10 Best Far Side Strips on a Desert Island (#2 Has a Surprising Twist)
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A castaway, a speck of sand, and a single palm tree. Few cartoon setups are as dependable, and Gary Larson came back to that tiny island again and again during The Far Side 's run. He rarely cared about the rescue. His castaways are too busy bickering, flirting, and receiving deliveries that make no sense. Few comics explore the tragic clash between modern society and nature like these strips do.
The juxtaposition between modern life and total isolation is delightfully silly, and it makes these strips some of my favorites from Larson's hilarious body of work . For this list, I looked through The Complete Far Side and picked the 10 desert island comic strips that squeeze the most comedy out of the least amount of sand.
That sandcastle has turrets. Someone spent hours packing wet sand by hand, and his island-mate is grinning over a brand-new crate. With nothing to do but wait, he plans to spend the afternoon wrecking his neighbor's masterpiece . Their friendship is about to get sandier.
The crate's brand nods to Wile E. Coyote, whose Road Runner cartoons turned ACME into a punchline. The name is even older than the cartoons, though. Businesses have used it for decades, and the word comes from the Greek akme , which means "a peak," according to Mental Floss .
Ms. Hollings has been stuck under the same palm tree for who knows how long, and now the guy beside her wants to dance. He even has a horn section. Larson never explains how a big band, music stands and all, ended up on a sandbar, which adds to the humor here.
All that's left is the hard part: the ask. If she turns him down, he has nowhere to go, and the whole band will witness his embarrassment . The Far Side often includes silly music-based scenarios , and this one hits all the right notes.
This may seem like a simple misunderstanding, but the hint of a smile suggests the pilot is angling for an easy day off . He read the wobbly F and decided his work was done. Down on the beach, the castaway will have to live with the weight of his misspelling.
The castaway would have been better off with SOS, which, contrary to popular belief, isn't an acronym. Delegates at the 1906 International Wireless Telegraph Convention in Berlin picked the Morse pattern because three dots, three dashes, and three dots were fast to send and hard to misread, per Mental Floss . "Save Our Souls" was added later.
A gag by ACME always lands with anyone who grew up watching classic cartoons. It's clever to evoke the infamous made-up company since a giant rubber slingshot band only exists to cause chaos. Across the water, his neighbor is stretched out with his eyes shut, unaware of the coconut rain of fire about to descend on him .
Coconuts are surprisingly good travelers. Their thick husks let them float in saltwater for three or four months, according to the New York Botanical Garden . Some still sprout after washing up hundreds of miles away. This castaway isn't waiting months for the tide, though. His coconuts are going airmail.
Larson had a way of keeping his characters optimistic in the direst situations. The world could be ending, but at least nobody has to worry about fishing limits . Here, a rock covered in oysters and mussels is enough to make one stranded man rejoice, although Doris doesn't look impressed. Of all the islands on this list, this slippery, pointy rock is the most unforgiving place to make a home.
Many things in life seem to come too late, and fate can be a harsh master. Here, Larson makes that bad timing particularly cruel. A man worn down to the bone finally gets the escape he needed years too late . This is one of Larson's darkest yet funniest strips . The visuals are also spot-on, and Larson drew the water with more detail than in any other strip on this list.
This strip is an absurd castaway scenario that shows Larson at his most deviously witty. Of all the crates that could have floated to the stranded man, his came from Turtle World. The tiny island in the bowl mocks his own situation , and the sea itself seems utterly cruel.
While a tiny turtle island may seem strange, those turtle bowls were once a staple of American pet stores. Then, in 1975, the FDA banned the sale of turtles with shells under 4 inches long, according to NPR . The reason was the salmonella risk they posed to children. By the time this strip ran in 1990, even his consolation prize was a throwback.
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A gag within a gag is peak Larson brilliance . What immediately stands out the most is having to deal with obnoxious neighbors. Everyone has them, some well-intentioned, some not. This strip is also a humorous U-turn into The Far Side 's food humor, since the only cooking fat out here comes from the same palm trees that make up their entire world. The man on the nearby island wants nothing to do with Carol's palm oil, and at the time, he might have had a point.
After a 1966 heart attack, Omaha executive Phil Sokolof ran full-page newspaper ads in 1988 called "The Poisoning of America!" They targeted the palm and coconut oil in processed foods, and seven large companies announced they were removing tropical oils, according to Time .
Coconut oil found new life as a health food later on. However, in 2017, the American Heart Association advised against it, since it raises LDL cholesterol. It picked polyunsaturated vegetable oil instead.
Larson's knack for making people painfully obtuse is clear here. A favorite Far Side archetype, the nerdy husband, can't believe that his wife is leaving him, even though Rico Suave is only a few feet away. Not even knowing the man's name shows a whole new level of ineptitude.
The Far Side 's desert island strips are often dark, but it feels apt to end on some positivity after wading through broken hearts, fights, and cruel irony. Yes, the two are forced to hang out here, but that doesn't mean they can't be grateful for their companionship . A sincere bonding moment between two bros is a sweetness seldom explored in Larson's work. Just ignore the grim reality of their situation.