“I Remember Thinking the World Was Going to End”: Gary Larson’s Far Side Was Shaped by the Dark Reality of Growing Up in the 60s

Like everyone in his generation, the creator of The Far Side, Gary Larson, grew up with the ever-present threat of nuclear war looming over his head – something that proved to have a major influence on his art as an adult. Larson often illustrated the end of the world in his cartoons, in part as a way to process his deadly serious concerns about humanity’s potential for civilization-ending catastrophe.

Appearing in a segment on The Far Side for ABC’s news program 20/20, Larson gave an honest appraisal of the influence Cold War-era fears of nuclear armageddon had on his absurdist style of humor. More than just prompting his frequent comics featuring nuclear bombs and explosions, the artist’s fears of mutually assured destruction were formative to his entire comedic sensibility.

In this way, Gary Larson’s work – as strange as it may have been at times – held a deeply familiar resonance for readers during its initial run, something that subsequent generations of readers might overlook, or have difficulty identifying with.

Gary Larson’s Cold War Upbringing Shaped His Humor

The Far Side Was A Product Of Its Time

Gary Larson’s anxieties about the end of the world, and more specifically, about humanity bringing about the extinct of itself – and by extension, every other species on Earth – weighed heavily upon his work in The Far Side. From its debut on December 31, 1979, until it ceased publication on January 1, 1995, Gary Larson regularly sought to find solace in humor, as he contemplated the calamity hanging over humanity’s collective heads. According to its creator, The Far Side was very much a product of his Cold War-era upbringing:

It was going from Leave It To Beaver to bomb shelters. I remember sitting in my seventh-grade English class thinking that the world was going to end during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It made you look at the world a little bit askew.

This early, regular exposure to the possibility of global crisis would later be embodied in The Far Side, which regularly featured characters who were absolutely doomed. Often, these characters were caught unaware, at the moment just before tragedy struck. Danger and despair were ever-present in Gary Larson’s comic; Far Side jokes, in effect, tended to have “Sword of Damocles” energy. This was the most notable lasting Cold War-era impression on the strip, as some of its funniest moments used that tension to great comedic effect.

For Gary Larson and people his age, the brushes with nuclear apocalypse they experienced were very real, and this had a profound effect on all of them, to some degree or another. Larson processed his fear using humor – in turn, his feelings about nuclear bombs and their makers helped to forge his sense of what was funny, leading to his inimitable comedic style later in life. In effect, The Far Side may not overtly feel like a lasting legacy of the Cold War, but a closer look at how and why it often dealt with death and destruction proves that it is.

The Far Side Depicted Armageddon Regularly Throughout The 1980s

More Than The Average Comic Strip

The Far Side ran throughout the 1980s, the final decade of the Cold War, and during that time readers regularly opened up their newspapers to the comics section to find another Gary Larson drawing of a nuclear explosion. The boldness of the strip’s depiction of atomic disaster may not carry across time, but for audiences in the 1980s – especially young adults like Larson, who had no conscious memory of pre-nuclear reality – it would have been a deliberate, and even somewhat confrontational choice of subject matter to joke about.

Of course, this was the point for him as an artist. Above all else, Gary Larson sought to get a reaction out of his readers, to provoke any kind of response, ranging from “What-the?” to “My God!” and everything in between, laughter being just one of several options. Coupled with his strong feelings about nuclear armament, this impulse must have made him feel almost compelled to address the subject, in his own irreverent – and at times, caustic – manner of doing things in The Far Side.

Beyond just an expression of his concerns about atomic weaponry, Larson’s repeated use of the mushroom cloud as imagery made a certain degree of artistic sense. A core virtue of The Far Side was its brevity, using a single panel and, usually, brief captions to communicate its jokes. Often, Far Side strips ran with no words at all. As a result, Gary Larson tended to rely on familiar visual and cultural cues to help his punchlines land. It’s safe to say that few of his recurring elements were as visually evocative as the nuclear explosion.

The Far Side Highlighted The Absurdity Of Nuclear Weapons

A Valuable Reminder

In a way, The Far Side’s jokes about nuclear explosions, and atomic bombs, were a needed reminder that these things remained a danger to civilization, even as the Cold War wound down. Throughout The Far Side, there was a strong vein of naturalism to match Gary Larson’s disdain for weapons of mass destruction. The artist’s unease with human folly was another constant in the strip’s run – with his armageddon jokes being just the most potent, large-scale example of the same instinct that led to jokes about bears killing hunters, and other comics where humans’ supposed supremacy led to their downfall.

From depictions of aliens watching the Earth explode, to jokes about bickering couples in bomb shelters, The Far Side not only called attention to the threat of atomic bombs, but did so while delivering some of its funniest jokes. Similarly, Gary Larson’s panels about unexploded bombs took aim at the idea that society, on a global scale, had learned to live with the possibility of destruction, rather than commit to nuclear disarmament. The patent absurdity of this put it squarely within the domain of a Far Side joke.

As an expression of Gary Larson’s childhood, including his formative fears, interests and experiences, The Far Side extended beyond just the possibility of nuclear exchange – but that was certainly among its most relevant recurring obsessions, and most crucial social critiques. Contemporary audiences will certainly find Larson’s apocalyptic editions of The Far Side funny, proving his humor has withstood the test of time, but it’s also valuable to consider the larger insight into the strip’s iconic humor at they represent.

Source: 20/20 Gary Larson interview, January 8, 1987