Some Of Gary Larson’s Best Far Side Comics Had Mind-Blowing Backstories

Fans of The Far Side know that the strip was often far more complex than it might seem at first glance – and the surprising backstories of some of his funniest comics make it clear that there is a ton to discover in any given panel. As writer and illustrator Gary Larson once revealed, many Far Side jokes started out as short stories before being turned into cartoons.

The Prehistory of The Far Side is an invaluable treasure for fans of Gary Larson’s work, offering an unparalleled behind-the-scenes look into the artist’s mind and the creative process behind the strip.

One of the most fascinating sections of the book explains why Far Side comics were so effective at capturing a sort of “in media res” style of humor. The Far Side was at its best when capturing a single moment, but even its author had to figure out how to get there first.

Far Side Comics’ Origin Stories Let Gary Larson Flex His Creative Muscles

A Comedy Powerhouse

Long before he became a professional cartoonist, Gary Larson liked to draw, and even as a child his nascent skill as a humorist was evident. As an adult, even while he became successful with the publication of The Far Side, Larson frequently let it be known that his true dream was to be a jazz guitarist. All that is to say, he was – and is to this day –a wildly talented, highly creative individual. So, it comes as little surprise that he occasionally dabbled in writing prose as well, in the form of very short stories.

As Larson explained in The Prehistory of the Far Side, some of his cartoons originated as brief vignettes, jotted down in his notebook, before they were fully realized as Far Side comics. Perhaps the most notable example was one 1983 comic, in which a student brings his project – a giant, intimidating looking robot – to his Metal Shop teacher’s office for grading. What makes the panel amusing on its own is the seeming lack of realization on the teacher’s part about what he is about to turn around and behold, as well as the aggressive way the student addresses his instructor.

The comic’s backstory, however, offers a very different perspective:

We had designed the robot in metal shop to do peaceful functions and serve mankind. Mr. Rockford supervised the project but mostly he just read his magazines and swore at us for screwing around excessively. As the semester waned, a few of us who were hoping to get an “A” became concerned that the robot may indeed not be completed in time. Subsequently, we all agreed to start showing up during study hall and after school to work on the thing.

Without supervision, however, things gradually got out of hand. I think it was Randy Boone who suggested inserting the death-ray. It went on from there as we constructed the steel-tooth mandibles and a double-barreled flamethrower. Weeks later, our creation was completed and we activated it for the first time at an assembly in front of the entire student body. Needless to say, when the carnage finally ended, we all received an “F.”

The backstory of the student and his killer robot embodies the most outrageous, hilarious elements of The Far Side, while also serving as a testament to the care and effort that often went into even Gary Larson’s most seemingly off-the-cuff, throwaway jokes. Interestingly, the story itself is distinct from the subsequent comic – indicating that Larson’s work was, in cases like this, a form of self-adaptation. Rather than depict what he’d written, the artist pulled from it to inspire a related piece of art in a different medium.

The Far Side Is The Product Of A Dynamic, Multi-Faceted Artistic Mind

Man Of Many Talents

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Gary Larson shared several more short stories that developed into Far Side comics, and their self-adaptive nature is one of the most fascinating things about this insight into the author’s creative process. Only one example – the tale of young Bobby Scwartz, who ran away after growing “tired of being forced to eat his oatmeal,” subsequently making it half-way around the world before someone called his family –features a direct connection between the story and the eventual finished comic.

The others are much closer to the “Metal Shop Robot” comic – establishing an idea that Larson would later articulate in a drawing. Another example stands out in particular because of the writer’s use of first-person POV:

I was standing in the kitchen one day, fixing a sandwich or something, when suddenly I heard a very distinct “sneeze” emanate from the fridge. Naturally curious, I opened the door and scrutinized the various food items. Suddenly, the mayonnaise began to scream, “The ketchup did it! The ketchup!”

Of course, I was stunned. This was, after all, an inanimate object. And, truthfully, to this very day, I’ve never been able to coax the ketchup to say or do anything, and have concluded that the sneeze was my own imagination.

Given The Far Side’s predilection for depicting anthropomorphized inanimate objects, it is surprising that Gary Larson’s narrator in this vignette so directly engages with the surreality of the idea. Especially considering that this story eventually turned into a comic where a human character interacts with the life-like items in his fridge, without giving it a second thought.

Both the “Metal Shop Robot” and “Condiment Dance” Far Side panels, and their respective backstories, evoke a clear sense of the idiosyncratic creative process that ultimately grounded Gary Larson’s success. In each case, the original story perfectly demonstrates Larson’s characteristic sense of humor. It also indicates the artistic flexibility to recognize how his ideas had to be adapted for that humor to carry over, in one way or another, from the written word to the cartoon panel. The fact that many Far Side strips started as prose makes it clear that Gary Larson had a deft artistic sensibility, across multiple mediums.

Larson’s Prose Stories Were Like Sketches Of Future Jokes

The Creative Process Behind The Far Side

Among the other short stories shared by Gary Larson in The Prehistory was one about a shotgun wielding Grandma taking on aliens, and one where a lonely man receives a phone call from God, who promptly hangs up after realizing he dialed the wrong number. Visitors from another world, and depictions of a bearded, sagacious-looking Judeo-Christian appeared frequently in The Far Side; what this shows is that Larson’s stories were the equivalent of his sketches, ideas that he had to get out on the page, so he could work on them later.

Larson was the first to admit that his humor was often inscrutable – the backstories to some Far Side panels clarify that he was not firing off one non-sequitur after another, but instead that many of his weirdest jokes had context, the reader just wasn’t always privy to it. While his best jokes might have been started by letting his subconscious leak out onto the page – in one form or another – the end result was the product of careful, consistent refinement, as he sought to formulate the most impactful version of each of his ideas.

Gary Larson always labored over Far Side jokes; as an artist, the smallest details of an illustration, or a single syllable of a caption, could make all the difference to how the strip’s humor landed. A look at some of his prose work, and how it inspired later panels, offers a valuable perspective on one of the most unique creative minds of the twentieth-century. Everything from jazz music, to classic cinema, to everyday observations influenced Larson, and the backstories for some The Far Side how his ideas took shape in response.

Source: The Prehistory of The Far Side