Summary
Gary Larson’sThe Far Sidemay love wordplay and goofy jokes, but the comic’s biggest obsessions are nature and science. It’s therefore not surprising that Larson wrote so many great gags centered around fossils, despite the fact that the study of petrified plants and animals doesn’t exactly have a ‘laugh a minute’ reputation. WhileLarson has plenty of hilarious dinosaur comics, he also specifically focused on the surprisingly hilarious potential of their remains.
Screen Rant has collected the 10 funniestFar Sidecomics about fossils, along with some extras to showcase Larson’s funniest themes and major obsessions.Don’t forget to vote in our end-of-article pollfor the funniestFar Sidecomic about fossils.
10In the Chicken Museum
This Far Side Strip Is a Successful Take on Larson’s Biggest Flop
Larson uses several types of animals again and again acrossThe Far Side’s run. Cows are the most famous, but Larson also often used chickens, insects, andgiant squid in his gags. Clueless, silly, and doomed, chickens are a perfect target for Larson’s mix of belly-laugh humor and morbid fascination with death, offering up protagonists who are painfully aware they’re going to be eaten but with no real plan to avoid it.
In the case of the chicken museum, Larson actually depicts some poultry who aren’t destined to be eaten by humans, including details like models of saber-toothed chicken ancestors and one chicken checking the museum floor map in confusion. The idea of animals having their own equivalent of a human concept is the same basic idea as in Larson’s ‘Cow Tools’ comic, however with a far more successful execution.
As Larson has explained multiple times, the gag of cow tools is simply the surreal idea of what bovine tools would even look like - something he describes inThe Prehistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibitas an"exercise in silliness.“However, when the comic was published, readers didn’t get the gag. Countless readers wrote to their local newspapers asking to have the joke explained, but sinceThe Far Sidewas a syndicated strip, the people they were contacting didn’t have any direct connection to Larson and didn’t know themselves. The confusion was so widespread thatLarson’s ‘Cow Tools’ debacleactually made headlines. Thankfully, the chicken museum pays off the gag in a clearer way,
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9Museums of the Future
In a Weird Gag, Larson Kind of Predicted the Future
In another gag rooted in surreal equivalence, Larson imagines a futuristic society that looks back on modern technology in the same way we look back at the distant past. Larson pictures everyday technology out on display with cod Latin/Greek names that evoke species of dinosaur. Of course, this beingThe Far Side, all the names are also puns on what the devices were used for.
While Larson’s image of a future museum is funny, it also somewhat predicted how quickly modern gadgets would be replaced and forgotten.While toasters, laundry machines and blenders are still in use, objects like floppy discs actuallyhavefallen out of use and now occupy a strange place in culture - in many cases, the symbol to save a document uses the image of a floppy disc, despite the fact that an increasingly large number of people have never used one. It’s therefore not difficult to imaginesome version of Larson’s comic playing outin the real future.
8Fossilized Footprint
Larson Loves the Image of People Getting Stepped On
Humans being crushed underfoot by large animals is a bizarre recurring image in Larson’s comics, but this is the best version of the gag simply because of the paleontologist’s absolute joy at the discovery. It’s been said that"comedy equals tragedy plus time,“and Larson essentially proves this true, as whatshouldbe a tragic image - a person being crushed underfoot by a dinosaur - is a subject of joy for both the scientists and the reader.
Given hislove of science and the natural world, it’s surprising that Larson would ever think to depict brachiosaurus andhomo habilisas existing at the same time. InThe Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson admits that despite using the idea so often, he’s always felt uneasy about depicting early humans interacting with dinosaurs. Larson writes:
I’ve always felt that I’ve committed some heresy by doing cartoons (like the ones above) that mixed dinosaurs with primitive people. I think there should be cartoon confessionals where we could go and say things like, “Father, I have sinned - I have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together in the same cartoon.
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7Cub Scout Attire
In Another Timeline, Gary Larson Is a Great Horror Writer
There’s a thin line between horror and humor, especially since both hinge on turning everyday expectations and rules on their head. While Larson’s comic turns the idea of a fossilized T-Rex secretly eating visiting kids into laughs,it’s the kind of idea that Stephen King could easily turn into a horror masterpiece(as he’s done for subjects as diverse as sentient trucks, cell phones and dancing clowns.) This may be whyStephen King is such a huge fanofThe Far Side, naming a comic where a dog shows off its trophy kills as his favorite.
InThe Far Side Gallery 2, King sings the praises of Larson’s humor. King particularly praises the cumulative effect ofThe Far Side’s strips, and the way that their bizarre shared logic creates an alternate way of looking at the world. King writes of Gary Larson,“he does what artists and humorists are supposed to do: he sees what I could see if I could have his eyes. I don’t have them, but thank God they are on loan.”
6I Distinctly Yelled ‘Second’
Gary Larson’s #1 Obsession Returns
WhileGary Larson revisits a lot of themesinThe Far Side, his #1 obsession is scientists behaving like little kids. Asked about the frequency of this idea in a 1987 interview with20/20, Larson admitted"It’s the theme that occurs to me most frequently"while also professing to have a sense of reverence towards real-life scientists.
As funny as the visual of a scientist saddling up a fossilized dinosaur is, Larson’s love of language comes through in the verbose way the characters argue over their silly hobby - having one scientist accuse the other of being facetious only enhances the humor of their behavior being so immature.
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5Another Skull, Another Fortune
Larson Doesn’t Settle for the Easiest Version of a Joke
In another gag that could easily be a horror story if it was presented with a different tone, two anthropologists studying human fossil remains keep finding Fortune Cookie-style fortunes when they crack them open. Where Larson rises about his fellow comic strip writers is in sensing that while an anthropologist finding a fortune inside a hominid skull is funny, it’s even funnier if we’re seeing the second time it happened. A lot ofThe Far Side’s genius comes from Larson finding a genuinely funny idea, then taking the time to make it even funnier.
4Chicken Bones
The Far Side Loves Making Picnics as Weird as Possible
Chickens make a grisly return in this goofy comic, where a new ‘theory’ explains the existence of fossils. One ofThe Far Side’s lesser-known themes, Larson loves depicting weird picnics, especially if the gag hinges on non-humans doing the most innocent human acts.The Far Sideloves to show aliens, monsters and animals enjoying a picnic, sitting at the breakfast table, or arguing over a white picket fence, airdropping the weirdest possible characters into the most mundane situations, then finding the most bizarre way for them to interact.
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3Fred and Wilma
Gary Larson Has It Out for The Flintstones
The Far Side’s humor is famously timeless, withLarson only targeting pop culture or celebritieswhere he knows the references will be just as funny decades later. In this case, two paleontologists dig down through layers of fossils,discovering the remains of the Flintstones' home. It’s a great gag that uses Larson’s single-panel style to its maximum potential, presenting the funny context in a small box right at the bottom of the image to ensure that you fully take in the scene before discovering the detail that makes it funny.
As much sense as it makes for scientists to discover the town of Bedrock while looking for ancient remains, it does seem like Larson thought it was particularly funny to target the iconic cartoon, as this isn’t the only strip where he finds the humor in Fred Flintstone’s untimely passing.
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2Laid Yesterday
Larson Tells an Entire Story in a Single Panel
While Gary Larson’s comics are always funny, one of his most remarkable skills is telling a complete story in one image. Larson often finds the perfect ‘moment’ in a narrative to communicate the most information. InThe Prehistory of The Far Side, he reveals that he uses short stories and preliminary sketches to decide where in the series of events to set a comic and even which character in it to follow.WhileThe Far Side’s contemporaries had multiple panels to show a story unfolding, Larson had to both narratively and literally fit all the elements into a single image.
In this case - where two paleontologists have discovered an inexplicable surviving dinosaur, mistaking its eggs for fossils - the use of the dino’s shadow tells readers exactly what’s about to happen next. Larson has a ton of tricks for showing what’s going on ‘elsewhere’ while still only using one panel (for instance, using the foreground or background to add new context), but this might be the best example of how masterfully he can make this split perspective seem totally natural. Few readers will consciously realizehow effectively Larson has created space’off-panel' and how this contributes to the narrative, but everyone who reads the strip instantly benefits from the effect.
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1DO NOT TOUCH
One of Far Side’s Best Comics
While ‘Laid Yesterday’ has a great grasp of narrative, it’s way easier to imply what’saboutto happen than to create an incredibly clear sense of whatjusthappened in a reader’s mind. This strip creates a whole story about a curious museum-goer deciding to prod a T-Rex fossil only to bring it crashing down, solely by showing the aftermath.Imagining a more traditional comic where the perpetrator looks around in one panel, reaches out in the next, then causes the fossil’s destruction shows just how much information Larson packs into a fun, immediately comprehensible gag.
Small touches like the billowing dust and the characters' comically understated reactions create an incredibly specific timeline of whatjusthappened, and the posing of the fossils - utterly destroyed beyond belief, with the skull and leg making it clear what this displayusedto look like - makes a funny idea brilliant in execution.Larson’s style is minimalist, but he never misses a detail that can actually make the joke better - for example, the slightly curled toes of the fossil emphasize the complete, comical destruction in a moment of physical comedy somehow performed by a shattered pile of dinosaur bones.
Those are the 10 funniestFar Sidecomics that take the millennia-old bones of ancient beings and somehow make them the subjects of brilliant comedy -be sure to vote below and have your say on the best comic on this list.
