I thought I’d seen all of the Larson comics…
but I recently ran across this one. I’d never seen it before and I don’t get it. Help?
I did do a search on this site and didn’t come up with it.
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul’s marching on.
I know about the song, how does that make this panel funny?
Does the hose have any significance?
It’s a(n auto) body shop. So you could read it as “John Brown’s Body” Shop or “John Brown’s” Body Shop. I admit the former doesn’t make a whole lotta sense, but you should now see the ambiguity that makes the joke.
I just ‘splain em, I cain’t hep with ‘preciatin em
It’s a pretty simple play on words. No amount of additional explanation will make it funnier to you.
I think it’s just a play on words - an extension of a famous song title into a mundane, modern use. That is what is supposed to be the joke - an absurd combination of the two things. Larson could have as easily made something about John Brown’s Body wash.
As others have said, John Brown was a famous abolitionist who lead a raid on Harpers Ferry,West Virginia, and was hanged for treason. Harpers Ferry was a Federal arms and ammuntion depot. The idea was to arm some freed slaves. The song “John Brown’s Body” was sung by northern Federal troups during the Civil War, or the War of Northern Aggression, or the War Between the States, depending upon your viewpoint.
So the cartoon is about John Brown’s Body shop.
Just don’t try to figure out Cow Tools. That way lies madness.
I didn’t get that one either, since I don’t know the song, but Larson makes that exact joke all the time – taking a phrase and adding a word to make it something different and unexpected. I don’t think the hose has any signficance, although it does look like the owner is staring at it.
Larson published 4,337 Far Side cartoons. Not all of us are going to think every one of them was a gem.
I’m not one to question Gary Larson on what makes a cartoon funny but it would’ve been funnier if the John Brown shown in the cartoon looked like the one from the John Steuart Curry mural.
“AND FENDER SHOP” is in smaller lettering. It’s like an afterthought on the sign, even though it changes the meaning.
It’s the same joke as in Arrested Development, when Tobias is doing a commercial and screams “WE’RE HAVING A FIRE sale”.
Sometimes you have to look closely at the hose in a Far Side comic before it makes sense:
I guess that part threw me because it was stretched out to a dog (?) dish but no dog. I was trying to make that part of the joke.
I wasn’t bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t funny, I just didn’t get the joke.
Indeed.
I’ve never figured that one out.
It’s purely absurdist/surreal. There’s not much to get. I’ve always found it amusing, but then I love the nonsensical.
Is that a dog dish? It looks more like a hubcap to me. I don’t think it (like the hose) adds anything to the joke, but it’s something I’d logically expect to see around an auto body shop.
If someone can explain the significance of the hose and the hubcap, please do so.
BTW, the lyrics I learned while growing up are
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, (3x)
but his soul goes marching on.
I’ve never understood the confusion. It’s just a bit meta. Animals talk and do other human stuff in The Far Side and other comics (somehow, no one is bothered by how the cow is standing on two legs). So why not make tools also? But cow tools are going to be stupid and useless because cows are dumb and don’t have great manual dexterity. It’s just a tiny bit of real-world logic invading the comic universe.