Summary

• Gary Larson's iconic comic strip, The Far Side, ran for 15 years with bizarre yet brilliant concepts and a distinct style.
• A cartoon called "Cow Tools" was written in the early days and confused many readers but is still talked about over 40 years later.
• The joke was confusing enough that Larson's syndicate had Larson explain it to newspapers

Welcome to the 929th installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. In the second legend of this installment, discover the Far Side cartoon that was so confusing that Gary Larson's syndicate forced him to explain the joke to all of the newspapers that carried the strip.

As a bit of a "behind the scenes" deal when it comes to articles about comic books and pop culture in general, we're generally working under the concept of "fair use" when it comes to using officially published comic books and TV shows and movies. It's how we can share works that are the intellectual property of other comic book companies, so long as we are using the work to comment on it, you know, like a critique or an explanation of the piece in a historical context. This is obvious, of course, as how could you possibly, say, discuss Frank Miller's artwork if you weren't allowed to use Frank Miller's artwork in the article?

Well, even with that pretty clearly established right, Gary Larson, the famed creator of the iconic comic strip, The Far Side, STILL doesn't want people to share his comic strips, and, well, whether reasonable or not (and I have absolutely NO problem with people who still do it, despite Larson's preferences), I tend to want to go with Larson's beliefs if all possible, which makes this tricky to discuss the hilarious story of how one of his early Far Side cartoons was so confusing that his syndicate actually had Larson write an explanation of the joke to all the newspapers that carried the strip at the time!

What The Far Side comic strip that caused so much controversy?

The Far Side, of course, was a brilliant surrealistic comic strip by Gary Larson that ran for basically 15 years (technically it ran for 15 years plus two days on both ends, launching on December 31, 1979, and ending on January 1, 1995). Larson's imagination was unparalleled in terms of coming up with some weird, weird concepts for his concepts. It was brilliant, but it was also, of course, inherently very strange.

Well, early in the strip's run, in October 1982, Larson did a comic called "Cow Tools," which showed a cow standing in front of a bench with a bunch of crudely made tools on the bench/table.

The strip confused the HECK OUT OF PEOPLE. Here is a newspaper article from 1982 about the hubbub over the confusion (note that I'm just reprinting the newspaper article. If THEY happened to reprint the cartoon, then your problem is with them, Gary!)...

A group was formed in California called The Fellowship of the Unexplained, and they wrote in to Larson to ask him to explain the joke, noting that they, "The Cow Tools fellows have been brought together by an absolute certainty that your cartoon means something.”

The absurdity of the cartoon has apparently also made it a really popular cartoon among Gen Z nowadays.

What was Gary Larson's explanation for the strip?

In The Complete Far Side...

Larson shared a newspaper article about the controversy....

The head of Larson's Syndicate noted that he got Larson's joke right away, but he was shocked by how many people DIDN'T, and REALLY wanted to know! Larson joked that even his own mother contacted him about it, noting that usually she understands his comics, but didn't get this one.

So the Syndicate actually made the unprecedented move of sending a letter to each of the newspapers that published Far Side cartoons and sent them the following explanation by Larson of what the joke was, "This cartoon was meant as an exercise in silliness. I've never met a cow who could make tools, but if I had, I feel sure that its efforts would lack something in sophistication and would resemble the crude specimens shown in the cartoon."

In the above newspaper article, Larson elaborated a bit further, noting that he had recalled something about how one of the things that separates humans from other animals is that we make tools, and so he though about other animals making tools, and as he noted, "I started thinking of well...cows. I like cows. I just think there's almost something intrinsically humorous about them. I even just like the name 'cow'. I thought, obviously cows don't make tools, but if they did, they would look like this. At the time, I thought it was hysterical...Wrong."

A while back, Liam McGuire wrote about how this comic "haunted" Larson for years due to just how much attention it got for confusing people. I don't think that Larson should think about it that way, though, as come on, what daily comic strip is still being discussed like this over 40 years later? People aren't still debating the meaning of that week's...well, I don't want to be mean, so fill in your own strip that you think is dumb. No, of course not! But they still ARE talking about "Cow Tools," and I think that that is wonderful. Even if I'm being good, and not sharing the actual comic strip here.

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Be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film and TV. Plus, Pop Culture References also has some brand-new Entertainment and Sports Legends Revealeds!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.