Gary Larson published over 4000 The Far Side comics over 14 years, and no creator amasses that body of work without a few duds. However, there’s one Far Side comic that Larson regrets so much, it still makes him cringe to read it. It’s to Larson’s credit as a cartoonist that even the comic he hates isn’t actually terrible and may stand a chance of being some fans’ favorite.

The strip in question was published October 3, 1994, and shows two clowns in an alley, with one advancing on the other, custard pie held aloft. His intended victim extends a finger, warning, “I wouldn’t do that, Spunky – I have friends in pie places.” In The Complete Far Side: Volume 3, Larson writes, “Cartoonist’s note: Above is my own nominee for the worst cartoon I ever drew. (I still cringe.)”

Making Larson’s suffering even worse, the comic is from the last year of The Far Side‘s publication, making it impossible to dismiss as an early mistake where Larson hadn’t yet found his voice. At this point, Larson had drawn thousands of Far Side comics and thought (at least for a while) that this gag was worthy to stand alongside them – even though he changed his mind later.

Gary Larson Hates His ‘Pie Places’ Far Side Strip

The Clown Comic Has a Groan-Worthy Pun

Larson’s “worst cartoon I ever drew” is a pure pun, substituting ‘high places’ for a more clown-appropriate warning. While it’s far from The Far Side‘s witty, morbid, surreal best, it’s far from being a total dud by any measure. Gary Larson fans who love The Far Side for its wordplay might even be inclined to place this comic among the series’ best, depending on their appetite for puns. While Larson may dislike this comic above all others, it’s not the only time he’s critiqued his own work. Indeed, in the below comic, Larson disliked the end result enough to include a caption apologizing for the gag.

While Gary Larson may not have liked the ‘Pie Places’ comic, he definitely loved the image of clowns throwing custard pies. The image appears again and again across The Far Side‘s run, often taking on different meanings. Clowns throwing pies are implied to be doing everything from carrying out actual violence to engaging in a bizarre mating ritual. Larson even imagines a gigantic, King Kong-style clown being defeated by an equally giant-sized custard pie fired from a catapult.

These strips showcase Larson’s ability to take an image or scenario the reader instantly understands and then twist it in new and unexpected ways. With only a single panel to work with in most of his comics, any extra context that Larson can mine from common images, ideas, or existing pop culture helps tell a complete ‘story.’ This is perhaps the standard that ‘Pie Places’ failed in Larson’s eyes – while it presents a pun, the wordplay doesn’t quite connect with the situation in a way that enhances the gag.

The Far Side Has Never Been Afraid of Puns

Gary Larson’s Wordplay Is Part of What Makes The Far Side Unique

Looking at some of Gary Larson’s best puns shows why wordplay is part of what fans love about The Far Side. Generally, when Larson plays with a common phrase or idiom, he makes it the center of the comic’s ‘story’, creating a cartoon world where the statement makes sense. Old West cowboys play poker with literal varmints, cashiers serve half-drawn customers and householders open the fridge to find a food-based mugging in progress, all in the name of creating a world where the pun’s new meaning makes a surreal kind of sense.

One of the things that makes The Far Side unique is that it often takes chances other comic strips wouldn’t. While Jim Davis has put Garfield‘s success down to featuring jokes and situations that make sense anywhere in the world, The Far Side often presents gags where the reader needs to bring specific cultural or scientific knowledge to the table in order to get the joke. For example, the below strip would make no sense to someone who hasn’t heard the claim that the average American couple have ‘2.4 children.’

This high standard for readers has won The Far Side many hardcore fans, however it also means that there have been occasions where Larson’s intentions went awry. And unlike the ‘Pie Places’ comic, the result wasn’t always a substandard gag, but sometimes levels of outrage Larson feared would end his career.

The Far Side’s Clown Comic Isn’t Gary Larson’s Biggest ‘Mistake’

Far Side’s Biggest Missteps Enraged Readers

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson names several comics where he made out-and-out mistakes that broke the logic of the strip. The most famous is ‘Sled Chickens of the North’ where – in the originally published version of the strip – the chickens in question weren’t attached to the sled by anything (harnesses were added in later printings.) Larson also admits to a number of factual errors that were especially embarrassing given his love of nature and science, and the large fanbase of scientists who therefore read his comics. Larson notes that he received letters for depicting polar bears and penguins living together, and also got notes about a strip that shows bananas growing down rather than up. He admits, “One side of me wants to say, ‘So sue me,’ but the truth is, it does bug me when I make these kinds of mistakes.”

Despite The Far Side‘s frequent use of dinosaurs and cavepeople, Larson also admits that he always feels guilty furthering the misconception that the two ever lived side-by-side, suggesting that cartoonists should have a dedicated confessional where they can seek forgiveness for this kind of misleading choice. There have also been comics where readers simply didn’t get the joke – the ‘Cow Tools’ strip baffled readers on publication, with many looking for deeper meaning in what Larson calls a simple “exercise in silliness,” while a comic that shows a family of cows on holiday fell flat because no-one noticed that one of the younger cows is holding up ‘bunny ears’ behind its sibling’s head (in the art, this mostly just looks like a bow.)

There were also cases of mistakes outside Larson’s control. In The Complete Far Side: Volume One, Larson admits that he “curled into a fetal position” after a friend pointed out that the statue on the cover of In Search of The Far Side had a phallic shape that had been far less apparent before it was colored. Another strip featuring an individuality-obsessed penguin was colored for merchandise, with the colorists depicting the bird in bright yellow among a sea of black and white birds – a change that breaks the entire logic of the joke.

Most notoriously, some fans who read the comic ‘when car chasers dream’ misunderstood Larson’s intent and – due largely to the placement of the transmission – thought that (in Larson’s words) “the dog and the car appear to be ‘romantically’ entangled.” Complaints flooded in, with one claiming that the comic “exceeded being ‘sick’ and became offensive.”

While the ‘mistakes’ above caused a lot more trouble for Larson than the bad pun in ‘Pie Places,’ it’s telling that he didn’t select any of them as “the worst cartoon I ever drew.” For an artist, a piece of art that everyone misunderstood and got angry over is one thing, but nowhere near as bad as a piece of art they understood perfectly but didn’t care about. Is this strip really the worst that The Far Side had to offer? Vote in our poll below to find out where other The Far Side fans stand on Larson’s least favorite strip.