The Far Side's reputation for dark humor is well-earned, but that wasn't the only comedic mode creator Gary Larson was comfortable working in; actually, Larson deserves just as much praise for the goofy, silly, and often downright whimsical Far Side jokes he crafted over the years, in parallel to his notorious gags featuring death, chaos, and mayhem.

Gary Larson's itted goal with The Far Side was always, first and foremost, to grab readers' attention. It is not unfair to say that dark, sometimes even borderline-shock humor does this more easily than the more lighthearted variety of punchline, yet a complete of Larson's work is not possible without looking at both.

The cartoons aggregated here serve to highlight the latter aspect of Larson's sense of humor, in the hopes of gaining some further insight, as readers, into what made an effective Far Side joke regardless of a particular 's tone, style, or content.

10 Sometimes The Far Side Managed To Get By On Sheer Audacity

First Published: March 1, 1994

"It's a known fact that the sheep that give us steel wool have no known natural enemies," the caption for this Far Side farm comic explains, with the illustration depicting a trio of spikey, tough-looking sheep grazing in a pasture, with the one in the foreground even sporting an eye-parch to reinforce how tough it is.

In a way, Gary Larson's silliest jokes have the exact same goal as his most shocking ones; a comic that got a reader to say "how did he even come up with that?" was a success, whatever path it took to get there. This should remind readers that while the "meaning" of a Far Side cartoon isn't totally irrelevent, in most cases it does take a back seat to the feeling the comic provokes, the experience of reading it and being left asking, "What the?"

9 Whether Its Subject Was Life Or Death, The Far Side Was Always Playful

First Published: August 23, 1993

This is the only hint of death the Far Side comics collected here – and it is only an opossum playing dead, hanging by its tail from a tree and showing off its natural defense mechanism, all while two opossum children have a classic argument on the ground below, with one angrily telling the other, "my dad can act deader than your dad."

In this cartoon, Gary Larson uses one of his most tried-and-true techniques, transposing familiar human behavior – kids arguing about whose father is stronger, smarter, or all around better – on to a non-human species. The silliness of the joke, from its premise to its execution on the page, is the defining virtue of this Far Side cartoon, which does everything that Larson's most beloved s do, only in a lighthearted rather than darkly comedic mode.

8 Gary Larson Knew How To Make His Characters Stand Out In A Crowd

First Published: December 27, 1991

"Oooooo! Check it out, Edith! It's a quadraceratops!" a triceratops having drink at a bar tells her friend, as a four-horned male walks into the establishment and orders a drink; this is a case of a Far Side cartoon where the premise and the punchline are the same, but because the joke is seemingly so innocuous, it is less likely to stand out to fans of Gary Larson's work the way his macabre comics do.

That is, as far as Larson's sense of humor could be described as niche, this is one that is borderline too esoteric for readers to find as funny as the artist might have hoped. Yet it stands out as a prominent example of the more straightforward strain of jokes that The Far Side often contained, which provided a kind of balance to the more out-there, experimental, and edgy s Gary Larson produced.

7 The Far Side Contained Tons Of Genius Word Play – And Some Straight-Up Goofy Puns

First Published: June 15, 1988

Gary Larson is often called a master of wordplay, and rightfully so; his skill of linguistic humor was a driving force behind The Far Side. Yet for every truly brilliant, even innovative play on words he concocted, there was a corresponding truly dumb pun, as in this , in which a man is shown repairing a roof uses a pistol as a hammer, as a cowboy on the ground below shouts up: "they tell me you're pretty handy with a gun."

Of course, Far Side fans will argue that the "dumbness" of the pun here is actually another dimension of its brilliance; that is to say, Gary Larson's ability to capture the most inane ing fancy with The Far Side is among its most remarkable artistic feats. It also shows that Larson's light humor is just as much a part of his work's DNA as its dark opposite.

6 The Rare Far Side Comic That Can Be Called A Family Affair

First Published: July 9, 1987

It's reasonable to say that not every Far Side cartoon was one that the whole family could gather around and enjoy together; some of Gary Larson's jokes were too obscure, while others were too abrasive, and altogether, different cartoons tended to appeal to different types of readers.

This joke, however, is not only whimsical, it is borderline wholesome. In the comic, Larson depicts a scorpion with a gaggle of its offspring hitching a ride on its back, with the punchline being the "baby on board" sign hanging from the stinger at the end of the creature's tail. The omission of a caption allows this simple bit of imagery to stand on its own, rendering it almost sweet, at least by Far Side standards.

5 This Far Side Cartoon Actually Depicts The Inverse Of Dying

First Published: June 12, 1985

Transformation is an underrated recurring element of Gary Larson's humor. Certainly, sometimes that transformation was death, but at least in this Far Side cartoon, it is the opposite, as the explores what happens when birds drink from the Fountain of Youth – that is, they are reverted to eggs, scattered around the base of the fountain.

Interestingly, experienced Far Side readers could reasonably argue that Gary Larson could have cut the caption from this , and it still would have been effective. Instead, the question becomes "what does the caption add here?" and the most likely answer is that it clarifies the lighthearted intention of the punchline, though as with most Far Side open-ended questions, that remains entirely open to speculation.

4 A Moment Of Self-Reflection, In Madcap Far Side Fashion

First Published: June 14, 1984

In this hilarious Far Side bird cartoon, a pair of ostriches are running at full-stride across a plain, when one catches a glimpse at the other in action and is suddenly struck with self-consciousness, shouting to its companion, "for crying out loud, Norman, look at you...I hope I don't look half as goony when I run."

It does, of course, which is the heart of the joke. It is a Far Side joke that deserves more attention, without question, one that is only hampered by a lack of an overt, or shocking, hook.

3 The Far Side Proposes A Fantastical Solution To An Ubiquitous Problem

First Published: December 8, 1982​​​​​​​

When writing about The Far Side, "cartoon" and "comic" are generally used interchangeably, yet this is an example of a Far Side that especially embodies the idea of "cartoonishness," as Gary Larson depicts the "car key gnomes," who creep into peoples' houses at night to steal and hide their keys.

This also represents The Far Side's strain of observational humor, with the premise of this joke most likely having arisen from Larson losing his keys, then thinking about how many people have this same problem every day, then coming up with a silly, unreal solution for it. It is another relatable Far Side punchline, one that any reader can appreciate, and laugh at guilt-free. This wasn’t always something Gary Larson’s work offered, considering how weird and unsettling his work was just as frequently, and so it adds something incredibly valuable to his overall oeuvre.

2 Sometimes The Far Side Really Was Just Clowning Around

First Published: April 3, 1982​​​​​​​

The Far Side was full of clowns, figuratively, but also literally – and just as often as they were being led to the electric chair, they were doing something genuinely innocent in its clownishness. This Far Side is more along the lines of the latter, though there is enough ambiguity to the image, especially with the absence of a caption, that some readers could argue an edginess to the clown's actions.

Here, a clown sits alone in a restaurant, trying to look innocent, after having just stuck a suction-cup dart to another patron's bald head; though readers aren't privy to the aftermath of this moment – i.e., the clown could have provoked a bar brawl, inadvertently or otherwise – the impression given by the illustration is that the clown is just having some lighthearted, playful fun, perhaps even trying to communicate in his "language," so to speak.

1 Even Snakes Can Learn To Dance In This Underrated Far Side Classic

First Published: May 9, 1981​​​​​​​

With music blaring from a gramophone, these two Far Side snakes are shown in the middle of a dance lesson, with the one leading substituting "step, step, slither, step" for the human equivalent of "step, step, slide, step" in another one of Gary Larson's classic jokes substituting animal characters for humans.

Any reader who has taken a dance lesson will immediately recognize, and likely relate to, the look of derision on the student snake's face, with the overall effect of this Far Side comic being to innocuously poke fun at a familiar contemporary experience. Though Gary Larson often had a wicked, dark sense of humor, the greatness of The Far Side is that, in totality, it contained all points on the spectrum of light and dark humor.