The summer of 1986 is looked back on with great nostalgia as a high watermark of popular culture, and while many classic blockbuster films were hitting theaters from June-August of that year, Gary Larson's The Far Side was truly reaching its own ascendancy as a staple of newspaper comic sections nationwide.

This makes it worth exploring, in more detail, the Far Side cartoons readers would have encountered in the summer of ‘86; these s will have readers wishing they had a time machine, though not one of The Far Side’s faulty ones, to go back and experience this moment in time for themselves.

The beauty of revisiting Far Side s from this era is that one can imagine themselves opening up the newspaper and discovering it for the first time, at the start of a hot mid-80s midsummer day.

10 The Far Side Flips The Script On Human-Frog , Delivering A Disquieting Visual

First Published: June 25, 1985

This is an example of a Far Side illustration in which Gary Larson dabbled in surreal, almost body-horror-style imagery, taking the folk knowledge that touching a frog can communicate warts and flipping it, so readers get to see a toad covered in small growths that look like the head and limbs of a human child.

"Wait a minute, Vince!" the afflicted frog's friend surmises, recalling "last summer" when "some little kid caught you, handled you, and tossed you back in the swamp." It is a borderline disturbing visual, but the absurd inversion of the familiar is so outrageous, in a good way, that the art successfully combines with the punchline to produce an underrated classic Far Side comic.

9 The Far Side's Invertebrate Characters Allowed Gary Larson To Take Unique Liberties

First Published: July 10, 1986

"Honey, it's the Worthingtons...our favorite couple of slimebags," a slug tells her spouse as it opens the door to find they have visitors; for humans, this would either be the sort of thing one would never say, or otherwise, might declare with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Yet the use of slug characters here allows Far Side artist Gary Larson to envision a scenario in which a character would utter this in an utterly genuine way, as the speaker is depicted with a genuine look of pleasant surprise on its face. This comic is representative of the fact that the more inhuman Larson's characters were, the more he relied on giving them human eyes, a Far Side trick used to convey character and emotion.

8 The Far Side Gets Real In This Cartoon About One-Sided Love

First Published: July 19, 1986

The Far Side, at its core, was an absurdist caricature of human behavior, even though this was often rendered by Gary Larson using animal characters acting human, in human situations. In a way, that makes a cartoon like this one, in which Larson strips away all the pretense of his work, and depicts two very real-feeling human characters, stand out among The Far Side's vast canon.

Split into two frames, this comic depicts a man lying awake at night wondering if his unrequited crush even knows who he is, while the bottom half of the shows what his crush is thinking about at the exact same time: "you know, I think I really like vanilla." This is a pitch-perfect rendition of the pangs and perils of love, and the fact that Gary Larson used human characters makes it especially noteworthy, because of the "all-too-real" feeling it manages to communicate.

7 This Far Side Dinosaur Uses Its Weapon-Like Tail A Little Too Frivolously

First Published: July 27, 1986

"thagomizer," a term coined by Gary Larson himself, at a fly, which buzzes in and out of the dinosaur's living room unfazed.

The walls, meanwhile, are left worse for wear by the impact of the thagomizer, illustrated with an emphatic "WUMPH" in the fourth of the cartoon, as another hole is added to the wall, of which there are already several evident in the first few frames. As far as wordless jokes go, this one is highly amusing, and skillfully executed by Larson, making this another quietly iconic Far Side entry.

6 The Far Side Takes On Faith Healers In This Classic Parody

First Published: July 30, 1986

Captioned "appliance healers," this Far Side cartoon lampoons the idea of faith healing, especially when it is done for fame and fortune. "I command the foul demons that have clogged this vacuum cleaner to come OUT!!," a man with a pompadour and rolled-up shirt-sleeves says, laying hands on the vacuum as its owner clutches her hands, praying for a miracle.

Behind her, a woman stands with her microwave, and behind her there is a man holding a toaster; the reader can imagine this line stretching off indefinitely behind the curtain, in a gag that comments both on the universal experience of owning a busted appliance, but not being ready to give it up, and the very particular phenomenon of religious healers, who sell their "skills" to desperate audiences.

5 The Far Side's "Turbulence Fake-Out" Comic Is Every Air Commuter's Nightmare

First Published: August 3, 1986

The Far Side featured some of the worst pilots imaginable, from devious pranksters to full-on dangerous and unqualified; this is a case of more of the former, with a hint of the latter, as the reader is given a view into the cockpit of a commercial jet, where the pilots are busting up laughing as they subject their engers to pretend turbulence, just to amuse themselves.

This is the kind of joke that preys upon both people's implicit trust, and their skepticism about flying, in general, and pilots, in particular; pilots are looked at, by some, with reverence, because their job involves taking on a massive responsibility. Here, Larson undermines that by depicting his pilot as mischievous, and worse, bored, a potentially deadly combination when dealing with the power of flight.

4 Gary Larson Uses The Far Side's Ants To Embody A Familiar Argument

First Published: August 9, 1986

In this Far Side ant comic, a pair of ant parents are shown sitting on the couch, trying to read their respective newspapers, as their children crawl all over the floors, and the walls, and even the ceiling, in the process getting a little to close for comfort to the giant (relative to their size, at least) magnifying glass propped up against the wall of their apartment, for some undisclosed reason.

"I wish you'd get rid of that hideous thing," the ant "wife" says to its spouse, "I think it's just plain dangerous to even have one in the house." This will strike some readers as familiar, as many might've had parents, spouses, or roommates who kept something unneeded, and at times even dangerous, in the house despite is serving no logistic, or aesthetic purpose. Gary Larson perfectly lampoons that here, in a comic that once more relies heavily on the ants' eyes to add to the humor.

3 There's Nothing Unusual About This Far Side Comic, Which Almost Makes It Weird

First Published: August 15, 1986

"They weren't the most evil people in the world, nor the best," the caption of this Far Side cartoon explains, before explaining that "they were the Village of the Darned," a spoof on the beloved 1960 sci-fi horror film The Village of the Damned, later remade in 1995 by John Carpenter.

What stands out about this Far Side comic, paradoxically, is that nothing about it truly stands out, which is precisely the point of the punchline. Gary Larson's sense of humor tended to rely on placing something out of the ordinary in an ordinary context, or taking something familiar out of its familiar milieu. Here, though, Larson captures a moment of total ordinariness in itself; it is effective in the context of the "Village of the Darned" joke, but it also contributes to this Far Side comic standing out less than others.

2 Old Man Tarzan Runs Into An Old Friend, In A Far Side That Leaves Readers Asking Questions

First Published: August 23, 1986​​​​​​​

Tarzan appears throughout The Far Side with surprising frequency, with this being perhaps Gary Larson's most out-on-a-tree-limb gag feature the Man of the Jungle, as he depicts an elderly version of the character, notably living in the city, rather than out in the wild, coming across "Cheetah," a chimpanzee character familiar from Tarzan lore.

"Their reunion was brief and awkward," the caption explains, given an apparent fissure in their friendship which happened as a result of "that ugly 'Jane incident'"; everything about this clicks into place in a way that makes it delightfully funny; from the way it captures the discomfort of running into a former friend, to the way the reader is left wondering what precisely the "Jane incident" is referring to, and what exactly what it so ugly, from the detail of "Cheetah" working for an accordion-playing busker on a street corner, all accumulate to form another underappreciated brilliant Far Side cartoon.

1 This Far Side Cartoon Takes Readers Where No One Has Gone Before

First Published: August 27, 1986​​​​​​​

In this classic Far Side cartoon, which evokes the most brutal days of summertime, Gary Larson takes readers "inside the sun," where they find a man with his feet up on a table, thumbing through a newspaper, surrounded by oscillating fans, next to a giant switch labeled "Rise/Set," which he is apparently in charge of.

Outside the window are the raging flames of the sun, confirming that this is one of The Far Side's toughest jobs, although the guy in the cartoon doesn't look like he's having the worst time. This is a sterling example of Larson's ability to reveal an absurd and irreverent side to the most familiar things in life, especially things people take for granted, such as the sun. Though it might not be the most laugh-out-loud Far Side , it is representative of his overall comedic project in a notable way.