Gary Larson’s The Far Side was a longtime hit in the newspapers – and one installment of the strip suggested it kept its place there through underhanded means. The comic employed dark humor and morbid surrealism over the course of its original 16-year run, and wasn’t afraid to tease its neighbors in the funny pages.
The “Far Side’s Spy Center” strip is on the surface a seemingly lighthearted bit, a wall of television screens depicting other cartoon characters, being watched by Far Side regulars: two stereotypical Larson-style humans, a snake, and a cow.
It is only as the reader takes a closer look at the TV screens that this Far Side panel reveals its darkest joke: Charlie Brown, threatening to put down Snoopy.
It Turns Out Charlie Brown Is A Bad Man, After All
All the references in this Far Side strip can be hard to catch, but eagle-eyed readers can depict references including Bloom County‘s Opus realizing he’s being watched, and Hobbes about to attack Calvin. Gary Larson himself is apparently under observation as well, appearing in the top right-hand corner of the frame. In the center of the frame, however, good ol’ Charlie Brown is threatening to have Snoopy put down. It is a particularly dark joke, which works because it is the diametric opposite of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. The Far Side, no stranger to controversy, made several Peanuts references throughout its run, in typical dark, and bizarre Far Side fashion.
Gary Larson’s Peanuts References Were An Off-Brand Sign Of Respect
Another stand-out Peanuts reference in The Far Side, similarly a dark reference to Snoopy’s demise, plays on his iconic “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” stories. A fighter pilot stands next to his plane, with his kills painted on the side – including the silhouette of a familiar scarf-wearing dog, on top of a familiar dog house. Additionally, Peanuts character, Lucy Van Pelt, was the subject of her own Far Side joke, this one featuring a group of anthropologists instead come across ancient art, depicting Lucy as drawn by Charles Schulz. At the time of its printing, Peanuts had been running for about 30 years, making this an off-brand homage to the comic’s longevity.
Gary Larson often used parody in The Far Side, and it is clear that his references to Peanuts and other comic strips resulted from a love of the medium; being lampooned in a Far Side strip was an honor, not an insult. “Far Side’s Spy Center” is one of Larson’s most visually ambitious strips, as he often favored minimalism in his cartoons. Here, the caption is minimalized, but the references to other comic strips speak volumes, both about Larson’s own humor, and what he thought of the humor of his contemporaries. Charles Schulz was without a doubt a major influence on Larson’s The Far Side, who in turn paid homage in his own particular style.
