15 Funniest Far Side Comics That Somehow Make Eggs Funny (Including 1 That Larson's Editor Refused to Approve)

Gary Larson’s The Far Side has a lot of obsessions, from delinquent cows to creative cavemen, and yet somehow eggs became one of the funniest recurring ideas in his comic’s entire 14-year run. Perhaps it’s because they sit at the exact meeting point of Larson’s love of animals and goofy pranks, but his yolk humor is so good, we couldn’t keep this list to just ten.

Here are the 15 funniest Far Side comics that somehow found a way to make eggs funny, from misbehaving chickens to poor Humpty Dumpty. Be sure to vote in our end-of-article poll for your favorite egg-based Far Side, but be warned – the choice is going to be harder than ever.

15 There Goes Another Batch

Small Reactions to Major Problems Are Far Side’s Bread and Butter

In this strip, Larson somehow makes a laugh-out-loud gag by combining eggs with a housing market joke. As in many of Larson’s best jokes, the gag isn’t just something unusual happening – it’s that it already happened once, and that somehow didn’t change the behavior of the characters in question. The Far Side‘s characters are often slow to catch on, but somehow these birds haven’t yet realized they’re sitting at a total ninety-degree angle.

14 Ham and Eggs

How Can a Single Comic Panel Feel Awkward?

In a world peopled by intelligent animals, some types of social faux pas are unavoidable, but in this case the main character manages to insult an entire diner with an incredibly simple food order. The looks on the animals’ faces are pure Far Side, as Larson aims for the same sense of stopping an entire room in its tracks that real-world blunders often lead to.

13 Fountain of Youth

Larson’s Mythic Reference Shows How He Trusted Readers’ Intelligence

One of The Far Side‘s strengths is how it often creates space for the reader to finish the gag for themselves. Many of Larson’s contemporaries would have felt the need to spell out even more clearly that birds are being reduced to eggs by unknowingly drinking from the Fountain of Youth, but The Far Side lets its readers make the final step themselves. The Fountain of Youth appears in multiple Far Side strips, showing how Larson trusts the intelligence of his readers: it’s not every comic that expects its readers to catch a Ponce de León reference.

12 Doris Griswold

Not Every Far Side Gag Is Trying for Laughs

In The Complete Far Side, Gary Larson admits that he knew he couldn’t always make the reader laugh, but he could always make them exclaim “What the–?” over the breakfast table. In this queasy strip, that’s definitely the case, as while the idea of lice giving their ‘owners’ as an address is funny, the visual is definitely more gross-out than laugh-out-loud.

11 Cake Mix

Far Side Is as Obsessed with Chickens as It Is with Eggs

In this strip, a chicken engaged in some baking considers using her own eggs in the recipe rather than going to the store. Alongside eggs, chickens appear across The Far Side, usually acting as the underdogs of Larson’s world.

While most of Larson’s chickens have to struggle with the knowledge that they’ll soon be eaten by humans, he also uses the birds in his most bizarre comics, with the weirdest of all time being a Nightmare on Elm Street parody (above) that implies a family have been tricked into eating their own dog.

10 Vikings

The Far Side Uses Real History to Set Up Surreal Jokes

Far Side is full of comics about real-world history, but this is among the funniest, as Larson unearths the little-known mellow era of Viking invasions. The added detail of the egg on the sail is a genius touch, making it clear just how committed these Vikings are to their irritating form of attack.

9 Egg Swap

A Darker Version of This Gag Is Coming Up Soon

In a genius wordless comic, Larson sets up the idea that if humans are going to steal chickens’ eggs, sooner or later the poultry are going to pay us back in kind. The expression on the woman’s face is perfect, showcasing Larson’s tendency to have his characters react to major emergencies in the most minor ways, while the complete lack of malice on the chicken’s face makes the strip significantly weirder (and therefore way funnier.) Of course, the implication of the chickens eating the baby aren’t made too apparent. While that decision may seem like common sense, it’s not like Larson held back elsewhere.

The Far Side has a surprising number of comics that show kids being eaten by everything from bears and alligators to a colony of ants. The strip above, showing a baby being carried to an ant hill, originally depicted an old man, with Larson revealing in The Prehistory of The Far Side that it was rejected by his editor with a two-word “No thanks!” Bizarrely, Larson’s instinct to swap the old man out for a baby paid off, as the comic was then instantly approved.

8 Scrambled

This Strip Was Too Dark to Be Published

This strip once again sees humans and chickens swap places, but this time Larson is way more explicit with the dark implications. While this comic strip has appeared in various Far Side compendiums, it wasn’t syndicated in national newspapers, with Larson knowing from the start that it wouldn’t make it past his editor. In The Prehistory of The Far Side, he writes:

I knew scrambled babies wouldn’t fly with most of the civilized world, much less my editor, although I did try to make them look cute.

7 Here’s Your Problem

Larson Loves Adding Goofy Twists to Kitchen Sink Drama

The Far Side loves nothing better than putting a single bizarre twist on everyday life. Here, two women sit down for what seems like a serious, emotionally raw discussion, only for the fact that both are chickens to result in a goofy punchline once the refrigerator is opened.

6 Humpty Dumpty

Far Side Often Took on Nursery Rhyme Characters

The Far Side loves any kind of set-up that comes with a bunch of pre-existing assumptions by the reader, allowing the joke to embrace a more involved narrative by drawing on the details fans already know. For that reason, Larson often parodied popular fiction and especially nursery rhymes, but even in that context, Humpty Dumpty was a favorite character to bring back again and again.

Larson picks apart every part of the Humpty Dumpty story, from asking why the King’s men would allow the horses to try fixing him to exploring what came next for the deceased egg. However, we’ve selected Humpty Dumpty hatching as the best of the bunch, answering the unasked but logical question of what laid Humpty Dumpty in the first place. However, it was a hard choice, and both the King’s horses comic and the image of the wall falling on Humpty after he survives his fall unscathed are classic Far Side.

5 Egg Fight

Far Side Exposes the Secret Life of Chickens

ln a strip imagining the unseen moments inside chicken coops, the chickens engage in a pitched fight using their own eggs – at least until they’re interrupted by the stern farmer. In a subtle detail, Larson draws the farmer in the pose of a frustrated parent, hands on hips.

4 Accident

Larson’s Command of Poses and Expressions Shines

In a total reversal of the ‘egg fight’ joke, this strip’s chickens react with outrage as a farmer’s careless accident erases all their ‘hard work.’ As ever, Larson’s character poses are perfect, with the chickens’ clear body language and blank faces conveying a cringeworthy silence.

3 Cowboy vs Chicken

One of Far Side’s Most Iconic Comics

Larson often found the funniest version of a situation by exploring its lead-up or aftermath, and that’s definitely the case in this comic where a cowboy and a chicken engage in a shoot out. Larson sets up a bunch of hilarious questions – how did the chicken anger the cowboy? did it really fire an egg into his face from so far away? – while also setting up a situation so immediately understandable, it’s hilarious that anyone would ask what happened.

The cherry on the cake is the sheriff ignoring the egg-faced cowboy as if he too has been killed, appealing to the crowd for some kind of explanation when one combatant is surely still capable of giving his own account.

2 That Does It

Simplicity Makes This Far Side Strip Shine

While chickens rarely get to win out in the world of The Far Side, that’s not to say they don’t try. In this strip, it turns out that not only do chickens strongly object to having their eggs stolen, but they’ve reached the point where they’re willing to take lethal revenge. The chicken stating its plan so directly makes a funny premise even better, as does Larson not even drawing the farmer’s face, emphasizing the size difference between the chickens and their intended victim.

Several of Larson’s strips see chickens turn against humanity, with one about ‘the revolution’ (above) acting as the perfect sequel to ‘That Does It.’

1 Laid Yesterday

Birds Aren’t Far Side’s Only Egg-Layers

Of course, it isn’t just birds who lay eggs, and this iconic Far Side strip sees a mother T-Rex return to the nest, only to find two unlucky archaeologists plundering it. The dinosaur’s shadow is a perfect use of Larson’s single-panel style, adding an extra dimension to what readers can ‘see.’ This is probably Gary Larson’s funniest dinosaur comic, but there’s some stiff competition for that title.

Dinosaurs are one of The Far Side‘s most frequent returning themes, despite the fact that in Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson admits he feels a little guilty for so often drawing them co-existing with cavepeople. Despite this, it’s through dinosaurs that Larson has received some of his most significant tributes – his dinosaur smoke break comic was hidden in a Simpsons episode to pay respect to the cartoonist, while his name for the spikes on a stegosaurus’ tail has been adopted by archaeologists, christening this bodypart now and forever as the ‘Thagomizer.’

Those are the 15 funniest Far Side comics that somehow made eggs funny – be sure to vote in our poll below to let us know which you consider Gary Larson’s funniest ‘egg’ comic of all time.