“Cow Tools” is widely consideredThe Far Side’smost confusing cartoon, butthe panels collected here give it a run for its money in that regard.“Cow Tools” might have cemented Gary Larson’s reputation for perplexing punchlines, but these comics are the ones that arguably elevated it to a true art form.
“Cow Tools” is certainly a strange cartoon, but the more fans become acclimated toThe Far Side’sstyle, and start to be able to read Gary Larson’s warped sense of humor more clearly, the meaning of the panel reveals itself more clearly.
These comics, meanwhile, are in many cases harder to decipher, or harder to understand the humor of, even after they have been explained.
10"Calf Delinquents": This Late-Stage Far Side Comic Channels The Energy Of “Cow Tools”
First Published: June 10, 2025
ThisFar Sidecartoon, from thelatter stage of Gary Larson’s career, feels like it is directly of a lineage with “Cow Tools.” Here, Larson instead depicts"calf delinquents," young prankster cows who stand on a cliff holding up a fake cut-out of lightning, in order to provoke their herd to stampede.
Except this punchline isn’t entirely obvious at a glance, causing confusion in a similar vein to the earlier bovine punchline. This is a common theme withThe Far Side’smore esoteric comics; the joke is never truly, entirely out of the realm of comprehension, not even “Cow Tools,” but sometimes Larson failed to get his point across.
9The Far Side’s “High Tide/Low Tide” Cartoon Illustrates The Perils Of Overly Subtle Humor
First Published: July 09, 2025
Gary Larson went as far as to “decode” thisFar Sidepanelfollowing his retirement; that is the extent to which the joke doesn’t land here. What is obvious about the cartoon’s premise is that the characters are the survivors of a downed plane, seen sinking into the ocean in the background, but the details don’t add up to the punchline Larson intended.
That is because the joke relies on a subtle bit of comedic irony. Too subtle, in fact. The fact that the rock is “encrusted with oysters and mussels,” which the man in the comic takes as a good sign, means that when high tide rolls in, the rock, and the couple, will be quickly submerged.
8"Part Of The Problem": Gary Larson Leaves Readers Guessing With This Unconventional Far Side Joke
First Published: August 08, 2025
ThisFar Sideconvention cartoonfeatures a gathering of people who self-identify as “part of the problem,“but what the problem is, exactly, and how these people play a role in perpetuating it, are unsolved mysteries that Gary Larson offers no overt clues to. In fact, it is important to the humor of the cartoon that there is no answer.
Yet that leaves many fans yearning for more context, which thisFar Sidepanel deliberately denies them. Instead, it leaves “the problem” and everything else about the “POTP” gathering wide-open to interpretation. Ultimately, the vibe is very similar to “Cow Tools,” in the abstract sense of how it leaves many readers feeling uncertain.
7"Babette’s Botulism”: Gary Larson Makes A Reference Nobody Needed, And Few Will Be Able To Digest
First Published: June 24, 2025
What remains elusive about thisFar Sidecomic is not just its meaning, but what makes it funny. When it comes toThe Far Side, this is honestly closer to “meaning” than the actual details, or “facts,” of the panel itself;captioned “Babette’s Botulism:The Sequel,” the secret to this gag is that it is actually one ofGary Larson’s many deep-cut references.
In this case, Larson riffs on the Danish filmBabette’s Feast, released the year before this comic. However, even for late ’80s readers, the movie would have had to be fresh in their minds for this callback to be obvious, let alone amusing, making it one ofThe Far Side’scomedic gambles that doesn’t quite pay off.
6Who Is “Mr. Pembrose,” The Far Side’s Most Hard To Figure Out Character?
First Published: June 14, 2025
ThisFar Sidecartoon is still debatedto this day. In the panel,a therapist tells “Mr. Pembrose” that he has to work on his anger issues, except it is not exactly clear who, or what, the patient is.While most readers assume “Pembrose” is a disembodied eye, there are some who think it actually is the couch, which has one human eye.
Whatever the case might be, this ranks up there as one ofThe Far Side’smost perplexing comics. In this instance, it is a result of the illustration not fully conveying the joke in a way that lines up with the details of the caption. Which is interesting, given that confusingFar Sideswere often the result of the opposite.
5The Far Side Explores The Dark Side Of The Food Chain In This Captionless Cartoon
First Published: June 28, 2025
In thiscaptionlessFar Sidecartoon,a shark sits in its living room reading a newspaper, with the walls surrounding it adorned with plaques bearing disembodied shark jaws.Most readers agree that the implication here involves the idea of sharks eating their own young. However, that is only an educated guess, which is precisely what Gary Larson wanted.
The Far Side Complete Collection
That is, thisFar Sidejoke lives or dies with the extent of the reader’s knowledge of sharks, and that is a deliberate decision on Larson’s part, thanks to the omission of added context via a caption. Here, though, the strange imagery and high-brow concept are a higher barrier for “getting” the joke than the comic often set.
4The Frontrunner For The Official “Most Confusing” Far Side Award, Move Over “Cow Tools”
First Published: Jun 24, 2025
If “Cow Tools” can only have one rival for the title of “most confusingFar Sidecomic,” it is this one, and this one should arguably win. In fact,Gary Larson called this cartoon “almost universally misunderstood.“In the panel,a man in his pajamas pulls open the living room window’s curtains to find a cat tied up outside, dangling upside down.
Except the way the man is pulling the curtain cord made most readers think he’s hoisting the cat up. Further, the way he says “the dog ain’t goin' for that new cat,” makes it sound like he’s giving the cat to the dog, when in fact that’s not what Larson intended.
3The Far Side Recreates “His Master’s Voice,” But How Many People Get The Joke?
First Published: June 20, 2025
For people who did recognize this obscure shout-out, it is a satisfying “aha” moment, but for the majority ofFar Sidereaders, even in the 1980s, there is a much greater likelihood that this cartoon left readers flummoxed, searching for precisely what to laugh at, once again grasping around for context that isn’t provided.
2This Far Side Giraffe Punchline Evokes The Same Confusing Feeling As “Cow Tools”
First Published: June 10, 2025
“No lions anywhere,” one skeptical giraffe asks another, who is standing on a chair to get an elevated lookacross the plain. Like “Cow Tools,” the risk the joke runs here is actually being too obvious. The humor is that the world’s most long-necked animal species feels the need to get just a little bit taller to scope out potential predators.
The deadpan quality of this gag is punctuated by the zebra in the foreground, giving a literal blank look at this behavior. Yet even astute readers might miss the joke, and instead look for some kind of deeper joke than there actually is, as was the case withthe “Cow Tools” controversy just a few years prior.
1"Columbus Discovers America”: This Far Side Cartoon Runs Aground Because Its Action Is Unclear
First Published: August 07, 2025
This is another example of aFar Sidecomic where there is a disconnect between the “action” of the frame and its caption, which in this casereads “Columbus discovers America,” with an illustration of sailors on a ship being tossed around by an unseen impact.This is the crux of the confusion, that the image features an effect, but not the cause.
After taking a beat to examine it, readers can infer that the “discovery” here equates to running their ship around, but the lack of clarity will leave a fair share of fans stumped, which makesthisFar Sidecartoon at least share a wheelhouse with “Cow Tools"and other confusing entries in Gary Larson’s canon.
