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I can’t quite tell if Gary Larson loves clowns or hates them
On Oct. 3, 1994, The Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson released what he would later regard as his worst-ever comic strip. It features two clowns in a back alley. One of them has his back to the wall, while the other clown is about to throw a pie at him. The clown with his back to the wall says, “I wouldn’t do that, Spunky — I have friends in pie places.”
Years later, when Larson published The Complete Far Side, he included a note below this panel saying “Cartoonist’s note: Above is my own nominee for the worst cartoon I ever drew. (I still cringe.) — Gary Larson.”
Honestly, I’m not so sure I agree with Larson here, as I think the pun is funny in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way. I also agree with the Redditor that said this comic strip would be a whole lot funnier without a caption at all.
Regardless, it’s definitely not Larson’s best work, and certainly not his best featuring clowns. They were actually a frequent subject of The Far Side, and the best jokes involving them were usually very dark, with clowns often dying, about to die, or causing some sort of horrible death to others.
Here are 10 incredibly funny — and incredibly dark — The Far Side comics starring clowns.
10 Draw!
This is one of those Far Side comics where it takes a second to get the whole joke, as your eye immediately goes to the dead clown. Once you notice the pie in the face of the gunfighter, then you’ve got it.
9 A classic
This one is from 1984, a full decade before the comic strip Larson would later regard as his worst one ever. It kind of plays on the same idea, with criminal clowns sticking people up with pies. It is a heck of a lot funnier, though. Maybe the problem with the 1994 one is that it was just a little too similar to this strip.
8 Clown Kong
This isn’t quite as dark as some of the others, but it’s still a clown terrorizing a whole city. Just imagine how many people those giant feet have stepped on.
7 Bulls vs. Clowns
I feel like if bullfights were just a sport where bulls had to run down clowns, everyone would get behind it — except maybe clowns.
6 Heads will roll (with laughter)
Somehow, in a comic strip that doesn’t feature a clown, Larson still makes clowns the butt of the joke. It makes you wonder how Larson felt about clowns. Did he love them or hate them? From other comic strips, it's pretty clear he hated mimes, but clowns are different. I tend to think he didn’t hate clowns, but knew how funny it was to do terrible things to them, or to depict them doing terrible things.
5 An eager clown
This one feels more dirty than dark, but still very funny.
4 Poor clown
I think this clown should do whatever these guys tell him to do.
3 The clown’s final walk
This is one of those comic strips that, to me, feels multi-layered. Obviously, there’s the visual gag of the clown going to the electric chair. That's a funny gag that didn’t need a caption at all. Yet, Larson found a way to cap that joke by having one of the two guards say, “I don’t think I’ll be able to tell the kids about this one.” That made things even funnier, but I think there’s yet another joke that hits a few minutes after reading the comic, and that is, why is this guy telling his kids about any of the executions he does? Surely this is the kind of thing you don’t share with your kids.
2 This just feels like a bad hire
Clowns should not be in charge of missiles. Everybody knows that.
1 Gary Larson’s darkest-ever clown comic strip
This comic strip is incredibly disturbing and feels like one of those “you couldn’t get away with that today” kind of things. Perhaps that’s why it’s so shocking — and so very, very funny — today.