By Brian VanHooker Published Oct 11, 2026, 1:04 AM EDT Polygon Lists Greatness is subjective, but these 10 are correct
Image: Gary Larson Sign in to your Polygon.com account Add Us Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap What, exactly, is the measure of greatness when it comes to comic strips ? The daily newspaper comic is a very limiting art form, with only a few panels — sometimes just one panel — to make a joke. Because of its brevity, it's easy to trivialize the medium as simply the “funny papers,” a daily, disposable art form designed to pick you up after reading the actual news.
Yet, we’ve seen comic strips do so much more than that. Characters like Snoopy and Garfield have become part of the fabric of our culture. Comic strips are capable of greatness. And since greatness is possible, what, then, makes a comic strip great?
The first instinct is to go for something “deep.” Comic strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes occasionally ventured outside of comedy to examine the world and say something thoughtful about it. But that’s not the case for other comic strips that don’t go deep. For Garfield , I’d argue greatness would come down to a really clever, relatable gag. For something like Prince Valiant , which specialized in highly detailed, picturesque images, I imagine greatness would relate to visual appeal.
So what would the measure of greatness be for Gary Larson’s The Far Side ?
Image: Gary Larson The Far Side didn’t do deep and life-affirming stuff. Nor was Larson's comic beautiful in any conventional sense, as his characters were often grotesque to enhance the comedy. It's tempting to associate greatness with the comic strips that made the biggest impact, like the Stegosaurus strip that resulted in a new name for a dinosaur bone, but Larson’s work never set out to end up in science books.
I’d argue that what Gary Larson was doing with The Far Side was trying to make the funniest joke each day. That's why he didn't use recurring characters — it wasn't about characters so much as the joke. Thus I’d argue, for The Far Side , greatness should be measured by the effectiveness and cleverness of the joke. Making us laugh was the purpose of The Far Side , so I can’t think of a better means by which to measure them.
So here are 10 Far Side comics that I think are Larson's best, not because they made headlines or they said something profound about life, but because they're just really clever and funny.
Image: Gary Larson One of the highlights of Larson’s work was just how much he trusted his audience. Sometimes the punchlines were broad and dumb — in the best way — and sometimes his comics were like a comedic scavenger hunt. This is a great example of a joke that only pays off when you figure out which cubicle you’re supposed to look in.
Image: Gary Larson Gary Larson didn’t do it often, but sometimes he used The Far Side to break the fourth wall with the reader — he would use a comic panel to deconstruct the art of comic strips. For example, this comic is about “sketchy” looking characters, so it features characters that are especially crudely drawn. It's really clever, but you’ve got to pay fairly close attention to get it.
Image: Gary Larson But a Far Side didn’t require subtlety to be great. For this one, it’s funny because of the overkill. It’s obvious the man…