Gary Laron’s The Far Side is known for mixing surreal humor with morbid undertones, making clowns its ideal subject matter. While Larson’s comic is known for its recurring cows and cavemen, circus clowns also belong on that list, starring in some of The Far Side‘s funniest (and weirdest) comics.
Here, then, are the 12 best comics starring The Far Side‘s clowns, from puns and visual gags to some truly dark moments – always with Gary Larson’s unique sense of humor shining through. To have your say on the funniest comic in this list, stick around for our end-of-article poll!
12 Clown Therapy
The Far Side Lives on the Boundary Between Tragic and Funny
When asked by The New York Times why so many of his comics star cows, Larson revealed that “cows are sort of tragic figures. Cows blur the line between tragedy and humor.” While that may be true of Larson’s bovine characters, it’s the definition of the clown’s role in pop culture. This strip gets to the heart of that idea, as one red-nosed entertainer fails to understand the inherent tragedy of the “tears of a clown.” As ever, Larson’s faces are a treat, from the blithe speaker to the resentful group members who disagree with his sunny outlook.
11 When Clowns Go Bad
The Far Side’s Dark Alleys Define Its Sense of Humor
One of the most unique aspects of The Far Side as a newspaper comic strip is that it’s always creating new worlds. While Peanuts and Garfield have set ‘rules’ about what’s possible and who might appear, The Far Side is always changing what’s reasonable or even possible. This is often seen in Larson’s ‘dark alley’ scenes, where the murky underworld could offer up anything from street-tough ducks to dealers of illicit “hoofed mammals.” Two clowns waiting down an alley to pie an unsuspecting businessman is a perfect microcosm of what Larson finds funny.
It’s also typical of The Far Side that there are two clowns. Any gag strip would set up a serviceable gag with a clown waiting to pie a businessman, but Larson likes to create an entire world in a single panel. In The Far Side, street clowns aren’t a one-off oddity, but a legitimate social ill – who knows how many might be waiting around the corner?
10 Missile Launch
Larson’s Clown Aren’t Quite Human
Of course, sometimes The Far Side is happy to settle for a pun – here turning the insult “clown” into a very literal (and very deadly) reality. Larson isn’t shy about dropping missiles on his characters – several of Far Side‘s funniest comics imply a nuclear apocalypse – but there’s something a little extra unnerving about the clown having seemingly no reason to break into a military installation and start pressing buttons. In the most eerie detail, the clown doesn’t seem happy or sad about the death it’s seemingly raining down from the heavens. Like the ‘dark alley’ comic above, Larson treats clowns as a separate species who aren’t just humans dressed up, but rather mischief personified.
9 Comic Relief
Sometimes, The Far Side Nails Very Human Experiences
From clowns as an alien force infesting normal society to a very human moment, The Far Side zeroes in on the experience of a group’s ‘funny’ member beginning to worry that he’s only seen as two-dimensional comic relief by his friends. Of course, unlike real life, Brian could make some immediate progress by removing his grease paint.
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8 Clown Painting
The Far Side Loves to Break the Fourth Wall
While The Far Side is no stranger to breaking the fourth wall, this is one of its most surreal comics because it crosses the boundary between two realities that both exist within the strip. While The Far Side‘s characters might sometimes know they’re in a comic or pull faces at the reader, it’s rare that they have to contend with that kind of challenge to their own reality. Thankfully, the museum-goer in this strip seems to have moved on before the pies started flying.
7 First Date
The Far Side Gets Risque
A relatively risqué comic from The Far Side yet again imagines clowns as a kind of separate species, with a pie to the face taking on a far more intimate meaning in harlequin courting. The other strips show that clown romance – and inter-clown socializing – is fraught with potential issues.
6 Kidnapped Clown
Larson Loves Dropping Unusual Protagonists into Dark Situations
While this strip could be dismissed as a mere pun, it actually goes further than it needs to in selling a weirder gag. The gangster speaking the caption is holding a cloth, suggesting that rather than an unfortunate play on words, he really is just referring to removing the clown’s greasepaint, and it’s actually only the reader who’s subject to any misunderstanding. The clown’s ‘real’ mouth is also included, showing he understands the gravity of the situation. Finally, fans are left to ask exactly why a quartet of gangsters felt the need to kidnap a clown – perhaps a nod to the old joke that if you want to kill a circus, you need to go for the juggler.
5 Clown-Zilla
The Far Side Loves a Kaiju
A giant clown is an inherently funny image, especially when the humongous harlequin becomes a Godzilla-like threat to safety. The use of a giant pie to bring down Clown-Zilla is a smart pay-off, though the clown’s jolly expression is really the heart of the joke.
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4 Execution
The Far Side Isn’t Afraid to Get Dark
Executing a clown is a dark premise (especially for those readers whose real-world knowledge extends to the crimes of John Wayne Gacy, and the fact that killer clowns aren’t confined to fiction.) In a bleak extension of the ‘innocent subject, dark situation’ joke, the officer in charge admits even he understands this execution is particularly grim. However, the officer’s comments do also create the accidental secondary joke that when the person in the electric chair isn’t a children’s entertainer, his usual response is to go home and tell his kids all about it.
3 Cowboy vs Clown
Larson Loves Unusual Shoot-Outs
It’s a great, weird gag that Old West onlookers would consider being shot dead equitable to being nailed by a thrown pie. Larson loves the Old West as a setting more than almost any other in The Far Side, however this comic misses out on first place because he actually told the same joke better with a chicken.
2 Witches
Where Else But The Far Side are Clowns & Witches Natural Enemies?
Larson loves to reference The Wizard of Oz – indeed, his last The Far Side strip is a loving reference to the 1939 movie – and thankfully the film is timeless enough that most readers will still get this joke, which hinges on the Wicked Witch of the West melting when exposed to water. The idea of a clown accidentally melting a witch with their squirting flower is funny, but so is the blasé way in which the first witch brings up this incident to the second, who clearly doesn’t recall it as such a fond memory.
1 Arctic Clown
The Far Side Nails a Rare Gag That Relies on Color
It’s rare that a Far Side joke depends on color, but this one is perfect. The way that The Far Side is structured – an image above a caption – creates a natural reading progression: the reader looks at the image, then reads the caption, then looks back at the image with new context. This comic nails that process, as what appears to be a single red ‘bean’ is revealed to be a clown desperately hiding from its natural predator. While it may be a single-panel comic, The Far Side is marked by a keen sense of formalism, and here uses the reader’s natural progression through the strip as the heart of the gag.
