Gary Larson’s The Far Side is famously irreverent, and that holds especially true when it comes to matters of religion. Far Side has offered fans strips set in Heaven and Hell, but its best gags regarding the hereafter star God Himself. Larson’s humor doesn’t take any real swipes at religion or faith, instead using The Far Side‘s cartoon god as a way to give the often mercurial laws and processes of nature a face.

Here, then, are The Far Side‘s 10 funniest comics starring God, from the creation of the shark to the Almighty’s quiz show ambitions. Be sure to stick around to the end of this article to vote on your favorite Far Side comic starring God.

10

SMITE

Larson Answers Why Bad Things Happen

When bad things happen, it’s easy to ask ‘why me?’ and Far Side has an answer… just not a comforting one. Larson imagines God micromanaging the mishaps of humanity, with a dedicated ‘Smite’ button for those who rub the Almighty the wrong way. In a classic cartoon gag, the poor guy walking underneath a dangling piano isn’t going to know what hit him.

Larson’s characters often come to sticky end, whether consumed by piranhas or blown up in a nuclear bombardment (a recurring theme that goes back to Larson’s childhood growing up during the Cold War.) Indeed, this was the main reason Larson never wanted to have recurring characters like contemporaries Garfield and Peanuts. While Larson’s editors wanted recurring characters and continuing stories so that fans would get attached to The Far Side‘s stars, Larson wanted to be able to subject his characters to various horrifying fates without upsetting fans. In The Complete Far Side: Volume One, Larson says:

Once you’ve got your character established in the hearts and minds of readers, it’s not a good idea to run him over with a truck a few weeks later. … My ever-changing characters got crunched, speared, shot, beheaded, eaten, stuffed, poisoned, and run over about twice a week. (Tastefully, of course.)

9

Acts of God

This Comic Shows Larson’s Love of Puns

If there’s one thing Gary Larson loves more than depicting badly-behaved scientists, it’s dismantling a turn of phrase by taking it totally literally. In this case, the term ‘Acts of God’ becomes a description not of natural disasters, but of a vaudeville act that includes juggling, dancing, and playing two saxophones at the same time. As you’d expect of a deity, God pulls it all off with admirable panache, admired all the time by an audience of angels.

8

God vs Ernie Miller

Far Side’s Surprise Recurring Character ‘Speaks to God’

Talking to God – and hearing back from Him – is usually a momentous occasion in someone’s life, but for Ernie Miller, it’s anything but. Larson’s everyman somehow misdials and gets through to Heaven, with Larson using the iconic ‘555’ dial code readers will know from film and television. Used for directory assistance in America, the ‘555’ code isn’t available to businesses or residences, making it safe to use numbers including these digits without accidentally prompting fans to deluge some poor person with calls.

Amusingly, Ernie’s adventures don’t stop at talking to God. Another comic sees the same character unsuccessfully trying to escape the Rat Race, only to find himself just a face in the crowd no matter where he goes. The two gags don’t have any deliberate connection – while Larson didn’t include any deliberate recurring characters in his work, he does often use the same names and designs. Larson actually explained these accidental recurring characters in one strip, which shows the ‘cast’ of The Far Side, confirming the same handful of fictional actors play all his characters.

7

In God’s Kitchen

Larson Offers a Contrary Version of Earth’s Creation

In this strip, God regrets skimping on planet batter, saving 50¢ on ‘Earthquik’ only to find out it hasn’t baked properly. In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson offers up the opinion that our planet being undercooked would explain why “things aren’t quite normal here.”

6

God Designs the Great White Shark

One of The Far Side’s Favorite Subjects Gets an ‘Origin Story’

Having designed a voracious killing machine, The Far Side‘s God considers ways to lighten up the great white shark before deploying it to Earth. Many of The Far Side‘s comics star sharks, which fit with so many of Larson’s other obsessions (desert islands, empty-headed beach-goers, and the natural world.)

Since The Far Side is (usually) a single-panel comic, Larson has several tricks for dividing up the storytelling space and adding extra context and information. One trick Larson often uses it to depict both land and underwater, using the divide to set up two spaces, e.g. sharks waiting for unwitting beach-goers. Strangely, when depicting God, Larson seems to have been particularly prone to breaking The Far Side‘s single-panel tradition.

5

God Creates Herbivores

Larson Knows Nature Is Red in Tooth and Claw

The Far Side was originally pitched under the name Nature’s Way, and many of Larson’s comics depend on adopting an animal’s perspective on a harsh, deadly, and often surreal world. Using God as a character plays on the same themes, as the prey animals’ place in the food chain is made even more galling by coming from God himself in this strip.

4

Uh-Oh

A Very Larson Take on the Garden of Eden

Larson presents a much different version of the Garden of Eden, with God ‘gifting’ humanity the garden totally by accident. Larson has long loved depicting humans as specimens kept in jars, though it’s usually aliens who have captured humans to study. Imagining the history of humanity as one long, regrettable follow-through on a cosmic accident certainly helps to explain some major existential questions, and perhaps even why God might want to use that ‘SMITE’ button in the first place.

In a great detail, a squirrel and deer witness the accident and watch the first humans running off to claim the world for themselves, with a definite impression that they know this isn’t good. Imagining that same squirrel and deer were also present in the previous comic suggests that Earth’s herbivores are having an incredibly bad day.

3

God’s Early Experiments

Far Side’s Chickens Have Been Unlucky from the Start

In this strip, Larson plays on the idea of God’s omnipotence, imagining a supreme creator who had to work up to ineffability. The ‘young’ God’s efforts at creation go particularly badly, and the first chicken meets a grisly end. That’s par for the course for The Far Side‘s chickens, who tend to be all too aware that they’re not exactly at the top of the pecking order when compared to humanity, let alone deities.

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson admits that he was nervous about depicting God in a less-than-flattering light, however not because of fan reaction. Larson says:

I was mostly worried about the last cartoon … not because of readers, who for the most part found it to be a light and silly drawing, but because I started to feel like I was bucking for a lightning bolt to come out of the sky and turn me into something like the kid here.

2

Trivia Tonight

Larson Had 2 Rules to Avoid Hate Mail

Larson’s art has always done a lot with a little, but the image of Norman looking at his fellow competitor with irritation really sells this gag. The nightmare of going up against an omniscient being in a trivia competition is a great joke, especially because Norman was apparently the reigning champ until the ‘new guy’ turned up.

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson notes that in order to avoid reader outrage, he was careful to follow two rules:

First, I made God look the way I think most of us are pretty sure he looks. Secondly, I made sure he was really winning hands down. Even if Norman had only ten points it would have meant that he beat God to the buzzer at least once, and someone would have gotten mad.

1

God Makes the Snake

This Far Side Comic Perfectly Captures Larson’s Sense of Humor

Yet again, Larson has God designing animals, but this gag wins out because it’s so immediately funny. Pretty much everyone has had the experience of rolling clay between their hands to create a ‘snake,’ adding a tactile familiarity to the gag. At the same time, it’s perfectly in-keeping with Far Side logic that while God is capable of making every animal on Earth, he still had to do it by hand, making snakes a much-appreciated change of pace.

Interestingly – also in The Prehistory of The Far Side – Larson recounts an occasion where his pet boa constrictor attempted to squeeze the life out of him. Larson had bought the snake as a baby and hadn’t quite registered how huge it had become, growing to over 15 feet in length. Larson notes he was forced to rehome the snake, and has included a similar snake in multiple Far Side strips. Given Larson’s comments about fearing “a lightning bolt” in response to his irreverent comics, his run-in with the snake may suggest that the Almighty is more creative (and funnier) than The Far Side‘s creator gives him credit for. Those are Screen Rant’s picks for the 10 funniest Far Side comics starring God – be sure to vote below on which of these strips you find funniest.