The Far Side Has the Best First Year in Comic History, and it’s Not Close

Let’s look back at the first year of The Far Side. Gary Larson’s genre-defying and generation-defining comic debuted 45+ years ago in 1980, at a pivotal point in American pop culture. Digging deeper into Far Side’s freshman year reveals some surprises, but it also confirms one thing we were already certain of: The Far Side is the GOAT.

In year one alone, Gary Larson produced some of The Far Side’s most iconic comics, and set the tone for the rest of The Far Side’s run, which lasted until the end of 1994.

But there was also a lot of finding his footing, which is clear when returning to 1980 Far Sides in hindsight.

The Far Side’s Iconic Style Rapidly Evolved Over The Course Of 1980

Exploring The Formative Days Of The Far Side

The Far Side launched in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 1, 1980. Its first cartoon declared Gary Larson’s outsider perspective with a joke about animals commenting on the strangeness of humans. Except it’s not a cow, or chicken, or any of the animals typically associated with The Far Side making the critique. It’s a crab.

It’s important to understand that for the first few years of its existence, The Far Side was a local phenomenon. It could have been a niche Bay Area thing that nobody remembers today. The fact that Far Side became huge in the ’80s, and has such an outsized legacy today, is honestly nothing short of remarkable.

Crabs and other crustaceans certainly popped up from time to time during The Far Side’s run, but they never ranked among Larson’s main roster of recurring animals. One thing that’s surprising about The Far Side in 1980 is actually how rarely the animals it is most synonymous with actually appear.

The Far Side’s “Recurring Characters” Came Into Focus As The Comic’s Visual Style Developed

Counting The Far Side’s Early Cow Output

Some fun facts: The Far Side’s first dog didn’t appear until its fifteenth comic, but still in the first month of 1980. Its first anthropomorphic dog, wearing a trench coat and pretending to be human, didn’t show up until May. The Far Side’s first cat popped up a week later, in a comic referencing “The Cow Jumped Over the Moon.”

Speaking of cows, they appeared in less than ten Far Side comics in 1980. And that’s counting all bovines, bulls included. No animal is more closely associated with Gary Larson’s cartoons than cows, but his comedic fascination with them didn’t kick in right away. In fact, overall, the low frequency of recurring “characters” in year one Far Sides tells us something.

Larson always had a deep reservoir of ideas and opinions to sustain The Far Side, but in 1980 he was still developing his bag of tricks, his stable of tropes. The stock figures and images he could quickly apply to a punchline when a panel needed to get done. And that’s one thing about The Far Side we need to acknowledge: time.

The Far Side Was Still A Part-Time Job For Gary Larson In 1980; Why That Matters

More Time For Inspiration To Strike; That Wouldn’t Be The Case In 1985

Some more fun facts: the first Far Side shark was also its first movie reference. To Jaws, of course. The first snake cartoon was a recycled from Gary Larson’s short-lived earlier comic, Nature’s Way. The first snake produced for The Far Side showed up on Leap Day 1980: the silhouette of a cobra looming over a terrified snake charmer.

What does time have to do with The Far Side? Well, it takes time to come up with the jokes, of course. And then a lot more time to draw the panels. And then there’s revision and redrawing, which Gary Larson did a lot of. In 1980, The Far Side wasn’t quite a full-time job yet for Larson. And it certainly wasn’t the career it would become.

If we take a closer look at the publication dates for early Far Side comics, we find that the San Francisco Chronicle was publishing it about 3–4 times a week at first. Later, The Far Side would become a 7-days-a-week operation. And for Gary Larson, a grind. But at the start, Larson had more creative time and space.

The result was a wider variety of Far Side jokes. Larson was still figuring out what worked and what didn’t, and he also had more opportunities to take creative chances. Once the Far Side was successful, and in high demand, its production schedule became more strenuous, which changed Larson’s creative approach.

One Thing’s Certain: The Far Side’s Dark Humor Was There From The Beginning

Gary Larson’s Comedic Sensibility Was Fully Intact In 1980

Fun fact time again: The Far Side’s first murder happened in its seventh comic. Its first Mob hit occurred in early February, when some Mafiosos threw a dog into the river with cement boots on for “bit[ing] the Godfather.” Its first-ever nuclear explosion followed in March. Its first controversial joke about suicide came in April.

One thing that The Far Side displayed from the very beginning? Gary Larson’s dark comedic sensibility, and his willingness to “go there,” which proved foundational to his eventual success. The Far Side was always a mix of silly and shocking, right from the jump in 1980. Larson refined his humor along the way, but it came out of the gate largely fully-formed.

Compare it to a sitcom analog like Seinfeld. Like The Far Side, the legendary sitcom was rough around the edges at first, but it had the spark of brilliance that would propel it to pop culture phenomenon status. Once Seinfeld figured out what it was, it was unstoppable. The same goes for The Far Side.

Early Far Side Comics Feature More Anonymous Characters And Throwaway Punchlines

Gary Larson Was Still Figuring Out What Hit & What Missed

One more round of fun Far Side facts: the first bear comic was published on February 1, 1980. The first of countless prehistoric cave-dwellers appeared on February 9. Worms made their debut on February 12, in a cartoon riffing on “William Tell.” The Devil’s first appearance was on 2/19.

Throughout 1980, Gary Larson established the set of recurring character types that he would return to throughout The Far Side. At the same time, so many of the cartoons he produced that year are hard to categorize. They feel like The Far Side, but they lack some of the signature elements that would come to define the comic.

1980 Was All About Establishing The Far Side’s Reputation & Laying The Foundation For Its Success

Gary Larson Planed The Seeds For An Incredible Career

The Far Side was like nothing else in newspapers when it first appeared in 1980. Over the years, as it spread beyond the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle and popped up in newspapers across the country, it carried this reputation with it. Yet in time, it became a recognizable part of the funny pages just like its more conventional counterparts.

Fans came to love the “you never know what you’re going to get today” quality of The Far Side, but the recognizability of its signature visuals was an equally important part of that. Readers might never have known if a joke was going to be hilariously dark, or absurdly stupid, but they developed a sense of what it would look and feel like.

And Gary Larson, in turn, supplied more cow comics. More chickens. More talking inanimate objects. More death and mayhem. Weirder comics. More outrageous comics. The Far Side, at its height, managed to balance pushing-the-envelope with “giving people what they want,” and the tools to do so were developed in 1980.