Gary Larson’sThe Far Sidehas a lot of obsessions, from delinquent cows to creative cavemen, and yet somehow eggs became one of the funniest recurring ideas in his comic’s entire 14-year run. Perhaps it’s because they sit at the exact meeting point ofLarson’s love of animalsand goofy pranks, but his yolk humor is so good, we couldn’t keep this list to just ten.
Here are the 15 funniestFar Sidecomics that somehow found a way to make eggs funny, from misbehaving chickens to poor Humpty Dumpty.Be sure to vote in our end-of-article poll for your favorite egg-basedFar Side, but be warned - the choice is going to be harder than ever.
15There Goes Another Batch
In this strip, Larson somehow makes a laugh-out-loud gag by combining eggs with a housing market joke. As in many of Larson’s best jokes, the gag isn’t just something unusual happening - it’s that it already happened once, and that somehow didn’t change the behavior of the characters in question.The Far Side’s characters are often slow to catch on, but somehow these birds haven’t yet realized they’re sitting at a total ninety-degree angle.
14Ham and Eggs
How Can a Single Comic Panel Feel Awkward?
In a world peopled by intelligent animals, some types of social faux pas are unavoidable, but in this case the main character manages to insult an entire diner with an incredibly simple food order. The looks on the animals' faces are pureFar Side, as Larson aims for the same sense of stopping an entire room in its tracks that real-world blunders often lead to.
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13Fountain of Youth
Larson’s Mythic Reference Shows How He Trusted Readers' Intelligence
One ofThe Far Side’s strengths is how it often creates space for the reader to finish the gag for themselves. Many of Larson’s contemporaries would have felt the need to spell out even more clearly that birds are being reduced to eggs by unknowingly drinking from the Fountain of Youth, butThe Far Sidelets its readers make the final step themselves.The Fountain of Youth appears in multipleFar Sidestrips, showing how Larson trusts the intelligence of his readers: it’s not every comic that expects its readers to catch a Ponce de León reference.
12Doris Griswold
Not Every Far Side Gag Is Trying for Laughs
InThe Complete Far Side,Gary Larson admits that he knew he couldn’t always make the reader laugh, but hecouldalways make them exclaim"What the–?“over the breakfast table. In this queasy strip, that’s definitely the case, as while the idea of lice giving their ‘owners’ as an address is funny, the visual is definitely more gross-out than laugh-out-loud.
11Cake Mix
Far Side Is as Obsessed with Chickens as It Is with Eggs
In this strip, a chicken engaged in some baking considers using her own eggs in the recipe rather than going to the store. Alongside eggs,chickens appear acrossThe Far Side, usually acting as the underdogs of Larson’s world.
While most of Larson’s chickens have to struggle with the knowledge that they’ll soon be eaten by humans, he also uses the birds in his most bizarre comics,with the weirdest of all time being aNightmare on Elm Streetparody(above) that implies a family have been tricked into eating their own dog.
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10Vikings
The Far Side Uses Real History to Set Up Surreal Jokes
Far Sideis full ofcomics about real-world history, but this is among the funniest, as Larson unearths the little-known mellow era of Viking invasions. The added detail of the egg on the sail is a genius touch, making it clear just how committed these Vikings are to their irritating form of attack.
9Egg Swap
A Darker Version of This Gag Is Coming Up Soon
Ina genius wordless comic, Larson sets up the idea that if humans are going to steal chickens' eggs, sooner or later the poultry are going to pay us back in kind. The expression on the woman’s face is perfect, showcasing Larson’s tendency to have his characters react to major emergencies in the most minor ways, while the complete lack of malice on the chicken’s face makes the strip significantly weirder (and therefore way funnier.) Of course, the implication of the chickenseatingthe baby aren’t made too apparent. While that decision may seem like common sense, it’s not like Larson held back elsewhere.
The Far Sidehas a surprising number ofcomics that show kids being eatenby everything from bears and alligators to a colony of ants. The strip above, showing a baby being carried to an ant hill, originally depicted an old man, with Larson revealing inThe Prehistory of The Far Sidethat it was rejected by his editor with a two-word"No thanks!“Bizarrely, Larson’s instinct to swap the old man out for a baby paid off, as the comic was then instantly approved.
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8Scrambled
This Strip Was Too Dark to Be Published
This strip once again sees humans and chickens swap places, but this time Larson iswaymore explicit with the dark implications. While this comic strip has appeared in variousFar Sidecompendiums, it wasn’t syndicated in national newspapers, withLarson knowing from the start that it wouldn’t make it past his editor. InThe Prehistory of The Far Side, he writes:
I knew scrambled babies wouldn’t fly with most of the civilized world, much less my editor, although I did try to make them look cute.
7Here’s Your Problem
Larson Loves Adding Goofy Twists to Kitchen Sink Drama
The Far Sideloves nothing better than putting a single bizarre twist on everyday life. Here, two women sit down for what seems like a serious, emotionally raw discussion, only for the fact that both are chickens to result in a goofy punchline once the refrigerator is opened.
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If Gary Larson’s The Far Side loves one thing, it’s nature, and that obsession with flora and fauna doesn’t stop at the shoreline.
6Humpty Dumpty
Far Side Often Took on Nursery Rhyme Characters
The Far Sideloves any kind of set-up that comes with a bunch of pre-existing assumptions by the reader, allowing the joke to embrace a more involved narrative by drawing on the details fans already know. For that reason, Larson often parodied popular fictionand especially nursery rhymes, but even in that context, Humpty Dumpty was a favorite character to bring back again and again.
Larson picks apart every part of the Humpty Dumpty story, from asking why the King’s men would allow the horses to try fixing him to exploring what came next for the deceased egg. However, we’ve selected Humpty Dumpty hatching as the best of the bunch, answering the unasked but logical question of what laid Humpty Dumpty in the first place. However, it was a hard choice, and both the King’s horses comic and the image of the wall falling on Humpty after he survives his fall unscathed are classicFar Side.
