10 Surreal Comics That Will Blow Far Side Fans' Minds, From Gary Larson's Biggest Influence
The Far Side is often treated like it had no predecessors, but as creator Gary Larson acknowledged, it actually had several significant influences, including the work of the artist Gahan Wilson. In fact, once Far Side fans get a look at Wilson's work, they won't be able to ignore the similarities to Larson's art and comedic style. In The Complete Far Side, Larson cited Gahan Wilson as a primary influence on his cartoons, but Wilson's work, and his contribution to the creation of The Far Side, often goes underappreciated.
The cartoons collected here offer a sampling of Wilson's work, which show the broad range of inspiration Gary Larson drew from it to produce The Far Side.
10
It's A "You Problem," Not A "Them Problem" In This Dark Gahan Wilson Cartoon
For Fans Of The Far Side's Anthropomorphic Animals And Psychological Humor
This Gahan Wilson cartoon evokes the unsettling feeling produced by many classic Far Side cartoons. The image features a man in a trench coat, looking visibly distressed, surrounded by stuffed toy bears. That includes one who holds his hand, as she turns to him and says "face it, Edwin, it isn't that we've all turned into teddy bears." “It’s that you’ve gone crazy,” the bear, presumably his wife, says to “Edwin.” As a punchline, this might lack some of the nuance of Gary Larson’s later jokes, but the premise is very evocative of Far Side. As with much of Wilson’s work, its influence on Larson’s career is evident, though it is perhaps more spiritual, and less empirical, here.
9
Gary Larson's Predecessor Produces A Classic Prehistoric Punchline
For Fans Of The Far Side's Caveman Comics
Prehistoric hijinx were one of the essential staples of The Far Side, and this comic demonstrates that Gary Larson's use of this trope had a direct ancestor in the form of Gahan Wilson's cartoons. This feels like a joke that Larson could easily have made, if Wilson hadn't first, in which a caveman tries to be trendy by adopting giant tusks.
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"Everybody else is doing it," the cave-dweller says, in response to a skeptical fellow biped, as sabertooth tiger and wooly mammoth loom in the background. It is a silly, simple joke, one that is a clear predecessor to The Far Side in both style and tone, while also prefiguring Larson's artistic style.
8
Gahan Wilson Serves Up A Classic Far Side-Style Joke That Is Up There With Gary Larson's Best
For Fans Of The Far Side's "Lost In The Desert" Comics
This Gahan Wilson comic is almost identical to many that Gary Larson would later produce. The "crawling through the desert" set-up was a Far Side classic, one that Larson evidently lifted directly from his biggest influence, Wilson's work. Here, a pair of poor souls, dehydrated nearly to death, get a bad sign for their survival, in the form of a burnt skeleton. "Looks like we can't expect to find much in that direction," one character says to the other, as they all-but resign themselves to the same fate as the skeleton. It is a bleakly funny punchline that The Far Side would riff on dozens upon dozens of times in subsequent years, but the kernel of it started here.
7
Gahan Wilson Reminds Readers What They Really Have To Do To "Make It" As An Artist
For Fans Of The Far Side's Musician Comics
In addition to being an author and artist, Gary Larson was a musician himself, and as such, The Far Side was full of jokes poking fun at musicians.This likely would have been the case regardless of Larson's influences, but still, even this has its precedent in the art of Gahan Wilson.
Here, he makes a joke about an orchestra conductor that rivals The Far Side's best. As the conductor raises his wand in the air, he looks down at his sheet music booklet, but where there should be the song, it is instead scribbled "fake it," a hilarious dig at an otherwise serious artistic profession.
6
Abraham Lincoln Resorts To Cue Cards In This Joke That Feels Straight Out Of The Far Side
For Fans Of The Far Side's Historical Comedy
Far Side fans know that Gary Larson loved to lampoon real history, and over the years, that included several spoofs on Abraham Lincoln's legendary Gettysburg Address. In effect, all of those were responses to Gahan Wilson's earlier take on the same premise, in which a man holds up cue cards for Lincoln with the speech on them. What this exemplifies is the way Larson lifted more than just specific ideas from Wilson’s oeuvre; he adapted the earlier artist’s entire modus operandi, which involved mashing together the familiar and unfamiliar, mixing up the real and the surreal, and intertwining the factual and the absurd, like he did with this Lincoln cartoon.
5
Gahan Wilson Introduces Death To Fine Dining In A Joke That Evokes Familiar Far Side Feelings
For Fans Of The Far Side's Grim Reaper Jokes
The Far Side's humor is infamously macabre, because Gary Larson wasn't afraid to joke about death, and that extended to jokes about the personification of Death, in the form of the Grim Reaper. Here, Gahan Wilson set a precedent for this, with a panel featuring the Reaper trying to get seated at a busy restaurant.
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“Relax,” the Reaper tells an absolutely terrified maître d', “all I want is a good table"; it is almost spooky how much this feels like a Far Side cartoon, in both its visual style, especially the look of terror on the face of the man confronted by Death, and its “out there” brand of comedy.
4
Like Many Great Far Side Panels, This Gahan Wilson Cartoon Makes Surgeons Its Target
For Fans Of The Far Side's Jokes About Doctors
With The Far Side, Gary Larson frequently pulled back the curtain and depicted the "truth" of what goes on in the operating rooms. The Far Side's hilarious jokes about surgeons follow the exact blueprint set by Gahan Wilson cartoons like his one, in which the gravity of the act of surgery is undermined by unexpected frivolity. Here, that amounts to the doctors following an instruction manual the way one would when assembling Ikea furniture, with the caption reading, "okay, now put Tab A into Slot B." It is a joke that relies on demystifying the seriousness and confidence associated with surgeons, a successful trick Larson learned from his predecessor.
3
Gahan Wilson Pioneered Turning Ordinary Household Objects Into Unexpected Danger
For Fans Of The Far Side's Anthropomorphic Object Comics
This Gahan Wilson illustration exhibits two familiar qualities of The Far Side. The first is Gary Larson's tendency to anthropomorphize random household objects. The other is Larson's knack for turning the ordinary into the outrageous. In this comic, a woman cowers behind her husband as he empties a plate into a garbage can with a mouth, including teeth and tongue.
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"I wish to God you'd get rid of that thing," the wife says. The idea of average items coming to life and becoming carnivorous was something Gary Larson returned to repeatedly during his career, with panels that featured mailboxes devouring mail carriers, saxophones biting their players, and more, and it all started with Larson's exposure to Wilson's work.
2
Gahan Wilson Confirms That Nothing Comes Between A Man And His "Death Ray"
For Fans Of The Far Side's Mad Scientist Comics
"What do you think you're going to do with your silly death ray once you've finished it?" a woman nags her husband. This Gahan Wilson cartoon shares so much DNA with The Far Side, most notably its melding of one familiar trope, the bickering married couple, with another, the mad inventor trope. Many of Gary Larson's comics would follow this formula, to great comedic effect. The similarities between Wilson’s work and Larson’s highlight the fact that The Far Side didn’t completely come out of nowhere, while also showcasing the ways in which Larson’s cartoon innovated on the trailblazing work done by Gahan Wilson. If anything, The Far Side took ideas like this one and ran with them.
1
Gahan Wilson And Gary Larson's "The Far Side" Both Routinely Tapped Into Paranoia For Comedic Effect
For Fans Of The Far Side's Therapy Jokes
This hysterical Gahan Wilson gag embodies the spirit of the phrase "just becasue you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you," by depicting a therapist who inquires about his patient's belief in a "plot to get [him]," while simultaneously ushering two highly shady looking figures into the room, seemingly confirming the patient's fears. The Far Side made many jokes about therapists, as well, but once more, what is notable here is the shared vibe between Wilson's humor and Gary Larson's. The way the joke here validates the character's paranoia, while delivering an almost downright spooky image, is totally in the vein of The Far Side, showcasing the iconic cartoon's biggest influence at its best.
