7 Best Bad Far Side Puns Of The 1990s

Published Oct 5, 2026, 2:32 PM EDT Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor. Puns and plays on words are essential to understanding The Far Side. The pun has historically had a bad reputation in the hierarchy of humor, though that has started to change in the current era of absurdist memes. In that regard, Gary Larson was a pioneer. He made wordplay a staple of the newspaper funny pages throughout the 1980s and well into the 90s. This list zooms in on the last few years of the '80s to get a look at Larson's puns while The Far Side was at its peak. Specifically, 1987 and 1988, the years after The Far Side had become a national phenomenon, and right before Gary Larson took a year off to recharge his creative batteries. For many people, this was the pinnacle of The Far Side. (Though others might say Larson was at his best in the final 2-3 years of his career, while some would argue there's nothing like the first couple years of The Far Side.) Last thing, before diving in, it's worth considering for a moment what the dividing line between a good and bad pun is. Truth is, it's kind of like quicksand, a Far Side favorite. Trying to qualify the quality of puns is shifting sand, a quagmire that is easy to get stuck in. For our purposes, we'll consider them on an inverse scale. For people who are anti-pun, the wordplay below will get more eye-roll inducing as the list goes on. For Far Side fans, the jokes will get funnier the more they get punnier. 7 "The Crepes Of Wrath" First Published: October 27, 1988 Some people would say there are no good puns. For the totally pun intolerant, though, this Far Side cartoon won't cause an extreme reaction. It is a "proper" pun, not one Gary Larson's most ludicrous linguistic stretches. (We'll get more and more of those as this ranking progresses.) And it is a highbrow reference, in this case to a masterwork of 20th century American literature. It flips the title of The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, which in turn takes its title from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Making it a double reference. In this Far Side cartoon, "the crepes of wrath" strike back at an unlucky diner, lodging in his throat while he eats at "Le Petite Cafe." Like all bad puns, somebody was bound to make this joke at some point. Gary Larson just put it in print first. 6 "Wildlife Preserves" First Published: October 18, 1987 Once The Far Side went national in the mid-80s, there was demand for more. And not just more in quantity. The Far Side started putting out Sunday strips, bigger and more detailed cartoons like this one. Here, Gary Larson put the "widescreen" effect of Sunday panels to great use, delivering an unforgettable illustration of a pretty effective bit of wordplay. This joke shows the difference a single letter, or syllable, can make when it comes to meaning. (A valuable lesson Larson learned early in his career.) A wildlife preserve, a designated stretch of land where the flora and fauna are protected, becomes something very different when you add that 's' to the end. It becomes an outrageous part of the plains where animals are stuffed into oversized jars, like jelly and jam. 5 "Romeo And Juliant" First Published: February 28, 1988 Another Far Side Sunday comic. Another Far Side literary reference, this time to the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, and his most widely recognized play. The pun? It' is a bit of a stretch. The "Juliet" in Romeo and Juliet becomes "Juliant." Gary Larson doesn't go so far as to label their rival anthills the "Capulants" and "Montantgues," but it is implied. The root of the joke comes from playing with the sounds of the words. "Juliet." "Juliant." The visual plays an important part in selling the punny punchline to readers. Again, Larson effectively uses the extra space allowed by Sundays, having the two lovelorn ants meet in the exact middle of the oversized frame, with their families piled up behind them toward the outer limits of the panel. 4 "Fruitcases" First Published: November 18, 1987 Speaking of laugh-out-loud Far Side visuals stemming from puns. This is an all-time great example, which is to say it is a ridiculous slice of wordplay. "Fruitcases." Suitcases made of fruit. Pun skeptics will be shaking their heads in disbelief, but for fans of the art form, like Gary Larson, it's a classic. Larson offers half a dozen examples of fruitcases of varying shapes and sizes. Apple, banana, grapes, lemon. It is a simple joke, and might be an example of a Far Side produced under the duress of time, as the comic's production schedule grew more intense as the 1980s progressed. Still, it is patented Larsonian humor, exactly the kind of thing readers would have been starting to expect from The Far Side by '87, 3 "How The Human Egg Is Often Deceived" First Published:​​​​​​​ October 11, 1988 This one is definitely a stretch. It is also an underrated, or at least overlooked, bit of Far Side wordplay. It is one of Gary Larson's favorite recurring joke forms: the faux-documentary style. Like this could be a photograph and accompanying caption in an issue of Scientific American or some other magazine, accompanying an article about human reproduction. Except instead of conception, Larson absurdly imagines sperm engaging in the art of deception to gain entry to the egg. "Conceive" becomes "deceive," as one of them masquerades as an "insurance salesman," another as a "phone repairman," and one more as a deliverman, saying "package for you to sign, ma'am." Without question, this is also one of The Far Side's strangest cartoons, all of it stemming from the substitution of one similar-sounding word for another. 2 ​​​​​​​"Take My Wife's Fleas" First Published:​​​​​​​ August 11, 1987 One of the funniest Far Side dog comics. Also, one of the best Far Side cartoons about stand-up comics. Gary Larson envisions the canine incarnation of pioneering 20th-century comedian Henny Youngman up on stage, delivering his classic line: "Take my wife's fleas." Because that's exactly what deadpan dog humor would be like, as opposed to human Henny begging for someone to take his wife off his hands. There are only so many ways to linguistically twist Youngman's catchphrase, and Gary Larson found a few throughout The Far Side's time in the spotlight. This one is by far the best of them, though, but that also makes it stand out, giving it an elite pedigree among The Far Side's most groan-inducing puns. 1 ​​​​​​​"Phonecaw" First Published: May 6, 1987 This is it. The Far Side's best worst pun of the late 1980s. "Louis..." a crow says, answering the telephone in her living room, with its human-style decor, and turning to her husband sitting on the couch reading his newspaper. It's for him. "Phonecaw," she says. It's hilariously bad, and stupidly brilliant. Somewhere along the line, "caw" became the onomatopoetic signifier for the sound of crows. At this point, in 1987, Gary Larson's routine use of animal characters in place of humans was more than just well-established. It was infamous. And that lent itself to jokes like this one. It is remarkable Larson came up with it, but even wilder when you consider that once the idea is out there, what other potential crow-based puns it opens the door to. "Get in the caw," for example. Or "go for cawfee." The funny thing is, there might actually be better crow puns than "phonecaw," but that's the one Gary Larson went with. And The Far Side proved time and again he was a master of messing with words, and turning puns into art, so maybe it's best to trust his judgment. Writer Gary Larson Colorist Gary Larson