Summary
- Title: The Far Side’s Best Cat Comics
- “A Squirrel’s Nest”
- “What to Do Today…”
Gary Larson’s The Far Side famously loves animals – in fact, the strip was originally going to be titled Nature’s Way – with a focus on everything from house pets to its recurring giant squid. While Larson definitely favors dogs, The Far Side has many great cat comics, with feline protagonists hunting down small creatures and putting humans in their place.
These are the 15 best Far Side comics that focus on cats, published during Gary Larson’s original 1980-1994 syndicated run. Be sure to vote in our end of article poll for your favorite, and to see which strip other readers think deserves the top spot.
15
“Keep the Door Shut!”
Far Side Takes Kitty ‘Gifts’ to the Extreme
Some of the best Far Side strips are those where the dialogue and situation make everyday sense, with just one detail pushing the image into the absurd. Here, a cat owner tries to prevent their feline bringing small, dead animals into the household as ‘gifts.’ However, in Larson’s world it’s not one bird or mouse, but a whole trailer full of them. The bipedal cat and sidewalk setting give this strip a similar look to George Gately’s Heathcliff – a strip with a similar appreciation of surrealism to The Far Side.
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14
“Randy’s Goin’ Down!”
Far Side’s Classic Surrealism Gets a Feline Twist
The Far Side often drops animals into a human-like world, and here Larson imagines a cat ‘catching’ mice by buying them from a gumball machine. One of the hallmarks of The Far Side is treating life as cheap – not necessarily in a ghoulish way, but more in the sense of adopting a scientific perspective. Larson treats the natural world as a place where predators hunt prey and the worst can very easily happen, with even his human strips maintaining this core philosophy. While it may technically be family friendly, The Far Side was (and remains) darker than the normal level of newspaper comic strip humor, as this strip demonstrates.
13
Wooden Leg
Larson Loves Wooden Legs a Surprising Amount
One of The Far Side‘s best tricks is flipping perspectives, as Larson presents a familiar situation, introduces an odd character, then forces the reader to adopt their perspective. In this strip, what’s initially an old sea dog’s wooden leg becomes a scratching post from a cat’s perspective. Larson loves putting a new spin on wooden legs, imagining pretty much every way animals could misunderstand the prosthetic, from beavers taking a bite to a squirrel nesting in an old man’s leg.
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12
What to Do Today…
This Far Side Strip Shows How Color Can Change Larson’s Humor
This strip is essentially the definition of dramatic irony, where the true meaning of a moment comes from the reader possessing knowledge that the character doesn’t have. In this strip, a cat wonders how to spend its day, as a nest full of baby birds waits above, sure to end up as its next project. In-keeping with Larson’s appreciation of nature, a lot of his cat comics depict them predating on smaller animals, just as many of his dog comics show them bullying cats. It’s a major, even overused theme in cartoons, though in the world of Far Side, there’s no sense of a bloodless, Tom and Jerry-style ending.
The different ways this strip has been colored shows how Larson’s comics can shift meaning when they move out of his original black and white. Above, one version of the comic uses minimal coloring, while another adds more cloud and shadow. While more detailed, the latter changes the joke, as now the chicks are hidden in shadow, rather than being on full display as the first thing the reader will definitely see. This is far from the most extreme effect color has had on one of Larson’s gags.
In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson mentions that when one of his comics was selected for merchandising, the intent was accidentally flipped. The comic sees a penguin in a huge crowd singing about its individuality, with the joke being that it’s actually identical to all the other penguins around it. However, when the gag was colorized, the artist colored the penguin bright yellow, with Larson stating “the entire point of the cartoon had been reversed.”
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11
Cat Showers
Some Far Side Comics Really Need Their Captions
In one of The Far Side‘s single weirdest images of all time, a cat stands in a traditional bathroom taking a shower – except instead of a jet of water, it’s using a gigantic tongue. The comic is a simple gag about feline self-grooming, but making the situation even a little more ‘human’ makes it way, way more disturbing. Without the caption clarifying what’s going on here, this panel could risk being the next Cow Tools – a Far Side strip so widely misunderstood that it actually made headlines because of the number of people trying to figure out what it’s about.
10
“I Know Nothing”
Far Side Goes Full Looney Tunes
This is one of the rare Far Side comics that would actually be stronger without its text, as a pet owner comes home to a scene that tells a very clear story. The panel lays out Gary Larson’s ability to tell a short story with a single image, and the reader is just as aware as the pet owner who’s responsible for the destroyed bird cage and missing canary. The idea of a housecat using dynamite and a plunger to get at a bird irresistibly brings Looney Tunes to mind, and there are similarities between Larson’s sensibilities and the classic cartoon’s. Most prominently, both have Acme Corporations that provide unusual inventions to their characters.
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9
The Rothenbergs
Far Side Offers Up a Comic for Cat Owners
In another strip where the bare premise makes sense, but is given a subtle tweak, a cat husband complains because his wife Zelda has alerted their annoying neighbors that they’re home by using a loud kitchen appliance. Of course, everyone being cats, the moment turns into a gag on the way cats suddenly appear once they sense that dinner is about to be served.
8
If Pets Wore Hats
Larson Nails the Public Perception of Cats and Dogs
Larson distills the cultural idea of ‘dogs are foolish but fun, cats are smart but aloof’ by simply putting them in the perfect headgear, showing a group of vacant-eyed dogs in baseball caps while the cats in the tree above are rocking stylish fedoras complete with ostentatious feathers. The joke could stop there, but Larson being a master, he uses a nearby window to depict a canary in a giant cowboy hat, communicating the undeserved confidence of the average pet bird.
7
“Is He Friendly?”
Larson Creates the Best Form of the Joke by Prioritizing Inference
Larson loves the gag of someone blithely underestimating a clearly dangerous animal, especially if someone else in the scene has visible injuries that should make them think twice. In this case, the joke is made all the stronger because the cat is so small and calm, allowing the reader to at least dip into the speaking character’s perspective, assuming the pet is harmless. With that said, Larson also managed to make the gag work with an imposing pterodactyl.
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6
Curiosity Killed the Cat…s
Far Side’s Recurring Detective Discovers a Deadly Idiom
The Far Side loves taking a turn of phrase over-literally, in this case imagining a case where – instead of their inquisitiveness luring them into a dangerous situation – a group of cats are literally killed by an excess of curiosity. It’s worth noting that the saying “curiosity killed the cat” describes a singular cat, with Larson upping the death toll for an even weirder scene. Thankfully, this only ranks about halfway on the list of weirdest things Far Side‘s trenchcoat-wearing detective has been called to investigate.
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5
Bob’s Assorted Rodents
Far Side Goes Looney Tunes Again with a Subtly Surreal Gag
In another comic for cat owners, Larson depicts a kitty that desperately wants to get outside after witnessing an accident it could only have imagined in its wildest dreams. It would have been easy for Larson to make this gag fit more neatly into the real world (using a milk float, for example), but instead he thinks up the two most specific, surreally perfect-for-the-situation businesses possible to drive this cat to distraction.
Longtime fans of The Far Side will be glad to see its secret recurring character rear his head yet again, as the second business involved in the crash belongs to Al – Larson’s placeholder name for generic and weird business ventures. Sadly, this strip makes it clear why Al needs to keep switching professions, as his latest venture yet again ends in disaster.
4
What They Hear
Larson Returns to the Dog/Cat Binary for More Laughter
While published separately (indeed, months apart, in December and October 1983), these comics are best presented as a pair, with Larson exploring the way pets process ‘feedback’ from their owners. While dogs are shown not understanding anything their owners say other than their own names, it’s implied that cats don’t care enough to take in any information whatsoever.
3
Dog Threat Letters
A Tiny Detail Shows Larson’s Mastery of the Form
In the hands of almost any other creator, this comic would be stronger without the dog running away – the implication of a hound hurling a bone through the window of this cat household should be stronger if the culprit is already gone. However, Larson’s art turns this idea on its head. Every detail – from the cats’ expressions not being shown to the dog’s resentful look back – enhances the gag, and the decision to show the dog running on all fours when it was presumably bipedal to make the throw is genius, accentuating the weird ‘animals as humans (but also still as animals)’ premise in the perfect way.
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The gag is enhanced by several small touches, from the different fonts on the note to the use of a bone rather than a brick to the single, nondescript photo on the cats’ wall showing the front view that the reader isn’t given of the characters. Larson is a master of this kind of single-image comic, and it’s a tragedy of the medium that the factors that prove it will always be subtle and easily overlooked. However, it’s a genuinely impressive truth that there’s no version of this joke funnier than the version Larson created.
2
Arrested
Small Choices Make a Masterpiece
Sometimes the brilliance of a Far Side strip comes from what’s implied to have happened just before or after, but sometimes – as in this strip – the humor comes from the fact that nothing could explain where these characters now find themselves. The idea of the police turning up in force to arrest an everyday housecat is a great visual, especially given the weapons they seem to think they’ll need to keep their prisoner under control. Pairing that overly dramatic nonsense with the mooted, domestic reaction of the owner is perfection.
1
Trickery! Trickery! Trickery!
Larson’s Command of Language Upgrades Good to Great
The idea of dogs clubbing together to learn more about their natural enemies is funny, and the concept that they’re genuinely fooled by a cat fluffing itself up is even better, but Larson makes this his best ‘cat comic’ of all time with the simple, repeated phrase, “Trickery! Trickery! Trickery!” The knowing, disapproving, overly formal phrasing of the teacher is pitch perfect, showing that Larson’s popularity isn’t just about his ability to create great images, but also his command over the phrasing that will deliver the absolute best form of each joke.
Those are Gary Larson’s 15 best cat comics – be sure to vote below for your favorite feline Far Side strips, and let us know whether you agree or disagree with our #1 pick.
The Far Side
- Summary:
- Written and drawn by Gary Larson, The Far Side is a comic strip series that ran from December 1979 to January 1995. A worldwide hit, The Far Side explores life’s surreal side and uses a mix of humans and anthropomorphic animals. As of 2020, Gary Larson decided to pick his pencil back up again and has started The Far Side up, circulating the comics on his official website.
- Writer:
- Gary Larson
- Colorist:
- Gary Larson
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