1980 to 1995 - with subsequent additions up to today - Gary Larson's The Far Side boasts more than 4300 comic strips. Today, we're going to try and find the very best... or rather, you are.

In this article, we'll offer up an exhaustive list of contenders for the best Far Side comics of all time, including some tidbits about the contenders. Then, we'll ask you to vote in our reader poll and decide the best of the best.

See below for exactly how the selection and poll are going to work,

How Our 'Far Side' Ranking Works

We've combed through every online ranking we can find of the 'best Far Side comics,' from our own copious coverage to CBR, Collider, Polygon and more. Below, we've assembled 17 classic Far Side comics, selecting the best of each list, those that appear across multiple lists, and those that are particularly beloved by longtime Gary Larson fans.

At the end of this article, Screen Rant readers will be able to vote for their favorites in a reader poll, with the ability to vote for as many of these 17 comics as they like. After you vote, the poll will reveal the current polling from ALL readers, and at the end of the week, we'll name the official top ten.

Smoking Dinosaurs

Larson comes back to dinosaurs again and again throughout The Far Side. Here, he posits an unlikely explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs with a comic later paid tribute by The Simpsons. With anachronous gags like these, it's kind of surprising that National Geographic named Larson "the unofficial cartoonist laureate of the scientific community."

"You're Sick, Jessy!"

Far Side's iconic cows appear multiple times on this list, as you might expect. In this strip, Larson's 'animals behaving like humans' gag is stressed to breaking by a casual barbecue that also happens to include cannibalism.

Bear Puppet Show

In one of Far Side's more grisly strips, a bear mocks the two hunters who thought they could take shelter in its cave. As revealed in The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson often wrote his strip ideas as short stories to find the ideal moment for a single image gag - here, the ideal moment is long after the hunters have perished.

Cow Tools

Custom Image by Robert Wood (from Gary Larson)

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson says "the 'Cow Tools' episode is one that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life." When 'Cow Tools' was first published in 1982, fans wrote to the newspapers carrying the strip in droves, even making headlines with their confusion over exactly what joke Larson intended.

Ultimately, this strip was meant to be just a surreal visual, with Larson imagining what the next rung down from 'primitive tools' might look like, then deciding the funniest animal to create them would be Far Side's ubiquitous cow.

Despite the confusion, 'Cow Tools' has become one of the most iconic Far Side strips of all time, symbolizing Larson's out-there sense of humor.

Airplane Weirdo

Larson showcases his talent for drawing grotesques in this strip, which sees its main character lamenting the slightly odd passenger sitting beside him, not yet knowing a WAY weirder individual is on their way to take the seat on the other side.

Using the foreground and background to set up jokes is one of Larson's greatest talents as a comic creator, and one that was necessary for The Far Side's original syndication, where he usually only had a single panel to work with.

Ride Into the Sunset

In a metatextual gag, Larson reveals what happens to cowboys when they ride off into the sunset - they get burned to a crisp. Larson loved playing around with clichés and tropes, whether they came from blockbuster movies or fellow cartoonists.

Canine Decoder Helmet

In Larson's most prescient depiction of the animal kingdom, a scientist decodes dogs' barks only to discover that what they're 'saying' isn't all that sophisticated. In a wild twist, the prevailing scientific theory today is that Larson was dead right, and that dogs only really bark to get human attention, with actual dog-to-dog communication taking place in more subtle ways.

Cows vs Car

This multi-panel strip shows cows hiding their intelligence from humanity in a decidedly low-tech way. The strip was made iconic by season 9 of Cheers, with Norm and Cliff trying to explain Larson's joke to naive bartender Woody:

(Woody Sighs)

Cliff: What's the matter Wood'?

Woody: I don't get The Far Side.

Cliff: Woody, Woody hand it over here. Come on, let's have a look. Okay Wood', now you see here in the first panel, the cows are standing on their hind legs, right? In the second panel, the car goes by, they're acting like normal cows.

Norm: See, the idea is here Wood', is that cows only act like cows when we're around, other times they act like people. Now does that, does that help you, clear it up a little for you?

Woody: I just meant I don't get The Far Side in my newspaper at home, but thanks for treating me like a one-year-old.

Didn't Wash Hands Alarm

It's hard to imagine this comic didn't start with Larson's real-life suspicions about his fellow diners, as a guest emerges from the restroom to a blaring alarm. Is this sanitary precaution worth trialing in real life?