10 Greatest Far Side Cow Comics Of All Time

The Far Side and cows are synonymous. A lot of animals, from household pets to wild carnivores, took a starring turn in Far Side cartoons, but it was the cow that emerged as the unofficial mascot of Gary Larson’s transformative newspaper comic.

No animal better represents The Far Side’s ability to take the familiar and make it strange, or wonderful, or disturbing, or outrageous. That became clear early in Larson’s career, even before the publication of “Cow Tools,” which is still called “Far Side’s most confusing comic” to this day. (Spoilers, it isn’t.)

In what might be a controversial move, “Cow Tools” doesn’t appear on this list. (We’ll get into why in more detail later on.) But the short answer is, “Cow Tools” belongs in a category all its own.

The panels below are the funniest, weirdest, and most perfect cow cartoons Gary Larson ever produced. (With the asterisk of *aside from “Cow Tools” if fans want to place it there. )

10

“The End” (The Cows Come After Gary Larson)

First Published: October 28, 1988

“The End (Act One).” That was how Gary Larson said goodbye the first time, signing off with one final new comic before a 14-month stretch of re-runs while the author/artist took a hiatus behind the scenes. (To play jazz guitar, but that’s a whole other story.) The illustration is a fourth wall-breaking joke about the cartoonist’s creations coming to drag him away from the desk.

And who else shows up wielding a rake, rather than a pitchfork, and more ominously, a spiked bat? Cows, of course. The Far Side had a whole roster of recurring animal characters, but it was cows that helped make Larson himself a household name.

And so, if it was cows that made The Far Side famous, it would be cows that took Larson out. He did come back in 1990, electing to illustrate four more years of The Far Side, but this was the beginning of the end, and it started with armed cows.

9

Mission Accomplished (Cows Start The Great Chicago Fire)

First Published: March 13, 1980

This is The Far Side’s first fully-realized cow comic, and it holds up to this day as one of the best. It is also an early example of Gary Larson’s penchant for rewriting history. The panel shows the Great Chicago Fire from a distance, as two cows watch the city go up in flames.

All according to their plan. “Agent 6373 has accomplished her mission,” the caption reads, revealing a cow plot against human civilization. This set a hilarious precedent for The Far Side: animals are smarter than they let on, and they’re out to get us.

This Far Side cartoon has been frequently repeated in syndication and published in anthologies, making it one of The Far Side cartoons with the most reach. It deserves a spot on this list, but it also paved the way for even better Far Side cow comics.

8

A Far Side Marriage Story (A Cow Expresses Her Discontent)

First Published: November 28, 1984

A married couple are in their living room, together, but doing their own thing, when she turns to him and reveals a heavy truth about their relationship: “Wendell…I’m not content.” It’s a soap operatic, melodramatic moment. Only this is The Far Side, and the couple are a cow and a bull.

And this is one of The Far Side’s most deep-cut references. That elevates it in the rankings for some readers, but keeps it from fully connecting with others. Still, on its own merit, it works as a practically perfect Far Side joke.

It is a human scene, with cows subbed in. Larson draws the cow wife to show she is classy, or at least trying to be: her jewelry, the martini glass. Her bull husband is sitting there with a can of beer, bull ring still in his nose. And in just four words, the caption connects all those dots.

7

What Starvation Does To Friends (The Far Side’s Most Desperate Cow)

First Published: July 8, 1985

It’s a classic cartoon trope. Two characters are somewhere lost in the wilderness, or adrift at sea, and their desperation and starvation have gotten to such extremes that they start to look at each other and see dinner. Someone might look at their friend and picture them as a big, juicy steak, for example. This Far Side cartoon hilariously literalizes that. Because one of the characters is a cow.

And the other one is a human. Which is where Gary Larson takes this panel to the next level. While thoughts of the cow across from him butchered and grilled dance in the man’s head, the cow is imagining him as a luscious patch of grass and flowers.

Sometimes the dumbest jokes take a touch of brilliance to come up with, and that’s the case with this all-timer of a Far Side cow comic.

6

Bessie Loves Her “Cow Ball” (The Far Side’s Most Niche Product)

First Published:​​​​​​​ September 25, 1985

“This is always amusing,” the speaker in this Far Side caption says, seriously underselling the spectacle that is about to roll into the living room. That is, “Bessie,” a seemingly domesticated cow, “inside her plastic cow ball.” On its face, the joke is patently ridiculous, but if you dare to overthink it (always perilous when it comes to The Far Side), that actually becomes the operative word: patent.

As in, this Far Side cartoon presupposes a world where someone saw the success of hamster balls and saw a lucrative business opportunity in scaling it up.

It also presumes a world where cows are common household pets, enough for a “cow ball” to be on the market, and for it to be little more than a novelty for The Far Side’s inhabitants.

5

“And We Just Sit Here Without Opposable Thumbs” (The Far Side’s Cows’ Lament)

First Published: March 29, 1984

“Well, there it goes again…” The Far Side was a world where cows could live approximations of human lives, but it wasn’t always necessarily a seamless transition. In fact, that was a crucial ingredient in The Far Side’s anthropomorphic animal humor, like this cartoon. Where the cows have a phone, but lack the digits to use them.

“And we just sit here without opposable thumbs,” one cow says to another as they sit on the couch watching TV. A framed photograph of a grassy field hanging above their heads. The real thing just outside the window.

But let’s be honest. 42 years after this Far Side cow cartoon first appeared in newspapers, the real question here is: if they can’t pick up the phone, how do these cows change the TV station?

4

“I Warned You Not To Invite The Cows In” (The Farmer’s Wife’s Lament)

First Published: September 17, 1982

The cows in this unforgettable Far Side comic have no problems using their hooves like human hands to hold cocktail glasses. In fact, it’s too easy. These cows like to party, the liquor has loosened up one bovine enough to start dancing on the farmers’ coffee table.

It’s an “I told you so” moment for the farmer’s wife. “I warned you not to invite the cows in for a few drinks,” she tells her husband. Right before it seems the rowdy cow is going to wreck her living room.

Gary Larson expertly stages the action here, drawing the dancing cow right at the moment it appears to be losing its balance. The fact that the coffee table could hold the cow’s weight is impressive, but the way the cow is pitching backward, it’s clear that if there were an immediate sequel to this Far Side cartoon, the table would be smashed to bits and pieces.

3

“That’s Right! The Cow!” (A Shocking Far Side Courtroom Confession)

First Published: November 23, 1982

The Far Side was great at courtroom comedy. It was a perfect setting for Gary Larson’s sense of humor, where the tension of a trial scene could be subverted in all manner of hilarious ways. In this case, an outburst from one of the jurors in the trial during witness testimony. Who happens to be the lone cow in the courtroom.

Not only does the cow make a scene, it admits guilt to the very crime being litigated. “I confess! I did it! Yes! That’s right!” The crime itself is left to the reader’s imagination, but whatever it is, the bovine perpetrator “feel[s] great!”

The funniest part of this Far Side cartoon is the way the cow refers to itself as “the cow,” aware that it sticks out in a crowd full of humans. It was the little things with Larson’s humor that make The Far Side so easy to return to and find funny even when readers know the comics well.

2

“Grisly, Yet Strangely Hilarious” (The Far Side’s Cows Get Vengence)

First Published:​​​​​​​ January 7, 1992

These Far Side cows have been milked and milked and they’re not going to take it anymore. This is arguably the best incarnation of something Gary Larson repeatedly imagined over the years: chickens and cows plotting or outright rising up in revolution against humanity. Or, in this case, taking “revenge,” in the form of turning the farmer’s tools against them.

Specifically, the “auto-milker,” which a crowd of cows subject both “Farmer MacDougal and his wife” to. Like many Far Side jokes, it has some truly gruesome implications, if you dwell on it too long. Larson balances this out with one of his best-ever captions, which takes on a true-crime tone to describe what happened next.

“Police investigators found a scene that they could only describe as, ‘grisly, yet strangely hilarious.” It’s not full-on meta-humor, but this Far Side joke does show a degree of self-awareness, which adds to the delirious hilarity of the cartoon.

1

“Tastes Like Chicken” (The Far Side’s Darkest Cow Comic Is Its Funniest)

First Published: May 26, 1993

“Interesting…interesting…” That’s what the cow taste-testing a steak says, a deranged look in its eye as it chews the first bite and processes the flavor. Gary Larson had made memorable cannibal cow jokes with The Far Side before, but this one truly takes the cake. Or the steak.

This Far Side punchline is another reference younger readers might not get, to the analog “tastes like chicken” meme. It’s a thing people say when sampling unfamiliar meats. But as far as human taste buds go, only a lifelong vegan might conflate steak and chicken. For a cow to do so is the apex of outrageous Far Side humor.

And that’s the real lasting hilarity of this panel. These cows are depicted as downright sociopathic, even psychopathic. The way human cannibals would be. It’s a disturbing thought, one that Larson was able to convert to an incredible joke in The Far Side’s best cow comic.

Honorable Mentions:

So, what have we learned? The Far Side’s best cow comics span from the start of its history to the end of Gary Larson’s career. And Far Side jokes are iterative; Larson repeated punchlines a lot, even after he’d perfected it years earlier. So, it’s no surprise that most of the best cow comics come from the Far Side’s ascendent period in the mid-to-late 1980s.

But the best overall? By this list’s rankings, #1 and #2 both came from the 1990s. That was when The Far Side got weirder, and more elaborate. Gary Larson was still making many of the same jokes, but he was putting wild new spins on them.

Still, it’s important to shout out all the cartoons that easily could have made this list. There’s another cannibal cow cartoon, “Sick, Jesse, Sick,” and the one where the cows are plotting to butcher the farmer and grill him instead. There’s the one where cows are trying to build a rocket to space, and the one where a cow takes the tractor for a joyride and crashes it.

And then there’s “Cow Tools.” It’s arguably the most recognizable and most important Far Side comic. (Weirdly, also maybe the most prophetic?) So, why didn’t it make the list? The truth is, the reason “Cow Tools” became a phenomenon is that people didn’t get the joke. And by Gary Larson’s admission, it’s not even the best joke.

So, while “Cow Tools” is the greatest Far Side comic by its own metric, it has to be set aside so that the actual best of the best Far Side cow jokes can shine. Take a look for yourself and consider how “Cow Tools” stacks up against other Honorable Mentions included here.

What is your ranking of best Far Side cow comics, readers?

Writer

Gary Larson

Colorist

Gary Larson