While The Far Side famously specializes in observations on nature and animal life, that interest often extends beyond its home planet. Gary Larson may have avoided introducing recurring characters, but along with dinosaurs and cavemen, aliens frequently star in the iconic comic’s sideways look at life.
The Far Side grabbed generations of fans by combining a surreal viewpoint with smart reflections on everyday oddities, often making unexpected moments feel normal, and the mundane feel bizarre. Aliens perfectly capture the spirit of The Far Side, and many of the strip’s best entries include extraterrestrial life. Here are the eleven very best The Far Side comics where aliens are the focus.
11 Cowboys and Aliens
A simple cartoon, ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ is a perfect example of the strip’s absurdity, with the punchline, that they are an “oft-romanticized image,” taking on ever greater dimensions of surrealism when placed against the hectic pursuit of a laser-firing spaceship after a hapless cowboy. Strangely, the strip accidentally predicted one of the biggest box-office flops of all time, with Jon Favreau’s 2011 Cowboys & Aliens (based on the 2006 comic) proving just how little curiosity existed regarding this particular Old West match-up. Cowboys have a special place in The Far Side‘s history, as Gary Larson actually came out of retirement to pen a cowboy-themed cover for The New Yorker.
10 Asking for a Knuckle Sandwich
Stereotypical street toughs are as at-home in The Far Side as alien life, and in this strip the two meet. Featuring a ludicrously badly disguised alien, what engenders such humor into the piece is the strangely touching naivete of the alien when set against the cold welcome from urban America. The strip is noteworthy for showcasing how Larson often uses different planes to include extra context in a single panel – the UFO in the background may barely register outside of confirming the speaker is an alien, but Larson’s ability to slip these contextual clues in has been feted by many professional cartoonists. Added to the way the dialogue implies what’s already been said, this comic exemplifies how Larson can tell a story in a single panel.
9 Falling Alien
A simple piece of physical comedy, this strip sees an alien species blow their chance at first contact when one of them tumbles down the stairs. As ever, The Far Side instills the inhuman with very human motives and body language, however what really makes this strip is the perfectly blank faces of the watching humans. This strip pokes fun at sci-fi properties, suggesting that when aliens descend in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it’s only after making plans to nail the perfect entrance.
8 Palm Tree Aliens
The Far Side is famous for its desert islands, and is often credited with popularizing the simple ‘two characters on a tiny island with a palm tree’ concept that is so ubiquitous in its imitators (and which TV fans may remember from The Office‘s caption competition episode.) The ‘Palm Tree Aliens’ comic provides perhaps the most deadpan gag on this list, with a marooned gentleman being one minute ecstatic over the idea of rescue, and the next dejected when he’s passed over (and robbed of his only source of shade.)
7 Alien Photograph
The Far Side succeeds because of how it packs a perfect narrative bundle into a single snapshot moment – albeit at the risk of sometimes creating a comic literally no-one understands. In a perfectly mundane moment, Larson creates a story about an average couple who meet an alien, obtain world-changing proof of extraterrestrial life, but then lose it when their camera film is exposed to sunlight in the course of their bickering. The fact that the alien is so friendly as to have its arm around ‘Warren’ drives home the idea that this couple truly only have themselves to blame for the twist that’s heading their way.
6 The Zork in the Earth
Another silly sight gag, ‘The Zork in the Earth’ is a play on ‘The Man In the Moon.’ The joke initially seems to be that aliens partake in the same kind of willful illusions as humans, but a second look reveals that while we may be kidding ourselves when we see a human face in the moon, the Zork shape is actually freakishly similar to the American continents. While not exactly challenging, this strip does show The Far Side‘s willingness to hinge its joke on small details that ask the reader to work for their punchline – something that’s often not the case among the strip’s contemporaries.
Related: Far Side Got a Rejected Comic Published by Making It Even Darker
5 Never Knew What Hit Him
The Far Side‘s love of wordplay is evident here, as Henry is punched in the face by alien life he can’t identify, flipping a common idiom on its head. Perhaps the most amusing aspect is that the alien simply walks up to Henry and punches him, rather than using any kind of advanced technology (though the small ship is also a fun visual detail.) The moment calls to mind similar surreal humor from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, in which the alien Bowerick Wowbagger uses time travel to insult everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. There are few more surefire recommendations than that fans of The Far Side will find something to love in Adams’ writing.
4 Circus Calculus
The tragedy of Professor Doyle, and his shocking captivity, is given full dramatic weight in this panel. Environmentalist Larson – no doubt wishing to cast aspersions upon the then alive-and-well animal circus – here presents the stalwart Doyle suffering at the whims of his alien masters performing the “trick” of solving complex mathematical theorems. Larson is beloved by the scientific community – to the extent he has multiple insects named after him – and was no doubt aware that this panel would end up displayed in laboratories and classrooms around the world.
3 Earth Terrarium
As with the previous strip, many The Far Side comics draw their humor from treating humans as just another animal. Here, that perspective understandably comes from literal aliens, who have unthinkingly caused a man to be mauled by a bear thanks to a casual storage error. Like aliens, bears turn up a lot in The Far Side, and even inspired the comic – Larson notes the 1950s children’s book Mr. Bear Squash-You-All-Flat as one of the earliest influences on his trademark humor.
2 Keys Locked in Ship
In one of those “could this situation get any worse” kind of scenes, two aliens await a crowd of people after one of them accidently locks their keys in the ship. The unfortunate happenstance is perfectly enhanced as the alien responsible adopts a pose of sheer embarrassment that’s immediately identifiable despite their inhuman physique. There’s a certain “everyday” quality to it that shines through in the humor – a joke on the common, minor inconveniences people face every day, but enacted on an otherwise world-changing event. The idea of a small spacecraft being treated as essentially identical to a car lives on in shows like Rick and Morty, where the titular scientist’s ship has an advanced AI, a compressed galaxy as a battery… and windshield wipers.
1 Roy Dooms Humanity
In one of the best Far Side cartoons ever, kindly old farmer-type Roy accidently seals the fate of humanity when he grabs the head of the leader of a species of hand-shaped aliens, resulting in what will turn out to be a terribly costly misunderstanding. There’s commentary about humans’ unthinking attitude to other life, plus a perfect sense of menace thanks to the ships in the background, which make it clear that Roy is dealing with an armada, not a single visitor. The aliens bring to mind Kurt Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians (recently appearing in the comic adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five), and were originally even more aggressive. Larson reveals in The Prehistory of The Far Side that the strip initially had Roy already reduced to a pile of ash, but eventually decided that actually showing the shake was necessary for clarity, even though “it’s a weird cartoon no matter how you look at it.”
The Far Side loves nothing more than the foibles of normal people, and these alien comics allow it to examine mankind through eyes that see the true weirdness humans exude when given half a chance.
