Summary

• Gary Larson's best The Far Side comics originally published July 1984.
• This list includes some of The Far Side's biggest obsessions: man vs chicken, surreal cows, desert island mishaps, and the Devil struggling to run Hell.
• In fact, we're calling our #1 entry Larson's best desert island gag among dozens.

Gary Larson's The Far Side ran from 1980 to 1994, with such a high quality that every month sees an all-time great comic strip celebrate a major birthday. In this case, we're looking at the 10 best comics from July 1984, celebrating the best of the best that just turned 40.

This list includes some of The Far Side's biggest obsessions: man vs chicken, surreal cows, desert island mishaps, and the Devil struggling to run Hell. In fact, we're calling our #1 entry Larson's best desert island gag among dozens.

10 Eggs

Far Side's July 21, 1984 Comic

There are some Far Side gags that require you to tune into Gary Larson's wavelength before you understand them. In this strip, readers see the moment after a farmer tripped, spilling and smashing the eggs he just collected from a chicken coop. The humor comes from the chickens' incredulity at seeing all their 'hard work' going to waste, as they stare down in disbelief at the farmer. One of the core ideas of The Far Side is depicting a world where animals have human intelligence but remain at the same low rung in the pecking order. That perspective creates great moments like this, where the people interacting with animals have to deal with their judgment.

Larson uses chickens a lot in The Far Side, tapping into how bizarre their relationship with humans would be if they knew they were perceived as the providers of eggs and meat - hence their outrage at the farmer wasting their time and energy.

The idea of humans and animals interacting was always core to Larson's vision for The Far Side - in fact, he originally wanted to call the strip Nature's Way before being talked around by his editors. That's probably for the best, as Far Side clearly didn't miss out on any animal humor, but now also includes scientists, surrealism, and meta gags.

9 Fresh Burgers Tonight!

Far Side's July 17, 1984 Comic

Cows are ubiquitous in The Far Side, with Larson explaining that he uses the bovine characters so often because he thinks they perfectly combine humor and tragedy. There are a ton of Far Side comics that build their jokes on the surreal inclusion of cows, and this goofy gag is among the best. However, fishing is also a surprisingly common topic for Gary Larson, with this strip being one of the few fishing gags that isn't somehow also tied into the theme of death.

The link is understandable once you factor in Larson's "animals as people" theme - fishing in an incredibly morbid pastime from the point of view of the fish, and Larson simply extends this logic to the humans who enjoy the hobby.

8 Rat Poison

Far Side's July 25, 1984 Comic

One of The Far Side's best gags is setting up a moment that makes no sense once you consider what has to have happened right before. For example, the iconic image of a penguin slipping on a banana peel it must have been able to see long before it became an issue

The gag is essentially the same in this rat comic - how did rat poison ever find its way into the kitchen cupboards of two actual rats? The joke walks right up to the line of being meta, winking at the reader's appreciation of Larson's "animals as people" approach, and presenting a situation where that concept breaks down. The rats are a normal domestic couple, so it stands to reason they'd have rat poison, but in a world where a normal domestic couple can also be rats, the logic of their lives immediately starts to break down. Larson often includes small details that make his jokes even funnier, and the rat wife's house dress and apron definitely make the core gag of this strip even funnier.

7 "I Hate This Place"

Far Side's July 4, 1984 Comic

In this laugh-out-loud strip, a denizen of Hell has missed the point of eternal damnation, as he decides it's noteworthy that he's not having a very good time. Despite the premise of this strip, it's actually surprising that anyone is actually suffering in Larson's vision of Hell. As cruel and deadly as the world of Far Side can be to its inhabitants, Larson generally depicts Hell as being run in the most incompetent way possible.

Larson's Devil might suffer more than any of his other characters, constantly confronted by employees who show no commitment to human suffering and deceased charges who ignore his authoirty by scrawling graffiti on the walls, ordering in pizza and turning down the thermostat - even his own mom is working against him.

6 Giant Squid

Far Side's July 13, 1984 Comic

The Far Side's giant squid turns up way more than you might think, but this strip showcases the humorous idea at the core of the joke - a normal guy is keeping a gigantic squid as a pet, not realizing a) how strange that is or b) how dangerous his house pet actually is to guests. Interestingly in a world of talking animals, Larson's giant squid comics tend to treat it as possessing non-human intelligence, enhancing its bizarre nature as something that clearly doesn't belong in a domestic setting.

5 You've Got to Stop Believing These Guys

Far Side's July 20, 1984 Comic

In its second trip to Hell of the month, The Far Side shows that the Devil isn't just contending with the damned, but with his own demonic employees. The idea of demons letting the damned escape on such a flimsy pretext shows just how badly run Far Side's Hell actually is, while Larson's combination of a boring office setting and the fiery Eternal Pit is a great visual gag. The comic also showcases Larson's oft-imitated habit of including a named character to enhance the gag, making the setting feel more everyday and thus emphasizing the more surreal elements.

The idea of the Devil dressing down an employee for letting the damned escape is funny, but Far Side makes the joke even better by extending the idea that this one specific demon, Edgar, is particularly and hilariously bad at his job. It's a core rule of comedy that 'specific is funny,' and Larson got the memo.

4 Imprinting Studies

Far Side's July 11, 1984 Comic

Larson's love of science and nature is often evident in The Far Side, and one of the things that makes the strip so beloved is that it often asks more of its readers than its contemporaries. In this case, the gag hinges on the reader knowing that ducklings imprint on their mother at a young age and that in studies of this behavior, they've often imprinted on the scientists studying them instead, following them around as a bizarre little family. This is the idea that Larson uses as the foundation for his joke, where the situation has flipped and a scientist has somehow become imprinted on the ducks.

This kind of gag explains why Far Side is famously beloved by scientists, to the extent that discoveries have been named in Larson's honor. Multiple newly discovered insects have been named for Larson, and his joke term for a stegosaurus' tail spikes was adopted by the scientific community.

3 Forest Custodians

Far Side's July 6, 1984 Comic

Far Side has a lot of explicitly fourth wall-breaking comics, but even when it's not quite acknowledging the audience, it maintains a healthy appreciation for its own artifice. Here, Larson imagines that forests have their own custodians who casually clean up after the animals. It's a funny premise by itself, but it also nods to the idea of Far Side comics essentially being a performance with their own sets and staff. Of course Larson's forest has custodians, since it's not an actual forest, and all the animals go home to their houses after their 'scenes.'

In the world of The Far Side, there are musicians on hand to provide background music, 'actors' have to pretend they can't see each other's speech bubbles, and all of his characters actually live together in a single apartment (just like the cast of every other comic strip.)

Perhaps the best version of this gag is the strip introducing the "Far Side cast," which confirms all Larson's characters are played by 'actors,' with some recurring personalities explaining why many of his characters look the same.

2 Spare Armadillo?

Far Side's July 28, 1984 Comic

In The Complete Far Side, Gary Larson says his main goal was that every Far Side strip should make the reader exclaim "What the--?" Often, he achieves this by adding one surreal detail to an otherwise familiar, everyday situation - in this case, a man wondering how he can get away with keeping his armadillos to himself when he's about to be asked if he has any to spare.

1 I Think He Sees Us!

Far Side's July 31, 1984 Comic

Our #1 pick for July 1984's Far Side is a twist on Far Side's iconic desert island gags. Larson loves the concept of two characters on a desert island, confronting bizarre situations with no space in which to maneuver or have their own lives. Here, Larson subverts his usual theme, revealing that his two survivors are actually in the middle of a small pond, with regular people constantly ing by. It's a great gag by itself, but it also makes Larson's other desert island gags even funnier, since it's now easy to imagine all the other characters are 'stranded' in the middle of a public park too.

Those are our picks for the 10 best Far Side comics originally published in July 1984, including a subversion of Larson's frequent desert island gags and a double-visit to his hilarious take on the afterlife.