Far Side's Final Comic Just Turned 50, And It's Only Gotten Funnier with Time
Gary Larson's final The Far Side comic just hit a major milestone, and the cap on the series' 14-year run is still as funny as the day it was published. Not only is Larson's finale a great joke by itself, it managed to bring every prior Far Side comic together - a feat that seemed impossible for a comic with no recurring characters and a deliberately inconsistent world. We're taking a look at Larson's final Far Side comic, as well as some of his best strips mocking iconic movies.
Far Side's Final Comic Turns the Entire Series into Larson's Dream
The Comic With No Recurring Characters Managed to Bring Everything Together
Published January 1, 1995, Far Side ended official syndication with a two-panel comic, breaking the usual rule of Larson's iconic one-panel gags. In the first panel, Larson stands on a stage with Wizard of Oz's Glinda the Good Fairy, being told to intone the beloved movie quote "There's no place like home..." In the second panel, Larson wakes up in black and white 'reality,' surrounded by family members who bear an uncanny resemblance to his stock characters.
Glinda was played by Billie Burke in the original Wizard of Oz, and recently depicted by Ariana Grande in the movie adaptation of Wicked, where she's reimagined as a school friend of the Wicked Witch.
The implication is that like Dorothy, Larson dreamed up the world of Far Side, peopling it with echoes of his real-life acquaintances. The comic recreates the ending of 1939's The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy has a similar realization, with local figures revealed as the basis for the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Wicked Witch.
While the Wizard of Oz comic is the last of Far Side's syndicated run, Larson has revisited his project sporadically since it officially ended. Larson came out of retirement to pen a cowboy-themed New Yorker cover, and sometimes posts new work on thefarside.com, experimenting with digital art tools.
Why Far Side's Final Comic Is So Perfect
Larson Created the Ideal Victory Lap, While Still Telling a Great Joke
The joke plays on the fact that despite never wanting to use recurring characters like his comic strip contemporaries, Larson's art style did lead to the creation of stock characters who featured again and again. Larson famously used cows and cavemen throughout The Far Side, while stock figures like 'The Nerdy Kid' and 'The Woman in Horn-Rimmed Glasses' appear under various different names. Larson joked about this habit earlier in Far Side's run, with a comic introducing the cast of 'real' people who play all his comic's characters. Enjoy Larson's stock character comic by opening the image gallery below.
However, the final Far Side comic pulls off the same trick in an even more satisfying way, offering a hilarious answer to why so many themes and stock figures appear again and again throughout the series. In the way of every great finale, it effectively brought back every beloved character and obsession, including Larson's longtime love of The Wizard of Oz.
Larson parodied everything from 1979's Alien to 1931's Frankenstein, often thrusting classic horror characters into hilariously mundane situations.
The Wizard of Oz comic showing Larson with a pet snake is true to life. In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson reveals he once had a pet Burmese python, which coiled around him and "attempted to do me in." While he doesn't say as much, this is likely why The Far Side uses the recurring image of a self-satisfied snake eating various characters.
Far Side Has a Major Wizard of Oz Obsession
Larson Parodied the Iconic Movie Again and Again
Like other creators including the Coen brothers, Elton John and Daisy Edgar-Jones, Gary Larson was clearly inspired by The Wizard of Oz, referencing the critically and commercially beloved movie throughout The Far Side's history. Larson created gags based on everything from the Yellow Brick Road to the Wicked Witch of the West to Dorothy's party of friends, with one particularly grisly comic showing the Scarecrow's dog eating his newly acquired brain. Enjoy some of Larson's Wizard of Oz comics by opening the image gallery below:
Thanks to its memorable music, creative concepts and groundbreaking use of Technicolor technology, Wizard of Oz remains one of the most popular and influential movies ever made, adapting the 1900 novel by L. Frank Baum. Larson had a fantastic eye for celebrities, TV and movies that would remain popular for decades, and it's partly because of this that Far Side's humor still hits so hard. The vast majority of Larson's movie references in particular are still immediately familiar to today's reader.
Larson Often Took Aim at Classic Movies
From Jaws and Godzilla to Sound of Music and The Godfather
Larson parodied everything from 1979's Alien to 1954's Them!, often thrusting classic horror characters into hilariously mundane situations. Larson was never afraid to get meta with his gags, with jokes including the idea that Jaws' shark is somehow exuding John Williams' iconic score and a comment on how movie sequels artificially dial up the stakes, with a hypothetical Psycho III gifting Norman Bates a tank.
Disney's innocent characters were perfect fodder for Larson's dark sense of humor, with Dumbo becoming a menace to humanity and the Seven Dwarves being eaten by a python.
The Far Side often combined horror and comedy, placing unflustered characters into horror situations or horrific characters into everyday circumstances - like a family of Alien's Xenomorphs sitting down for dinner. Far Side's air of menace and Larson's somewhat morbid humor characterized The Far Sidethroughout its syndicated run, and seemingly stems from Larson's appreciation for the natural world, where the reality of predator and prey is difficult to ignore. Indeed, he originally pitched Far Side as an animal-centric strip under the name Nature's Way.Nowhere was this dark humor funnier than when Larson was taking on Disney.
Larson Has a Particular Taste for Taking on Disney
Pinocchio May Suffer More Than Any Other Far Side Character
While Larson might have taken aim at plenty of classic movies over The Far Side's long run, his biggest big-screen target was always Disney. Larson took on not just blockbuster films like Peter Pan and Bambi, but also deeper-cut movies like The Incredible Journey. Disney's innocent characters were perfect fodder for Larson's dark sense of humor, with Dumbo becoming a menace to humanity and the Seven Dwarves being eaten by a python.
However, Larson put no Disney character through Hell more than Pinocchio. The idea of a puppet coming to life awoke Larson's creativity like few other concepts, leading to Pinocchio being pecked by woodpeckers, gnawed by beavers and savaged by lions (seconds after being given human form.) Even Jiminy Cricket wasn't safe, with a comic depicting him perishing in an entomologist's killing jar.
In the case of both Pinocchio and The Wizard of Oz, it's clear to see how Larson took subjects emblematic of childhood innocence and gave them a signature twist, introducing morbid and surreal elements that made both funnier than ever. It's 30 years since the final Far Sidecomic was published, and yet the gag is still great for how it ties together many of Larson's most popular themes, parodies a beloved pop culture fixture, and bids farewell to an era of undeniably great comic humor, all at the same time.
- Writer
- Gary Larson
- Colorist
- Gary Larson
The Far Side is a humorous comic series developed by Gary Larson. The series has been in production since 1979 and features a wide array of comic collections, calendars, art, and other miscellaneous items.
