I think I might have expected to see another car on the lot with body damage. But then maybe weird details are more his style?
I know this is a bump, but the original Far Side comic popped back into my head and I haven’t seen anyone address my thoughts.
I get the John Brown’s Body and fender shop thing, but I can’t let go of the hose. It sits firmly in the center foreground, and John Brown’s wide-eyed expression makes it look like he’s surprised about the hose. The dish looks like an oil drain pan. My first thought was “oh hey this mechanic is wondering why someone came to his lot, drained their own car’s oil, and refilled it with the water hose, they’re going to be in for a world of hurt soon.” Either that or he’s wondering how they even managed to drive away under such circumstances.
Of course, that doesn’t quite work because it’s not a mechanic shop, it’s a body (of which fenders are a subset) shop. So he wouldn’t be doing oil changes, not that it would stop someone else from just rocking up and doing it for some reason. Also the dish/pan is empty, not full of old oil. But the fact that the hose and dish are so prominent makes me suspicious of it being just set dressing.
Did you notice the author wrote “captain” instead of “caption”? 
Is it though? It doesn’t logically follow for me. Why would a body shop have a hose stretched out front?
Ha ha, well that’s one interpretation. I’m with you in that the hose is conspicuous if it has no meaning but to read into that panel that because there’s a round thing on the ground, it follows that someone must have snuck onto his lot at night, changed his oil, washed it out with a hose is a wee bit of a stretch.
The thing about the dish (for me) is two-fold: it’s location and the fact that the hose terminates at it. Even if taken as a given that there would be a hose on a bodyshop lot, you would expect it to to rolled up when not in use - or at least slung over by the building. Same if the round thing is a hubcap. There might be one laying around, but not out where customers would run over it.
I’m not claiming it has to be part of the joke, but the fact that the hose ends at the round thing implies it is a dish. Probably for the dog that guards the lot at night - to prevent unwanted oil changes :~)
Wouldn’t the hose be to set off the ding ding when someone drives over it? If you’re in the back of the garage, or something?
Only in full service as stations, which have gone the way of the dodo. In body shops they stay inside sanding and hammering all day. People go to the office and schedule repairs.
Also the ding-ding hoses aren’t attached to a water spigot, they don’t have nozzles on the end, and they’re usually stretched tight across the pavement.
Keep in mind that Larson isn’t a mechanic, nor a body worker, nor anything else of the sort. The hose doesn’t need to have an actual legitimate purpose at a body shop, because Larson doesn’t know what has an actual legitimate purpose at a body shop. It just needs to be the sort of thing that looks about right for being at a place like that, to a layman like Larson.
I agree with you, and I’m just having fun here. The dog humping the “transmission” (which is way too far to the back) is a prime example.
But although Larson isn’t a mechanic, he is an artist. And the panel is arranged so that the hose and pan/bowl/dish/hubcap is front and center. The hose “points” there, and the eye is drawn there, making us think it is important.
I chuckled at "John Brown’s Body
and Fender Shop"
But the panel should have framed on the garage and sign, and JB, not the driveway.
Maybe the purpose was to have you find the joke, not see it immediately. Hence it was constructed to draw the eye away from the sign initially.
Agree. As a former commercial artist, I can attest that looking up reference was all in a days work. However maybe cartoonists are lazier?
Hose and dish:
John Brown has a dog.
Cartoon trope: dogs chase cars.
Cartoon trope: what if a dog caught a car? e.g.
Larson cartoon:
- John Brown’s Body is already a funny name for a garage.
- If John Brown’s dog escaped (dog dish in the picture, no dog), he might chase cars, catch them, and bring J Brown the fenders / damage the fenders / whatever,
- Forcing J Brown to change the name of the shop (smaller letters) to add “and fender shop.”
Funny!
But that would have made the panel a landscape. Far Side panels are all in portrait. The sky and the driveway are all filler. Putting that hose and hubcap there is akin to putting a cloud or two in the sky just to break up the monotony of the dead space.
It’s called The Far Side. Not The Normal Side. It’s The FAR Side. The less sense a panel makes the better it is. Thus Cow Tools is the best Far Side panel of all time. John Brown’s Body Shop is a play on words not likely to be used as the name of a real body shop. It is merely one of the most basic Far Side panels. Cleanly done, but not complex.
I disagree, this will always be my favorite.
This one confuses me too. Why is one of the boards loose? Are we to assume the dog already slammed into the pet door and a plank went flying? And now he’s going to do it again?
I swear he does this on purpose.
Loose? It’s braced against the floor.
It’s like you’ve never even tried to keep a poodle out of your house.
It’s not. There is one board horizontally across the pet door, nailed into the door on either side, and there is a second board behind it to brace it against the floor (you can see it nailed into the floor). It’s a pretty effective miniature barricade, though pretty haphazardly done, as if the human constructed it quickly on the spur of the moment.
Okay, that makes more sense.
Even better that my grandmother has a little dog named Fifi.
My husband recently commented that Far Side doesn’t really hold up and I told him he’s bonkers. Maybe it was more edgy back in the day, but it’s still hilarious and weird.
All of my favorite comic strips are hilarious and weird.