10 Far Side Comics With Laugh Out Loud Visuals

Here are ten fantastic Far Side comics with laugh-out-loud visuals - strips that are clearly going to be hilarious, even before you read the words or even necessarily get the gag that Larson is aiming for.

10 Scuba Snorkel

Larson loves to flip the purpose of everyday objects. In this case, a swimmer is using a snorkel to breathe while underwater, but what was meant to make breathing effortless instead leads to him inhaling some passing bugs.

Larson stacks the deck in terms of visual humor, with the swimmer looking directly at the reader with a shocked expression, his hand shaking as he drops his harpoon. The bugs couldn't be clearer, with the fly that's been sucked into the snorkel apparent thanks to its flight lines, while a fish looks on with a dopey expression.

Even before you realize exactly what happened here, the swimmer is selling his predicament with a classic look to 'camera.'

9 Mrs. Oswald

In this early strip, a grumpy old man sits wedged in a shopping cart as his forgetful wife shuffles off to the car with their groceries. It's a funny premise, but Larson's grotesque characters are what really sell this gag, from Mr. Oswald's impossible pose, to Mrs. Oswald's nonplussed expression, to the cashier's casual response to a highly unusual situation (at least, in our world.)

Larson loves the theme of grumpy old men encountering bizarre circumstances - a set-up that boils down his biggest theme of humans coming up short against a natural world that simply doesn't share their priorities.

As a pleasant bonus, these strips allow fans to enjoy Larson's most caricature-esque characters, with sagging jowls and perpetual scowls.

8 Penguin and Banana

In a great visual gag, a penguin slips and falls on a banana, despite a) living in a barren environment where you could see a bright yellow banana coming for miles and b) living about 600 miles away from the nearest banana.

The gag builds and builds the more you think about it, but the initial visual is the best part. Larson zooms out so far that the Penguin's expression is hard to read, but it mostly just looks mildly annoyed at what should surely be an impossible situation.

7 Flying Frog

The best Larson comics don't require a caption - they just rely on the reader putting two and two together and figuring out the gag. In this case, an ambitious frog has tried to catch an airplane, only to be carried off into the sky for its efforts.

There's something hilarious about such a small character taking on a much bigger foe and paying the price - even in a comic explicitly about this frog, it's still a tiny presence in the actual comic panel, emphasizing how foolish it was to ever think it should pursue such momentous quarry.

6 Carmen Miranda

Singer, dancer and actress Carmen Miranda is known the world over for her fruit-covered headware - a style initially inspired by Brazilian fruit vendors, which grew more and more exaggerated over the course of her Hollywood success. In this comic, it turns out that Miranda's entire family are prone to wearing foodstuffs as accessories, even including the family dog.

It's a fun joke about a public figure (and some of Larson's most biting comics take aim at real-life celebrities), but ultimately the visual gag is so weird that, before you read the caption, it doesn't seem possible that any joke could pay off this visual.

It's also a visual that pays off multiple times, with several nested gags, from the angry kid in the corner who doesn't subscribe to this family craze, to silly food combos like a giant pickle on a stack of pancakes, to the younger member of the family who only has a single piece of pie skewered on his cap (presumably, the Miranda clan add more food as they age.)

5 Aliens Fishing

Another recurring theme in The Far Side is humans being treated like animals - here a group of aliens are fishing for humans like we do fish. But rather than a healthy weight, they're looking for the coolest humans possible.

Everything about this visual is great, from the little hats the aliens are wearing to the fact that the nerd has a fishhook in his nose. Aliens literally fishing for humans is a funny enough visual gag, even before you add the extraterrestrials rejecting their catch for not being cool enough.

4 Deer vs Hunter

The flipside of treating humans like animals is treating animals like humans, and in this strip a deer runs from a hunter, desperately trying to figure out what it could have done to find itself in his murderous sights. It's a fantastic gag, requiring an animal character who's smart enough to think and reason like a human, but seemingly has never heard of the concept of hunting.

However, yet again, even before the details the visual gag is great. Larson makes the hunter a genuinely menacing presence, while the deer is shown hiding behind a tree, glancing around desperately, just like anyone else pursued by a mysterious gunman.

3 Faulty Life Net

In another strip so good it doesn't need a caption, a woman leaps from a burning building, only to bounce off the life net provided like a trampoline and right into another, identically on-fire building.

Larson's gag has some fantastic visual elements, from the woman's face being hidden - prompting the reader to imagine her response - to the nonplussed but unpanicked expressions of the firemen below. Larson's art does an amazing job at underselling huge moments - casual inconveniences invite looks of horror, but fiery chaos is barely worth a shrug.

2 Early Microscope

In this joke, cavemen use a highly sophisticated piece of equipment to detect something that should have been apparent at first sight - but hey, at least it's a start. Larson's cavemen gags are some of his best, with the recurring joke of them inventing early, pointless versions of modern tools and habits.

This gag gets funnier as you realize that the 'microscope' is just a statue carved out of stone, but the initial humor comes from the mammoth's totally blank expression, as it stands obediently in place while the cavemen perform their 'science.' This scene is clearly ridiculous even before the details are revealed.

1 Midvale School for the Gifted

In perhaps the most beloved Far Side comic of all time, a seemingly 'gifted' student pushes against a door clearly marked 'Pull.' For our money, the Midvale sign isn't actually needed for the joke to land, especially because Larson draws the kid fully and totally committing to pushing at the door with all his might. Everything about this pose is perfect, from the bowed head to the single book clutched at the student's side.

Those are the ten Far Side comics with inarguably hilarious visuals - let us know in the comments what other strips belong on this list.