Gary Larson’s The Far Side often looked beyond Earth for its humor. In a series of cartoons about astronauts and space exploration, Larson applied his offbeat, sometimes dark view of human nature to alien encounters, scientific discovery and the dangers of getting carried away.
The cartoons range from simple physical comedy to unsettling visions of Earth’s fate. One panel shows an astronaut accidentally smashing a fellow crew member’s face shield while celebrating on the moon. Another imagines the Apollo 11 crew racing out of their spacecraft to be the first to step onto the lunar surface, turning a historic achievement into a contest for the finish line.
Larson also found humor in the unknown. In one cartoon, two astronauts discover that Earth is a balloon and decide to keep the revelation quiet. Elsewhere, an astronaut making contact with an alien encounters a giant spider in a spacesuit, while another spots a creature eating fruit shaped like tiny astronauts.
Other spacefaring characters face more immediate problems. Two pilots heading toward the sun argue over a pair of sunglasses as they are caught in its gravitational pull. A monkey struggles to eat a banana through its helmet, and an astronaut discovers alien faces carved into a mountain range in a scene reminiscent of Mount Rushmore.
The collection’s final gag gives Earth an abruptly unremarkable end: two aliens fly through space as the planet splatters across their windshield, prompting them to complain about the mess. Across these scenarios, Larson’s astronauts are not heroic explorers so much as ordinary, fallible people confronting the strange scale of the universe.
Sources: Comic Book Resources.