The summer of 1986 is looked back on with great nostalgia as a high watermark of popular culture, and while many classic blockbuster films were hitting theaters from June-August of that year,Gary Larson’sThe Far Sidewas truly reaching its own ascendancy as a staple of newspaper comic sections nationwide.
This makes it worth exploring, in more detail, theFar Sidecartoons readers would have encountered in the summer of ‘86; these panels will have readers wishing they had a time machine, though not one ofThe Far Side’sfaulty ones, to go back and experience this moment in time for themselves.
The beauty of revisitingFar Sidepanels from this era is that one can imagine themselves opening up the newspaper and discovering it for the first time, at the start of a hot mid-80s midsummer day.
10The Far Side Flips The Script On Human-Frog Contact, Delivering A Disquieting Visual
First Published: July 11, 2025
This is an example of aFar Sideillustration in which Gary Larson dabbled in surreal, almost body-horror-style imagery, taking the folk knowledge that touching a frog can communicate warts and flipping it, so readers get to seea toad covered in small growths that look like the head and limbs of a human child.
“Wait a minute, Vince!” the afflicted frog’s friend surmises, recalling “last summer” when “some little kid caught you, handled you, and tossed you back in the swamp.” It is a borderline disturbing visual, but the absurd inversion of the familiar is so outrageous, in a good way, that the art successfully combines with the punchline to produce anunderrated classicFar Sidecomic.
9The Far Side’s Invertebrate Characters Allowed Gary Larson To Take Unique Liberties
First Published: July 24, 2025
“Honey, it’s the Worthingtons…our favorite couple of slimebags,” a slug tells her spouse as it opens the door to find they have visitors; for humans, this would either be the sort of thing one would never say, or otherwise, might declare with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Yet the use of slug characters here allowsFar Sideartist Gary Larson to envision a scenario in which a character would utter this in an utterly genuine way, as the speaker is depicted with a genuine look of pleasant surprise on its face. This comic is representative of the fact that the more inhuman Larson’s characters were, the more he relied ongiving them human eyes, aFar Sidetrickused to convey character and emotion.
8The Far Side Gets Real In This Cartoon About One-Sided Love
First Published: July 21, 2025
The Far Side, at its core, was an absurdist caricature of human behavior, even though this was oftenrendered by Gary Larson using animal charactersacting human, in human situations. In a way, that makes a cartoon like this one, in which Larson strips away all the pretense of his work, and depicts two very real-feeling human characters, stand out amongThe Far Side’svast canon.
Split into two frames, this comic depicts a man lying awake at night wondering if his unrequited crush even knows who he is, while the bottom half of the panel shows what his crush is thinking about at the exact same time: “you know, I think I really like vanilla.“This is a pitch-perfect rendition of the pangs and perils of love, and the fact that Gary Larson used human characters makes it especially noteworthy, because of the “all-too-real” feeling it manages to communicate.
7This Far Side Dinosaur Uses Its Weapon-Like Tail A Little Too Frivolously
First Published: July 23, 2025
ThisFar Sidepanel foregoes a captionin favor of using a sequence of multiple panels to deliver its joke, which featuresa triceratops wildly swinging its"thagomizer,” a term coined by Gary Larson himself, at a fly, which buzzes in and out of the dinosaur’s living room unfazed.
The walls, meanwhile, are left worse for wear by the impact of the thagomizer, illustrated with an emphatic “WUMPH” in the fourth panel of the cartoon, as another hole is added to the wall, of which there are already several evident in the first few frames. As far as wordless jokes go, this one is highly amusing, and skillfully executed by Larson, making this another quietly iconicFar Sideentry.
6The Far Side Takes On Faith Healers In This Classic Parody
First Published: June 21, 2025
Captioned “appliance healers,“thisFar Sidecartoonlampoons the idea of faith healing, especially when it is done for fame and fortune.“I command the foul demons that have clogged this vacuum cleaner to come OUT!!,” a man with a pompadour and rolled-up shirt-sleeves says, laying hands on the vacuum as its owner clutches her hands, praying for a miracle.
Behind her, a woman stands with her microwave, and behind her there is a man holding a toaster; the reader can imagine this line stretching off indefinitely behind the curtain, in a gag that comments both on the universal experience of owning a busted appliance, but not being ready to give it up, and the very particular phenomenon of religious healers, who sell their “skills” to desperate audiences.
5The Far Side’s “Turbulence Fake-Out” Comic Is Every Air Commuter’s Nightmare
First Published: May 24, 2025
The Far Sidefeatured some of the worst pilotsimaginable, from devious pranksters to full-on dangerous and unqualified; this is a case of more of the former, with a hint of the latter, as the reader is given a view into the cockpit of a commercial jet, wherethe pilots are busting up laughing as they subject their passengers to pretend turbulence, just to amuse themselves.
This is the kind of joke that preys upon both people’s implicit trust, and their skepticism about flying, in general, and pilots, in particular; pilots are looked at, by some, with reverence, because their job involves taking on a massive responsibility. Here, Larson undermines that by depicting his pilot as mischievous, and worse, bored, a potentially deadly combination when dealing with the power of flight.
4Gary Larson Uses The Far Side’s Ants To Embody A Familiar Argument
First Published: July 01, 2025
In thisFar Sideant comic, a pair of ant parents are shown sitting on the couch, trying to read their respective newspapers,as their children crawl all over the floors, and the walls, and even the ceiling, in the process getting a little to close for comfort to the giant (relative to their size, at least) magnifying glass propped up against the wall of their apartment, for some undisclosed reason.
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“I wish you’d get rid of that hideous thing,” the ant “wife” says to its spouse, “I think it’s just plain dangerous to even have one in the house.” This will strike some readers as familiar, as many might’ve had parents, spouses, or roommates who kept something unneeded, and at times even dangerous, in the house despite is serving no logistic, or aesthetic purpose. Gary Larson perfectly lampoons that here, in a comic that once more relies heavily on the ants' eyes to add to the humor.
3There’s Nothing Unusual About This Far Side Comic, Which Almost Makes It Weird
First Published: July 04, 2025
“They weren’t the most evil people in the world, nor the best,” the caption of thisFar Sidecartoon explains, before explaining that “they were the Village of the Darned,“a spoof on the beloved 1960 sci-fi horror filmThe Village of the Damned, later remade in 1995 by John Carpenter.
What stands out about thisFar Sidecomic, paradoxically, is that nothing about it truly stands out, which is precisely the point of the punchline.Gary Larson’s sense of humortended to rely on placing something out of the ordinary in an ordinary context, or taking something familiar out of its familiar milieu. Here, though, Larson captures a moment of total ordinariness in itself; it is effective in the context of the “Village of the Darned” joke, but it also contributes to thisFar Sidecomic standing out less than others.
2Old Man Tarzan Runs Into An Old Friend, In A Far Side That Leaves Readers Asking Questions
First Published: June 20, 2025
Tarzan appears throughoutThe Far Sidewith surprising frequency, with this being perhaps Gary Larson’s most out-on-a-tree-limb gag feature the Man of the Jungle, as he depicts an elderly version of the character, notably living in the city, rather than out in the wild, coming across “Cheetah,” a chimpanzee character familiar fromTarzanlore.
“Their reunion was brief and awkward,” the caption explains, given an apparent fissure in their friendship which happened as a result of “that ugly ‘Jane incident’"; everything about this panel clicks into place in a way that makes it delightfully funny; from the way it captures the discomfort of running into a former friend, to the way the reader is left wondering what precisely the “Jane incident” is referring to, and what exactly what it so ugly, from the detail of “Cheetah” working for an accordion-playing busker on a street corner, all accumulate to form another underappreciated brilliantFar Sidecartoon.
1This Far Side Cartoon Takes Readers Where No One Has Gone Before
First Published: June 29, 2025
In this classicFar Sidecartoon, which evokes the most brutal days of summertime, Gary Larsontakes readers “inside the sun,” where they find a man with his feet up on a table, thumbing through a newspaper, surrounded by oscillating fans, next to a giant switch labeled “Rise/Set,“which he is apparently in charge of.
Outside the window are the raging flames of the sun, confirming that this is one ofThe Far Side’stoughest jobs, although the guy in the cartoon doesn’t look like he’s having the worst time. This is a sterling example of Larson’s ability to reveal an absurd and irreverent side to the most familiar things in life, especially things people take for granted, such as the sun. Though it might not be the most laugh-out-loudFar Sidepanel, it is representative of his overall comedic project in a notable way.
