Isn’t there a blog site where occasional new ones are being (or were going to be) posted?
That same panel just hit my Facebook page yesterday with people trying to figure it out.
Take this!
Dan
There’s a hint of that in the eyes.
It’s my first click in the morning, followed by the Calvin & Hobbes strip. The problem with the Far Side is the viewer comments, all of whom seem to think they are irresistibly funny. I quit reading the comments for that reason.
I read some online stuff about the cow tools strip, and basically Larson says that if cows made tools, they would not make any sense to anyone, including the cows. It’s probably one of his least funny strips, but he’s rightly unapologetic about it.
I similarly never understood the confusion. Of course the tools don’t make any sense; they’re made by cows.
In The PreHistory of Far Side, Larson says
The “Cow tools” episode is one that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life.
…
Inevitably, I began thinking about cows, and what if they, too, were discovered as tool makers. What would they make? Primitive tools are always, well, primitive-looking — appearing rather nondescript to the lay person. So it seemed to me, whatever a cow would make would have to be even a couple of notches further down the “skill-o-meter.”
…
The first mistake I made was in thinking this was funny.
…
So, in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood and wasn’t funny and therefore I went on to even greater success and recognition.
It’s easy to forget how good Woody Harrelson was at that role.
The other one he got a lot of flack for was one of a couple of aliens with great big grins, in a bubble flying saucer driving low over a street with humans running, in obvious fear.
That was it.
He started getting calls from editors, asking “what’s the funny here?” (By that time, he had such a legend that people assumed there was a joke that they were missing.)
He said, “Well, there’s the caption. Doesn’t that make it funny?”
The editors etc. said “What caption?”
Turned out the reproduction process had cut off the caption, which was that the aliens were going “weeeeeee!!!” as they saw all the terrified humans running from them.
Maybe not a really great one, but at least it made sense. In Larson world, at least.
The part not mentioned in the Larson quote, is that one of the cow tools looks a lot like a saw, so people think, “OK what am I missing? The one is a crude saw. What are the others supposed to be?” And that is the source of the confusion. It is remarkably similar to the OP’s comic. “JOHN BROWN’S BODY shop” is grin worthy funny, but then, why the hose, and why is JB staring at it? Confusion!
One thing to note about that website is that the previous strips are available only going back three days.
Exactly! If I had never seen a Larson comic, I might have jumped to the JB play on words “and fender shop” and smiled and moved on. But being pretty familiar with his stuff, I started looking for the deeper funny and the weird arrangement of the hose and whatever that saucer thing is had me scratching my head. Why is the hose stretched out, why only one dish (or hubcap)?
If it’s just a play-on-words panel, I’m fine with it. but I don’t I was too far out in the weeds for thinking there might be more to this.
When I saw the cartoon in question, my first thought was “Where’s the dog?” Followed by recognition of the word play. Then another look for the dog.
Huh, to me, the hose and the… whatever (hubcap or dog dish) were just “irrelevant detail that one might see at a body shop”.
This is where I am at as well. However, the placement of the hose and dish/hubcap in the center of the piece does give me pause that there is more meaning to that feature. Or, I am just overthinking it.
The hose symbolizes Lincoln’s prioritization of the Union over abolition.
He got even more flak for the one captioned “What dogs dream about.”
IIRC the issue is that the typesetter or whoever types up the captions had them yelling “Yeeeeeeeee!”, when it should have been “Yeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaawwwww!”
I saw this recently:
Yeah, from what I recall, the problem was that readers thought that the people running were saying “Yeeee”.
While we’re on the topic of dogs, hoses, and the Far Side, can someone explain the one to me where the “wife” dog catches the “husband” dog with the hose in his mouth and cheeks apparently full of water and she says “So! Planning on roaming the neighborhood with some of your buddies today?” I have absolutely no idea why she would say that or what is supposed to make this funny, but it must be something because I’ve never seen anyone else be confused by it.