The Best ‘Far Side’ Strips That Prove It’s the Top Single-Panel Comic Ever

With all due respect to Love Is…, no single-panel comic series has had as massive a cultural impact and created as many brilliant laughs as Gary Larson’s The Far Side —and he did it without making us look at a single creepy-ass naked baby.

In 1976, Larson was a cashier at a music store in Seattle with no formal artistic training and an affinity for MAD Magazine and the work of Don Martin. Upon realizing that his job absolutely sucked and that drawing cartoons was way better than selling records, Larson sat down at his kitchen table and penned a half-dozen strips that he would soon sell to the local newspaper Pacific Search for $90, thus launching one of the most celebrated careers in cartooning ever. 

Though those first strips weren’t Far Side comics — Larson published his early work with the title Nature's Way before starting The Far Side in earnest in 1979 — Larson’s first attempt at cartooning proved to the artist that his interests in comedy, rudimentary sketching and biology could be combined into a compelling comic series that still has fans laughing and learning today.

Writer and podcast host Jeff Blehar is one of the many creatives for whom Larson and The Far Side represents the pinnacle of comic brilliance. As such, Blehar recently started a now-viral Twitter thread where Far Side fans from across the internet came to share the strip they believe is the best panel of the best comic ever published. Here are the top hits…