10 Funniest Far Side Comics That Make Numbers Hilarious

Gary Larson's The Far Side is famous for its creative use of language, surreal visuals and dark sense of humor, so it's kind of unfair that he also nailed mathematical humor.

In these ten comics from The Far Side's original syndicated run, Larson tackles square roots, calculus and math puzzles in his inimitable style.

10 Square Root of 5,248

In this comic, Larson twists a classic cliché - a menacing cowboy sidling up to a rival at the bar and posing a pointed question, usually along the lines of, "What are you looking at?" Sadly for the white-hatted cowboy in this comic, his much bigger antagonist isn't asking something rhetorical - he's posing a complicated equation with life or death stakes.

Larson's Far Side comics often involve cowboys, playing around with the hyper-macho character archetype and contrasting it against truly bizarre situations.

A lot of Larson's humor depends on the assumptions his fans bring with them, and the 'rules' of Westerns are so firmly imprinted on the American subconscious that there's a lot of material for him to play with.

9 Calculus Equations

This strip mines the sci-fi trope of the 'alien zoo' for humor. Countless stories have played with the idea of aliens imprisoning humans like humans do animals, but Larson is one of the rare writers who considers what they'd really like to see us do.

Rather than backflips or poetry, Larson concludes that aliens would find it thrilling to see human professors write out calculus, complete with an alien ringmaster holding a whip as if 'Professor Doyle' is a wild animal who must be kept under control at all times.

The Far Side often uses aliens in its comics, and Larson smartly never settled on one brand of extraterrestrial.

The aliens of The Far Side can be smart, silly, dangerous, militaristic, gigantic and everything in between - in short, whatever visual best sells the joke they appear in.

8 Four Wrongs Squared

In this comic, Larson takes a risk, trusting that readers will figure out the key to this comic is the iconic saying that "two wrongs don't make a right." The line was just spoken by 'Sidney', prompting a passionate rebuttal from his mathematician co-worker.

Typical to Larson's love of wordplay, he takes the idiom's mathematical framing seriously, arguing that while simple addition may not produce the desired solution, some more sophisticated mathematics could be used to justify pursuing revenge.

7 Trivia Tonight

In this strip, a human competes against God in a Jeopardy-style trivia contest. Being omniscient and having created everything in the first place, God is beating the reigning champion hollow, much to his irritation.

Despite the potentially controversial subject matter, Larson didn't get any complaints. In The Prehistory of The Far Side, he puts this down to two factors, stating:

First, I made God look the way I think most of us are pretty sure he looks. Secondly, I made sure he was really winning hands down. Even if Norman had only ten points it would have meant that he beat God to the buzzer at least once, and someone would have gotten mad.

6 All Squared Away

There comes a point in every bad biographical movie when a historic event is boiled down to a ridiculously simplified moment. A famous lyric, quote or discovery becomes a convenient soundbite, as a metaphorical lightbulb appears above the famous subject's head - something that film critic Mark Kermode calls the "Chubby Hmm" moment.

Larson pulls off his own version of this moment with Albert Einstein, who cracks his mass-energy equivalence equation after hearing his cleaning lady use the word "squared."

Anyone who even slightly understands Einstein's equation will be further amused by the fact that rather than working out the equation as a whole, Einstein was working piecemeal. He'd already nailed the 'E=MC' part, but was stuck multiplying it to the powers of various numbers with no success.

5 Number One, We're Closed

In this strip, a helpful bear presents a numbered list of why a tourist really shouldn't wander off into the woods. Larson got a lot of jokes out of the 'bear vs human' conflict, but in this car, the bear is really trying to do the visitor a favor, rather than mauling him on the spot.

Larson's depiction of humans being defeated by nature earned him a reputation for liking animals more than people, but when the question was put to him in a 1987 interview with ABC's 20/20, he replied, "down deep inside, no I don't, but I've never met an Irish Setter I didn't like."

4 A Train Leaves Philadelphia at 1pm

The idea of the recently departed facing a challenge to get into Heaven is the premise of many classic gags, but usually it's some kind of moral reckoning. In Larson's universe, the angels simply require applicants to answer a high school math puzzle.

Larson draws on school day-memories, bringing back the type of question that made a lot of his readers sweat even when their immortal souls weren't on the line.

3 ​​​​​​​If I Have Four Apples...

This comic plays on the con/magic trick where a horse appears to perform arithmetic and stamps out the answer (actually just responding to subtle commands from its trainer.)

In the world of The Far Side, not only is the trick legitimate, but it's something horses go to school to learn, with an equine teacher posing apple-based sums to keep the attention of their ungulate class.

Larson returned again and again to school as a setting for humor - another subject packed with archetypes ripe for parody, from bizarre students to unusual subjects.

2 Math Anxiety

One of Far Side's biggest recurring jokes is the idea of cavemen inventing modern ideas for the first time. In this comic, an early hominid gets anxious while performing the most basic possible addition, revealing that humans have been anxious about mathematics since before 'numbers' even existed.

1 We've Mathematically Expressed the Purpose of the Universe

In this strip, a scientist takes immense pleasure in solving a seemingly impossible equation, totally ignoring the fact that he just conclusively proved life doesn't have any meaning. Indeed, this is put as bluntly as possible, with "the purpose of the universe" revealed as a big, fat zero.

Larson's The Far Side often gives the impression of taking place in an indifferent universe, but that's not always a bad thing. As dark as it is for life to have absolutely no purpose, Larson's characters at least have a 'god' who doesn't make them actually reflect on it.

Those are the 10 funniest Far Side comics about numbers - let us know in the comments below which was your favorite.