Gary Larson’s The other side ran from 1980 to 1994 and produced absolute classics even in its final year. Here are the 10 funniest comics from July 1994, which will be 30 years old in 2024.

Larson’s comics for July 1994 include some of his greatest obsessions, including beetles, Vikings, and his iconic desert island. However, the month also includes one of his best pop culture references – A The Wizard of Oz Parody that takes one of Larson’s favorite movies and makes fun of it.

Larson’s expert handling of insects made him popular with many real entomologists, resulting in several insect species being named after him…

10 A hairy thorax

Far Side Comic from July 7, 1994

Larson loves inappropriate workplace pranks, and in this flick, the staff at a tropical greenhouse eat lunch together, only for one member of the team to stumble upon a disturbing sandwich topping. It’s implied that Marv did something to offend his coworker enough to earn him this disturbing snack, but we never find out what. The other side often uses beetles for humorous reasons, with Larson using his knowledge of nature to invent gags specific to each insect species.

In fact, Larson’s expert handling of insects made him popular with many real entomologists, resulting in several insect species being named after him. These include the louse strigiphilus garylarsoni and the butterfly serratoterga larsoni, although in The complete other sideLarson shares a letter from the discoverer of the former, in which he admits that the naming after Larson is a kind of “dubious honor.”

9 International House of Horrors

Far Side Comic from July 25, 1994

Because The other side While Larson tends to tell jokes in frame after frame, his humor often leans toward archetypes like cowboys, pirates, and especially Vikings. The expectations these characters create as part of their cultural baggage give Larson plenty of pre-existing details to play with.

In this case, Larson imagines Vikings returning from a long day of raiding to dine at their version of the International House of Pancakes. Unfortunately, the Vikings in question have no access to fluffy pancakes and must instead make do with a variety of disgusting porridges.

8 Herd mentality

Far Side Comic from July 27, 1994

As in previous Hanna-Barbera cartoons, The other side basically loves the image of something being squashed until it is completely flat. This actually goes back to one of Larson’s very first inspirations – Morrell Gipson’s children’s book Mr. Bear, squeezes you completely flat. In a 1986 interview with Dateline 20/20, Larson described the book as an important inspiration for The other sideSense of humorand said:

There was something so fascinating about the image of this big bear running through the forest and destroying the homes of these little animals. I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

While bears tend to be more active in the world of The other sideLarson’s elephants more than make up for this deficiency, as his comics draw a lot of humor from the idea of ​​coexistence between humans and elephants, when either group can crush the latter without hesitation.

Shredding is not the only way The other side uses elephants – Larson also has great running gags about “hidden” or camouflaged elephantsand alludes to how impossible it would be for the giant pachyderms to go unnoticed.

7 Senior Librarian

Far Side Comic from July 26, 1994

As much as The other side has a reputation for surreal and dark humor, strips like this one suggest that Gary Larson finds nothing funnier than someone missing the obvious. In the comic, a cleaning lady starts a conversation with a librarian by asking her if she’s read anything good recently, disregarding the fact that they’re surrounded by a sea of ​​books, and the librarian can’t possibly answer anything other than yes. The humor comes from the fact that Ned has been waiting Years to make his move, but he still hasn’t come up with a better opening sentence.

6 Small defenseless village

Far Side Comic from July 7, 1994

Wide sideThe Vikings return in this comic, where it turns out that a small village nonetheless has strict rules about when it’s “open” for looting. From Vikings to cave dwellers, Larson’s best historical joke is that people in earlier eras essentially played roles written to a script, and the Vikings were very conscious of what was expected of them. Apparently, this “performance” logic even extends to the Vikings’ victims, who are willing to watch helplessly as their village is looted, but only within reasonable working hours.

Gary Larson had two rules for portraying God in The Far Side and credited them with preventing a backlash from religious fans.

5 Idiots

Far Side Comic from July 22, 1994

In this strip, God completes his creation by adding a dash of idiots whose purpose seems to be to make things a little more interesting. Larson has quite a few comics starring God, often finding simple ways for the Almighty to create and control reality – from baking the planet in an oven to bringing about every single moment of misfortune with the push of a button.

Although Larson liked to invoke God in his comics, he was aware that the topic could be controversial for some readers, and that he even “hope for a lightning strike” with the film in which a young god tries and fails to create the chicken. The backstory of The Far Side, Larson notes that in his comic strip, which features God in a televised quiz, he was careful to follow two rules to avoid reader outrage.:

First, I made God look like what most of us think he looks like. Second, I made him win really easily. Even if Norman had only had ten points, that would have meant he would have beaten God to the final whistle at least once, and someone would have gotten mad.

4 Executioner understudy

Far Side Comic from July 13, 1994

Some of The other sideThe best gags of are silly, if not a little cute. In this flick, it turns out that executioners have actor-style stand-ins who take their place when they mess up in their duties. Oddly enough, the executioner in this flick somehow managed to break his axe cleanly in two without harming his intended victim at all, and let out a subtle, “Damned!” Larson enhances the humor with the witty depiction of a stage curtain behind which the understudy waits for her big break.

3 Scarecrow

Far Side Comic from July 14, 1994

In this cruel film The Wizard of OzThe Scarecrow returns home with a new brain, only for his “faithful” dog to eat it straight out of the box (in this version of the story, the wizard was apparently extremely literally about organ distribution.) Larson often parodied The Wizard of Oz In The other side – actually the last Wide side The comic shows Larson waking up from a dream in a black and white world, where it turns out that his various relatives were the inspiration for all of his comics (a parody of Dorothy’s awakening in the cult film).

2 Threatening clouds

Far Side Comic from July 29, 1994

If The other side proves one thing: Gary Larson is a big fan of wordplay. Many Wide side Strips are based on the premise of taking a popular phrase completely literally, and that is the case here, as the idea of “threatening clouds” (dark clouds that make it clear that bad weather is coming) is transformed into literal aggression written across the sky. Larson amusingly ensures that the comic’s character cannot read the message, which adds an extra level of danger to the situation. Strangely, this is far from the only Wide side Comic that combines fishing and death threats.

The other side often takes the perspective of his sentient animals, making any human who takes advantage of nature the villain. From this perspective, it’s easy to understand why Larson so often equates fishing with the threat of death – after all, that’s how the fish see it.

1 Where will you go?

Far Side Comic from July 12, 1994

The other side is famous for its desert island gags, where one or two people are trapped on a tiny circle of sand with only a single palm tree for comfort. In this version, a couple stranded on the island eventually split up, and Larson delivers another gag where the answer is so obvious that it seems odd that anyone even asked the question. While Wide side not only loves deserted islands, but also has a surprising penchant for exploiting broken relationships for his humor.

These are the 10 best Wide side Comic book from July 1994, featuring many of Gary Larson’s greatest obsessions during the comic strip’s final year of publication.