While Gary Larson’s The Far Side is considered family friendly today, that wasn’t always the case. The comic’s surreal and often morbid sensibilities caused plenty of controversy during its original 16-year run, and there were several times when publications pulled it from their pages, and even moments where Larson thought certain strips would end his career for good.
Some comics got angry letters, some came with threats of legal action, and a few even received complaints from Amnesty International. Here are the 10 most controversial comics in The Far Side history, as well as how Larson feels about them in retrospect (with quotes drawn from his creator notes inThe Pre-History of The Far Side.)
10 Cow Tools
Starting off with a comic that made people confused more than angry, ‘Cow Tools’ is one of the most infamous comic strips ever printed. The joke is purely surreal – Larson explains in The Pre-History of The Far Side that he simply found the idea of what tools cows would make intriguing – especially given his interest in nature, and the idea of tool use defining the upper tier of animal intelligence. The silly cartoon (which arguably predicted the future tone of meme culture) created mass confusion, with newspapers even running stories on how nonplused America was with the comic. Larson and many of the papers who carried the comic were deluged with letters asking for an explanation. While these messages were bemused rather than angry, it was an embarrassing response for Larson. In The Pre-History of The Far Side, he admits:
The “Cow tools” episode is one that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. A week after it was published back in 1982, I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die.
9 Elephant’s Foot
While some newspapers would sporadically decline to publish the odd comic, Larson notes in The Pre-History of The Far Side that the Los Angeles Times had a habit of pulling his work. While he admits some of the darker strips they refused were fair matters of taste, he’s far more baffled with complaints about the above comic strip, in which an elephant is outraged to learn that their foot has been turned into a piece of furniture (a not uncommon practice of trophy hunters that The Far Side references in multiple comics.) Larson notes that far from making light of this kind of trophy, he finds it “appalling that the demand for ivory has caused these magnificent animals to be continuously poached,” and that he was mocking trophy hunting as inherently contemptuous of nature – a point that seems to have been missed by the newspaper.
8 Witch
Larson tends to take a thoughtful approach to criticism of his work, amiably admitting that tastes differ and even occasionally noting that he agrees with those who disliked a given strip. However, in the case of the above comic, Larson notes that while he received complaints from some parents, the comic is still “one of my personal favorites.” Larson cites the double-surrealism of being irritated that the witch ate both children – “as if to suggest one would have been pretty bad, but both is really unacceptable.”
7 Jane Goodall
An accomplished conservationist and noted expert on chimpanzees, Dame Jane Goodall guaranteed her place in pop culture by spending time living alongside apes in order to study them. Larson professes an immense respect for Goodall and intended the above comic affectionately, however it was quickly met with a damning letter from the Jane Goodall Institute, stating that the cartoon was “inexcusable” and questioning “the editorial judgment of running such an atrocity in a newspaper.” Larson was left in fear of a lawsuit, and declined to have it reprinted by the National Geographic Society.
Thankfully, that last move actually brought the comic to Goodall’s personal attention, as members of the organization reached out, puzzled by ‘her’ reaction. In The Pre-History of The Far Side, Larson shares how – once she’d actually seen the comic herself – Goodall reached out to give her approval, and even used it in fundraising for her institute (as well as writing a foreword for The Far Side Gallery 5.) The incident resulted in a friendship between Goodall and Larson, who later visited her research station in Tanzania.
6 Dog vs Car
Larson admits that the furor around this comic caught him by surprise, and it’s one of the rare Far Side controversies that came from a total misunderstanding. Larson envisioned the dog standing over the body of its ‘kill’ and letting out a triumphant howl, but the unfortunate placing of the transmission case gave some readers the impression that the dog and car were “romantically entangled.”
Larson shares some of the resultant hate mail in The Pre-History of The Far Side, with one reader saying the comic “goes so far beyond the bounds of decency I’m at a loss for words to describe it,” while another claims it “exceeded being ‘sick’ and became offensive.” More seriously, several newspaper editors complained, with one writing, “If I’ve got to start screening The Far Side for obscenity, then I don’t need it.”
5 Bobbing for Poodles
Larson is a major fan of nature, and many of his strips rely on the juxtaposition of placing animals in human situations, but with their animal instincts intact. While ‘animals doing funny things’ is a staple of newspaper comics, The Far Side is particularly aware of the darker side of the animal world, and many controversial comics deal with animals suffering in some manner. With this strip, angry readers claimed “you have offended millions of pet owners with this garbage,” though Larson notes that the original caption would have likely caused even more trouble, since the image was originally titled “Bobbing for babies.”
4 “Faster, Fifi!”
A truly controversial comic in The Far Side‘s run, Larson notes this was the first strip to get a notable negative reaction. Larson describes the violence depicted as a Tom and Jerry-style gag drawing on general antipathy to “little rat-sized dogs named Fifi” and the people who own them, however all many readers saw was animal cruelty played for laughs. One reader summed up this response, writing, “Gary Larson’s cartoon made me furious. It was cruel, stupid and ridiculous, not to mention hideous, idiotic and sick. In fact, all of Larson’s cartoons make me furious.”
3 Torturer of the Month
It’s rare that a newspaper comic strip can earn the ire of human rights organization Amnesty International, but several of Larson’s strips featuring torture have invited criticism from the group. Amnesty notes that torture remains a modern-day problem around the world, and media that either downplays its severity or makes it seem like an artifact of the past serves to obscure this fact – something that’s especially egregious to an institution that’s constantly trying to raise awareness. In The Pre-History of The Far Side, Larson notes that he considers his torture strips mostly harmless,” but that Amnesty International “has at least raised my consciousness to this problem.”
2 Surgeon
This The Far Side strip – which shows a surgeon throwing ‘scraps’ to a dog in the operating theater – has the honor of being so controversial, Larson’s editor never let it see print. In The Pre-History of The Far Side, Larson writes:
My editor returned this to me before the ink had dried. If it had been published, I’m sure I would have been up a certain creek without a paddle.
However, far from decrying editorial censorship, Larson uses the book to credit his editors with likely saving his career several times over by nixing comics that would have enraged readers who he was only trying to entertain. Amusingly, however, Larson also confirms that even the mildest scatological humor was impossible to get published in the early days of the strip – to the extent that he couldn’t even depict an outhouse or dung beetles.
1 Tethercat
Larson notes that the dog/cat hate that underpins ‘Tethercat’ has been fodder for cartoon humor for decades, but that didn’t stop cat-lovers expressing their rage over the strip when it was first published. An early controversy, Larson has said that at the time, he believed the furor over ‘Tethercat’ was going to end his career. Readers wrote to their local papers threatening to cancel their subscriptions and accused Larson of encouraging cruelty to animals, specifically suggesting children would be liable to copy the behavior shown in the comic. One reader wrote “you should be fined at least $1000 for each such cruel cartoon,” while another railed, “this is sick, sick humor!”
In The Pre-History of The Far Side, Larson muses on why the comic caused so much rage, and comes up with the theory that – unlike in a cartoon or even a longer comic strip – the violence is never resolved, giving it a uniquely distressing quality; as if the Tethercat game is still happening and always will be. Larson notes that some people would have liked a disclaimer saying that the cat escaped and came back with a bazooka, but that he’d probably then come under scrutiny from dog-lovers.
Despite these encounters with controversy, The Far Side remains beloved today, and went on to immense success. However, in an interview with The New York Times, Larson notes this was never guaranteed, and that various controversies could have sunk the strip. Accordingly, he expresses that “I’ll forever be grateful to fans, who in those early days rescued The Far Side from cancelation, or campaigned to get it reinstated.”
