15 times the Far Side broke the fourth wall

For the past five decades, Gary Larson'sThe Far Sidehas enthralled readers with its simple, absurdist, and occasionally poignant portrayals of (extra)ordinary life. During its 15 years of syndication, Larson gave sane people everywhere the ability to cope with the insanity of modern life. Nothing is ever truly too ridiculous within the panels of The Far Side, not even breaking the fourth wall.

Breaking the fourth wall has produced some of the series' best and most memorable panels. Through this technique, Larson observes growing up, coping with unrealized expectations, or the comic strip industry itself. These fourth-wall-breaking moments all honed in on their respective territory as only The Far Sidecould.

Flowers Have a Self-Image

Larson Draws Them Like Humans From The Far Side

Gary Larson hardly ever passed an opportunity to bring a layer of the surreal into his comics. Some were so far into the absurd that they barely made sense, but most retained a kernel of reality to ground readers before skewering their imaginations. Such is the case with this panel that breaks the fourth wall by addressing readers ("humans," one assumes) directly.

In this rare split-panel comic, The Far Side shows readers how they see flowers and how flowers see themselves. Of course, it plays off every time readers have tried to tell people suffering from a poor self-image how they look. By applying it to the resplendent beauty of flowers,Larson points out the perfection of the natural world and the grand diversity of appearance among humans. There's beauty in both.

This Band Gets a Gig In the Far Side

And The Saxaphonist Gets Demoted

Gary Larson returned to several different topics and settings during his 15-year run in the papers. One such topic that he plumbed the depths of was music. A musician himself, Larson seemed to delight in poking fun at musicians and their fussy ways. Here, a jazz band is playing a gig, but the audience on the dance floor is made up of cartoon animals.

The clarinetist leans over to the saxophonist and says he's never doing the booking again. Animals and humans have an odd relationship in The Far Side. Sometimes, animals mimic humans, and sometimes, humans catch animals in the behavior. And sometimes anthropomorphism leads to Far Side jokes that barely make sense. Here, the humans on the bandstand are surprised to see cartoon animals on the dance floor (as normal humans might be), almost as if the situation might be totally absurd.

Larson Told One Joke In Several Ways

In Doing So, Broke Others' Fourth Walls For Them

As a musician, Larson found a way to use music to break the fourth wall, except he seemed to do it on behalf of others. One recurring joke is when someone in a panel (usually meant to call to mind a popular TV show or movie) is aware of music that would normally cue suspense or impending danger. Or, in the case of this panel, it cues the arrival of the hero.

In this panel, Tanto is waiting on his horse outside an outhouse. The other horse doesn't have a rider, implying he is inside the outhouse. The caption clearly references the iconic Lone Ranger Theme, which always cues his arrival. Tanto is like a theater director saying to an actor, "You're on!"

These Far Side Characters Are Trapped

It's The Old Cartoon Glass Trick

Larson was not above breaking the fourth wall to make fun of himself. Several cartoon-related entries can be found on this list. In this one, two disheveled explorers are cutting their way through the jungle only to discover that their nemesis, "the dirty bugger," has trapped them in the jungle. But how can they tell?

Why the international cartoon symbol for glass, of course! The characters use the artist's (Larson) devices to discover the nature of their entrapment. There's something heavily symbolic in the scenario once you stop giggling and get past its absurdity.In this comic, Larson takes the place of a god-like character with his creations discerning the nature of their situation from his arcane devices.

Gary Larson Describes The Origin Of The Far Side

He Must Have Showed Up Sometime After Dorothy

In these two panels, Larson attempts a surreal depiction of the origin of The Far Side for the comic strip's final piece on January 1, 1995. It's fitting that Larson should attempt an explanation of where The Far Side came from in the very last panel. In the first panel, Larson speaks with the good fairy in the Land of Oz. The cast of Far Side characters is around him as the fairy tells him, "You've always had the power to go home . . ."

In the second panel, Gary, like Dorothy before him, wakes up in his bed with his family around him, proclaiming, also like Dorothy, that they all look like the characters he saw in the Land of Oz. On the surface, this fourth-wall-breaking moment is a send-up of The Wizard of Oz. But at a second glance, Larson seems to be telling his readers something real about where The Far Side came from. He got the ideas for his jokes from his family, albeit twisted through his imagination's surreal, dreamlike power.

Nobody Ever Asks to Be Drawn in The Far Side

That Teen Should Point His Finger At Larson

Life is hard, and for many teenagers, it seems as if life is harderfor no one but them. No one knows this truth better than their parents. That being said, it isn't just teenagers who think they never asked to be born, though that demographic is undoubtedly the one most likely to express as much to their parents.

Of course, no one who calls The Far Side their home is ever really born. Instead, they are brought to life via pen and ink, and this panel toys with the notion that they are well aware of that fact. That being said, their parents probably aren't the ones who these particular teens should be lambasting for bringing them into the world, especially when they know where their lives started in the first place.

Sketchy Characters Have a New Meaning in The Far Side

Larson's Love Of Puns Got the Best Of Him

Calling people sketchy has long meant that they don't seem trustworthy for one reason or another. As much as it is frowned upon to judge someone solely based on their appearance, the idea of "sketchy characters," like many other simple phrases, takes on a new meaning in Gary Larson's The Far Side.

While this strip provides anartistic pun in the classic The Far Side fashion, it also leans into everyday tropes and stereotypes. The idea of elderly shopkeepers worrying about what trouble a pair of unruly teens might get into in their store is far from new. Still, the idea of said teenagers quite literally being sketchy characters puts a fourth-wall-breaking spin on a very specific kind of awkward social interaction.

The Far SideGives Readers an In-Depth How-To Guide

Readers Can Learn How To Draw In Four Easy Steps

Plenty ofcomic creators and artists have published "How-To" guides over the years. Almost every child who went through the drawing phase wanted to learn how to depict people with pencil and paper. Thousands of millennials grew up learning all about How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way and "The Marvel Method," and thousands more are certain to as time passes.

Gary Larson was not different in using The Far Side as a platform for publishing his own How-To guide for budding artists. However, the absurd detail with which Larson presented his "How-To" guide is different. Each layer of the human body is unnecessarily drawn "atop" one another. The joke, along with several wink-and-nod puns, is that all the layers don't matter because they've been wiped from the page entirely.

The Far SideGets Serious About Cartoon Espionage

The Cast Spies On Other Cartoons

Creators are famous for many things, and paranoia is often one of them. Corporations are also known to be quite paranoid because they worry that their competitors will steal their ideas and expose their darkest secrets to the world. And of course, this panel wouldn't be anything withoutits pop-culture reference to high-tech spy thrillers.

In The Far Side, worries over plagiarism and corporate espionage come together in the form of the strip's spy facility. Within this not-so-secret locale, human and bovine agents work tirelessly to keep up with the competition. This mostly means video and audio surveillance of other comic strips like Peanuts through a series of monitors.

Nothing is Ever Normal in The Far Side

If It Is, That's a Problem

Gary Larson built his career on absurdist observational humor, and The Far Side stands as proof positive of that. The inhabitants of The Far Side are perfectly aware of how strange their lives are, leaving them with grave concerns when things don't get a little weird. In this panel, a typical suburban home in The Far Side looks altogether too normal.

As with any other minor domestic disturbance, the residents of The Far Side have someone they can call upon to inspect the problem, thanks to Bud's Cartoon Repair. What "repairing" an otherwise ordinary evening looks like is up to the reader to decide. Still, longtime fans of The Far Sideshouldn't have any trouble conjuring up scenarios involving cows, aliens, ducks, and the like.

Everyday Art Supplies Are Deadly to The Far SideCharacters

Gary Larson didn't just relegate the idea of riffing on the medium of cartooning to a single strip. Over the years, several editions of The Far Side broke the fourth wall by pointing out the methods behind its creation, though they rarely cost individual characters their lives. Nevertheless, there are tragic examples of artist negligence.

That is precisely the case with this unexpectedly brutal strip. Just as real-world violence tragically claims the lives of people every day, The Far Side's inhabitants have to worry about the threat of attacks such as drive-by erasings. One careless move from the artist's pencould wipe them out completely without a moment's notice.

The Far Side Sometimes Pokes Fun At Other Comics

Garfield Meets a Grisly Demise

In this cheeky panel, Gary Larson pokes friendly fun at his comic strip competitor, Jim Davis, and his immensely successful cartoon creation, Garfield. In this panel, a food bowl has the first few letters of Garfield's name but leaves out the rest to avoid copyright infringement. Coiled around the bowl is a big python with a huge, cat-sized bulge in its middle.

The only one in the know as to what sparked this joke is the python, who looks directly at the reader with a smirk, making it one of Larson's best jokes featuring snakes. According to Larson in The Prehistory of The Far Side, he once had a Burmese Python who tried "to do me in," which resulted in Larson rehoming the pet. But since that day, Larson has memorialized Python by showing it eating various things. In one of the darkest Far Side comics, it eats a baby.

Larson Takes the Day Off In The Far SideStyle

The Comic Vending Machine Is Out Of Order

Everyone can appreciate taking time off work, and cartoonists are no different. Larson took a 14-month long sabbaticalin 1988 before returning to his job again in 1990. So, this Far Side panel could easily describe his state of mind. For most, taking a break means occasionally stepping away from their desk and letting reprints do the heavy lifting for a little while.

For Gary Larson, on the other hand, taking a break meant hanging a sign in the window, or rather panel, of The Far Side for a single edition. That alone is a decent gag, but seeing so many classic The Far Side characters stacked on each other as if they had been hastily discarded on Larson's way out makes this strip much better.

Gary Larson Knew Exactly How Weird The Far SideWas

His Was Not One Of the Serious Comics

There aren't many comic strips that lean so deeply into abjectly absurdist territory as The Far Side. While the characters within The Far Side knew as much for themselves, so did their creator, who was more than happy to note it for the sake of everyone else. While some of his critics may have opined that he lost his mind, he was well aware of the reality.

When a pair of decidedly more realistic cartoon characters show up unannounced at the door of a home inhabited by cows, snakes, chickens, and instantly recognizable Far Side denizens, they are promptly told they have the wrong house while given other more serious options. This causal disregard caps the moment with a nod to fellow iconic comic strips.

The Far Side's Perfect Joke Was Ruined

And That's The Joke

Not every joke is perfect. Sometimes, The Far Side gets darker than readers could have anticipated, or the jokes themselves just don't seem to make any sense. Once upon a time, however, Gary Larson crafted a comic strip that most readers would describe as "perfect," even if they never got the chance to actually read it for themselves.

That is precisely what happens with this specific comic strip, which promises readers that it contains the perfect joke. Of course, the two people forcing their way into the forefront of the single-panel comic strip in question make it impossible for anyone to know what that joke happened to be. However, there is little doubt that it was perfect in every conceivable wayuntil Larson broke the fourth wall again!