The 10 Greatest Far Side Comics of All Time

Published Aug 28, 2026, 7:05 PM EDT Jeremy has more than 2700 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. It’s not super easy to summarize The Far Side the way you might with other comic strips, since there’s no narrative at play and no real grand message. It was a series that cartoonist Gary Larson did between 1980 and 1995, with the vast majority of those comics being made up of a single panel with a single joke. The humor’s sort of observational, but usually absurd at the same time, and therein lies a lot of the charm. The jokes are also usually easy to get, unless Larson was referencing something sort of obscure or scientific (which did happen decently often), or unless you're talking about Cow Tools, the infamous strip that doesn’t really tell a legible joke, and has become a noteworthy meme as a result. Cow Tools will not be here, as a warning, in case anyone feels disappointed by that, because these are the actual best The Far Side comic strips… or at least 10 that are “even” better than Cow Tools. 10 'Boneless Chicken Ranch' (1983) Image via FarWorks, Inc. Things will be kept brief with commentary for most of these Far Side panels, since they're right there, and what else can you say, sometimes? The commentary has to be kept particularly brief for something like Boneless Chicken Ranch. Oh yeah also, don’t really know how to name some of these strips, so these names aren’t even official, but more just quote text in the strip. Yeah, bad commentary, and wonky titles. This is going to be a mess. But yes, Boneless Chicken Ranch is just that. Right there. Do you see it? Do you see they're literally boneless, rather than carcasses with the bones taken out post-death? That’s the joke, to quote The Simpsons. Maybe the only thing otherwise worth noting is that this is one of those Far Side strips so simple it doesn’t even need the usual text caption underneath (most of the other examples here either have text featuring dialogue from the strip, or some kind of caption necessary for the joke to land). Image via FarWorks, Inc. This one’s odd, difficult to name, and also stands out from Boneless Chicken Ranch for having a lot of text. Here, the lengthy caption makes Shared Dreams of Success extra amusing, since there’s a detailed (by Far Side) standards backstory about three utensils sharing a squalid apartment and aspiring to be famous someday, somehow. And Mack (who’s the Knife) does it, which is the main joke, riffing on “Mack the Knife,” as in the song. Still, this is probably funnier just for its absurdity of it being about utensils paired with the melancholic atmosphere (if a Far Side strip can have atmosphere) and the hefty caption. It’s Larson committing to a weird bit, and then tripling down on it, whereas if he only doubled down, this could be just another Cow Tools. 8 'Butlers of the World' (1993) Image via FarWorks, Inc. While it’s not the only murder-mystery/butler-themed joke The Far Side did, Butlers of the World might be the best. Even if you’ve got no familiarity with the whole cliché around “the butler always did it,” this coasts by on having a Butlers of the World convention at all. It’s an annual banquet. How long has it been annual for? What did the butlers talk about? Why? Honestly, if Agatha Christie had lived for longer, and had felt the need to continue pumping out novels for all her remaining years, maybe she would've eventually had to up the stakes by having a novel take place at a Butlers of the World Annual Banquet. Why not? It could well be amusing for longer than just the single panel this one ultimately is. 7 'That Place in Texas' (1980) Image via FarWorks, Inc. The first Far Side cartoons were published from the start of 1980, making That Place in Texas among the earliest panels (out of a little over 4000, by the time Gary Larson officially ended the series in 1995, on the basis he was fatigued and didn't want things getting stale… though there has been new Far Side material in the 2020s). It’s about a soldier not remembering the Alamo, while trying to say “Remember the Alamo.” It’s a simple and kind of stupid joke that gets funnier the more you think about it, somehow, and that has to be a sign of humor working, you know? If you're talking great Far Side comics, it’s good to remember that… uh… remember the… remember that Far Side comic about remembering that place in Texas! 6 'For Crying Out Loud, Warren' (1987) Image via FarWorks, Inc. The more famous Far Side strip that’s ape-related is the Jane Goodall cartoon, which has more of a story behind it, sure, so there are actual things to talk about there (regarding some controversy and Goodall’s personal reaction to it). Yet the strip that’s going to be referred to here as For Crying Out Loud, Warren is funnier, with Warren being one of the Far Side’s most underrated “characters.” It’s the look on his face while he does it, and the fact that only one ape seems bothered by it, and the notion that it probably takes more intelligence and coordination than beating one’s chest. Yeah, sure, there aren’t really characters here in the traditional sense, but the daring and singular Warren, with his armpit fart noises, deserves to be recurring more than most Far Side figures. It’s the look on his face while he does it, and the fact that only one ape seems bothered by it, and the notion that it probably takes more intelligence and coordination than beating one’s chest (again, things that you think about that make the strip funnier the more you look at it). 5 'Beware of Doug' (1983) Image via FarWorks, Inc. Another Boneless Chicken Ranch situation, since there’s no caption here, Beware of Doug is also incredibly simple, even by Far Side standards. The only thing that really gets funnier if you look at it for more than a second is the fact that Doug does not look very scary. But it only takes more than a second, and if you’ve only got one second, it being a play on “Beware of dog” is enough. The salesperson also doesn’t seem to have noticed Doug, even though he’s not very well-hidden. Okay, there’s a third joke, and you have to look at the strip for maybe two seconds to get there. That’s a testament to Beware of Doug, though. It’s some economical joke-telling and also very smart while being very dumb/board. 4 'Hell's Video Store' (1991) Image via FarWorks, Inc. Gary Larson issued an apology for this one, because he made a joke at Ishtar’s expense before actually watching Ishtar, and he conceded that it wasn’t as bad as its reputation made it out to be. Ishtar has indeed become further re-evaluated since not only Hell’s Video Store, but Larson’s admission, but then again, having a “not that bad but probably still not great” movie as your only option to watch is kind of hellish. Maybe it can be likened to what The Good Place says about the afterlife, and the idea of Hell being just mildly annoying quite constantly being worse than a stereotypical Hell full of intense pain all the time. Or if you subscribe to the idea that Ishtar is actually pretty bad and the critical re-evaluation is fairly silly, then Hell’s Video Store still works as intended. 3 'Early Microscope' (1983) Image via FarWorks, Inc. Early Microscope is not science fiction-themed the way some Far Side strips are, but it is science-themed. It having a two-word caption adds to things, too, because it feels primitive, or a bit like caveman speak. That being said, it clashes with the caveman saying “It’s a mammoth” rather than “It mammoth” or just “Mammoth,” but perhaps that’s another joke being delivered by way of a subversion. The non-speaking caveman shouldn’t be left unappreciated, too, since he seems very invested in this whole early microscope, with his hands on his hips like he’s almost impatient in anticipating what the specimen under the microscope is. How they got the mammoth there without knowing and feeling that it was a mammoth… what do you know? It's another Far Side strip that gets funnier if you want to dig into the whole thing and over-analyze it. 2 'Isn't Anyone Here a Real Sheep?' (1983) Image via FarWorks, Inc. Gary Larson takes another saying (“A wolf in sheep’s clothing”) and makes it literal and therefore absurd in Isn't Anyone Here a Real Sheep?. It’s hard to know how long these wolves were at it before one of them got frustrated enough to speak up about the fact that there don’t seem to be any actual sheep around, and only a couple of others give up the illusion once he does. The others continue to be wolves in sheep’s clothing, it seems, perhaps like the dogs in that infamous Tethercat strip. Isn't Anyone Here a Real Sheep? is very easy to like overall, and one of those quintessential Far Side strips you could show to just about anyone and expect them to find it funny (while understanding what the deal with the whole strip was in a matter of seconds). 1 'All the Little Black Dots' (1984) Image via FarWorks, Inc. Music is tackled in this one, which is going to be named All the Little Black Dots here. There’s a guy in an orchestra and he suddenly can’t read music, and probably never could, but he got dressed up for the whole event, and it’s clearly some kind of significant orchestra, considering the decent-sized crowd and all. But yeah, music does look like meaningless black dots (plus some squiggles) if you don’t read it. The way the guy’s smiling rather than panicking is great, and the glance by the conductor with the look of dawning horror on his face similarly makes it all funnier. There are lots of perfect Far Side strips, and so many great ones that weren’t mentioned just now, but this one might well be the most perfect… or it’s a contender. It’s hard to pick from 4000. You're probably outraged anyway about your favorite 359 strips that weren’t included here, nor even given honorable mentions (sorry!). Tales from the Far Side Release Date October 26, 1994 Directors Marv Newland Writers gary larson