Gary Larson The Far Side Darkest Comics

The Far Side remains one of the greatest comic strips ever printed, running from 1979 to 1995 with Gary Larson delivering surrealist humor, absurd wordplay, and bizarre situations that somehow made newspapers acceptable vehicles for genuinely weird comedy. Beyond the laughs though, Larson had a dark sense of humor that occasionally crept into his otherwise whimsical strips—the kind of dark that made you laugh nervously because you weren't entirely sure if you should be laughing. This deep dive catalogs 15 of his darkest moments, showing that comedy doesn't need to stay light to stay funny. It's worth revisiting why The Far Side worked: Larson understood that humans find comedy in the grotesque, the morbid, and the slightly unsettling.