Gary Larson Whiffed Hard When He Published ‘Cow Tools’

We’re still talking about one The Far Side Cartoon 40 years later

Writing a daily comic strip must be hard. Not the drawing three pictures a day part but trying to make every strip funny. Almost every comic strip has days where readers wonder what the joke is supposed to be there is a joke at all. I’ve been reading Family Circus for 40 years and never laughed once.

One of the most consistently smart and funny comic strips was Gary Larson’s The Far Side. It was a bit darker than other strips and usually featured animals doing human things. The joke being the animals nature getting in the way of them fitting in with society.

Some of Gary’s jokes in The Far Side required knowledge of the animal kingdom or something that no longer existed. As a kid there were a few Far Side cartoons I was too young to understand, or so I thought. Cow tools was one of them.

What sets Cow Tools apart is the confusion it caused. Nobody got it. Gary was known for making smart jokes, but people with PhD’s spoke out that they didn’t get it either. What was the joke supposed to be?