Comment by Waterluvian a day ago
I think it’s about time for me to confess: I really don’t get Gary Larson cartoons. I understand what each is about, but my amusement level doesn’t correlate with their popularity.
It’s a slightly odd, somewhat lonely feeling to see something so universally beloved and popular and feel nothing.
Have you ever laughed out loud at a cartoon? I don’t think I have, and I would say I enjoy cartoons quite a bit. A grin is about the best reaction I can give to one myself
But what if there is no Garfield?
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/tagged/garfield%20minus%20...
>Have you ever laughed out loud at a cartoon?
Generally, I agree with you. But I do remember coming across Parking Lot Is Full one night and having to stifle my laughing so I didn't wake up my wife who was sleeping next to me while I was reading it.
That's totally fair. I had to dig a bit - but I'm pretty sure I may have audibly chuckled when I came across these in the wild.
Have you ever read Viz?
Specifically on the London underground (or your local public transport) during morning rush hour, with a hangover. It's hard not to laugh out loud.
MAD is wacky. This is more England and it's casual gutter talk. All cultures have their own. Do you enjoy any British hum(o)ur?
VIZ is crass, puerile in the extreme, casually (insert your red line here)-ist on many levels, and often repetitive. It uses common slang words, so somewhat culturally revealing. It's 'wrong' on many levels but done with style, albeit sometimes a repugnant style - So you inwardly 'gasp' in revulsion but outwardly stifle a giggle.
The fake small ads are often very very funny.
Lastly, like so many gags that use the 'shock' effect, the humour doesn't last forever; take a look at an early one on Archive...
I'm not sure I've ever laughed out loud at a cartoon, but as a kid, the compilation books of Charles Addams cartoons used to fill me with so much warm pleasure I would read them over and over, and his cartoons still just plain make me happy to this day. I can clearly see that Larson does that same thing for many people.
Maybe you have to be a boomer or Gen X-er to appreciate it?
The test:
https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/390/the-chase
If given the choice, I would have the Viking ship with a kittens-in-a-basket flag.
> Have you ever laughed out loud at a cartoon?
I laughed out loud multiple times clicking on links in this very thread, reading comics I've read dozens (and dozens) of times before.
Life is less lonely when you focus more on social groups you do have something in common with than trying to latch onto everything that's popular.
That said, you might not be as alone as you think. The far side has been the butt of many bits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfkynJ4hbI
Often if you don't get it, its because you didn't get it.
There is a famous one of 2 explorers in the jungle and the man is saying "Holy moly Loretta, not only is it still there, but look what it did to the end of my stick !"
So not really funny unless you can recall (or imagine) a moment when you had a bug on you and you ask someone to brush it off and you have that minute of like, did you get it or is it still there ? If that has actually happened to you, its a hilarious cartoon.
>time for me to confess
Don't feel that way. I can totally understand why some people wouldn't "get" (or I'd put it "appreciate") The Far Side. It's a very particular kind of humor, and it's fine that it's "not everyone's cup of tea". I, for example, absolutely loathe poetry. It's like the cilantro of literature of me, and I don't have the gene that makes it not taste like soap. ... Who cares!?!
I have this "joke" that I dearly love, that I've never met anyone who gets it. It is a bad joke, largely because nobody gets it. It doesn't imply something in me or something lacking in ... everyone else. Humor is just what you find in it. It is: "Well, I defended my thesis in comparative literature, but it seems like he's got a pretty healthy pulse to me..."
Right, but what makes it work for me is that you have to bring the setup to the table. I think The Far Side is similar in a lot of its humor.
My favourite own joke is when I’m sitting on a beach towel or grass or whatnot and I want to get up, I’ll say,
“I can’t stand sitting, so I need a hand standing.”
Nobody ever finds that amusing but it kills me every time.
One of those situations where I say: "I'm hilarious... to myself."
What, not a fan of 'Cow tools'? [0]
In a way Cow Tools was too simple rather than too hard, so people thought there must be more to it.
I don't think the joke itself is a bad idea. I remember The Simpsons doing the room full of monkeys on typewriters where one comes up with "it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times" which in a way is a similar joke, right? i.e. Not a good result, but funny because it's still much more than you'd ever expect in reality.
Simpsons joke has a reference. It’s not a Simpsons original.
It is the infinite monkey theorem from the late 19th and early 20th century.
The joke was a reference to that pop culture idea which pointed out that if the infinite monkeys thing is real, there should also necessarily be products that are very close to great works but not quite right.
That's the context of the joke, but it's not the source of the humour.
Or Rattlesnake Training?
I'm curious if you understand this joke (https://i.imgur.com/II5W6Pl.png).
I think it's similar to the Cow Tools panel.
Specifically, the Far Side panel plays on the idea of the fact that cows would have a cow-centric view of the world and would likely develop tools that were alien to us. The other part of the 'joke' is that cows don't build tools (afaik). edit: I think the "3rd" part of the joke is that the tools look like shit, which is what you'd expect from even the most talented cows.
The humor of the space alien joke is similar in that it's pointing out the difficulty that everyone has in understanding how others (other people, other species, etc.) view and describe the world.
> I'm curious if you understand this joke (https://i.imgur.com/II5W6Pl.png).
I don't, because I'm from the UK...
A lot of his comics aren't great, having to create 7 per week, a fact he referenced in his comics themselves. But just the way he represented people - pudgy, cat's eye glasses, doing some esoteric thing like collecting butterflies or building a robot in the basement, is amusing to me.
It is probably down to whether you find humor in absurdity as the far side leans rather hard into this.
The humor "is" very weird, the normal flow is a strange image that is not funny and a simple caption that is also not funny. but coupled together there is something funny about the absurd connection that is made. sort of like a caption meme with better drawing. And honestly I think there are a lot of them that we just don't "get", too strange for comprehension, and we find this funny as well.
Neither did Homer if it makes you feel better.
https://youtu.be/LjfkynJ4hbI?si=rMrpX7VChQMX23_I
(Obviously not the only one if not getting Far Side comics made the Simpsons!)
I think about it as pushing the boundaries of the minimum amount of funny to be a joke. It's not anti humor, it's not absurdism, it's not ironic. It's trying to approach the absolute least amount of whatever a joke is. Some kind of minimum joke Komolgorov complexity.
I think that all humor belongs more or less to a particular time (a decade if you will). Garfield for example is very much a product of the 1980s. When humour is viewed outside of its time, it’s different. Did you read FarSide in the 1990s, or come to it later?
'Dinosaurs' was a masterpiece and I won't hear otherwise.
The series finale is one of the greatest T.V. finales of all time.
No, the Far Side was popular the way The Simpsons was popular.
I think you're dramatically underestimating how big it was during its run.
I don't think I've ever laughed at loud at something from Far Side, rather I've always thought of his comics as "smirk-worthy".
School for the Gifted
https://imgur.com/a/6wERHNk
Dog Translator
https://imgur.com/a/UwDJxXm