12 Hilarious Far Side Comics Featuring Rhinoceros (From 1980 to 1987)

Though they don’t get as much credit as some of the other animals that populated The Far Side, Gary Larson’s comic frequently featured rhinoceroses, whose distinct look gave many of the artist’s cartoons an added visual flair. Over the course of the cartoon’s fifteen years in publication, rhinos appeared in multiple unforgettable Far Side panels.

When most readers think about animals that appeared in The Far Side, it is often Gary Larson’s comics about dogs that come to mind first; others might immediately think of the funniest Far Side cartoons featuring snakes, or the many different appearances of vultures and other birds of prey.

Rhinos are less likely to top the list – yet they appeared almost as frequently as their animal cohorts, taking center stage in just as many laugh-out-loud installments of The Far Side, as well as many which left readers scratching their heads, in patented Gary Larson style.

12

Getting Warmed Up For A Long Day On The Far Side

First Published: April 26, 1987

This mural-style Far Side panel depicts what the caption calls “the African dawn,” as the sun rises over the plains – to find the groups of animals mingling about, having their morning coffee before getting started on another long day of being wild beasts. Considering how stressful the state of nature is, especially in the world of The Far Side, it is nice that artist Gary Larson gives these creatures a moment to enjoy a morning pick-me-up.

Though the rhinos share the panel with a group of cheetahs, it is the horned duo on the right that get the big laugh of this Far Side, as one fills the other’s cup all the way to the brim, prompting the line of dialogue: “Whoa. That’s enough.”

11

Another Far Side Marriage Ends In Despair

First Published: August 6, 1986

Marriages did not exactly fair well in The Far Side, which featured its share of feuding spouses and illicit affairs. This panel depicts the latter, featuring a woman clinging to her lover as her husband – a rhinoceros – arrives home early from work unexpectedly.

The most successful Far Side panels, for the most part, were effective as a result of their illustration and their caption working together to make the reader laugh. This is a great example, as the composition of the image and the silliness of the caption enhance one another, adding up to a perfect joke. With the rhino husband silhouetted in the background, the wife tells her paramour to stay still, because “his vision’s not very good, but his sense of smell and hearing are quite accurate.”

10

What Happens When You Don’t Tidy Under The Couch Regularly

First Published: June 14, 1986

This Far Side panel doesn’t feature an actual rhino, but it uses the form of a rhinoceros to great comedic effect. Captioned “Roberta takes on a dust rhino,” the comic depicts a woman holding up a broom and dustpan as the giant silhouette of a rhino leaps out at her. Ironically, the “dust rhino” is perhaps one of the most aggressive rhinoceroses Gary Larson depicted in The Far Side – though the takeaway for readers is less likely to be the danger of rhinos, and more to a reminder to sweep the floor.

The joke here exhibits a qualities that make it a patented Gary Larson punchline: it takes something familiar, in this case the colloquial term “dust bunny,” and comedically escalates it, then embodies it in a memorable image.

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Fans of the far side can’t pass up this master collection of Gary Larson’s finest work. Originally published in hardcover in 2003, this paperback set comes complete with a newly designed slipcase that will look great on any shelf. The Complete Far Side contains every Far Side cartoon ever published, which amounts to over 4,000, plus more than 1,100 that have never before appeared in a book and even some made after Larson retired. 

9

“That Spoiled Rhino,” One Of Several Pet Rhinoceroses Featured In The Far Side

First Published: January 10, 1986

The rhino’s stand-out feature, its horn, is put to great comedic use here, in a panel that features one busting straight through the front door of a house, while the homeowners look on from the kitchen, in the background of the illustration. Rather than a menacing intrusion, however, the caption makes it clear this is an annoyance, as this rhino is evidently the couple’s pet.

“That spoiled rhino is going to either bellow or charge the door all night till we let him in,” the wife here tells her husband in this Far Side cartoon, in a deliberately skewed take on homeowners leaving their dogs out at night. While this might seem anathema to pet parents now, it was at one time standard operating procedure, qualifying pets – whether dogs or rhinos – who got to spend the night in the house “spoiled.”

8

A Rare Moment Of Quiet Reflection For The Far Side

First Published: December 14, 1985

Captioned, “the rhino in repose,” this panel features a moonlit pastoral scene, with the silhouette of a rhinoceros center-frame, in what appears to be a meditative or yogic stance, balancing on a single leg. Both the image and the joke here are subtle, but like many of Gary Larson’s best comics, it is worth unpacking.

This is an example of a Far Side comic that is perhaps funnier at the conceptual level than the execution, which is bound to leave many readers narrowing their eyes and asking, “What-the?” The idea of a rhino achieving a state of blissful tranquility on a gently-sloping hilltop, under a sky lit by a full moon, is abstractly hilarious, even if that might not have entirely translated to the page in a way that every ready will immediately appreciate.

7

Far Side Artist Gary Larson Danced To His Own Beat

First Published: February 25, 1985

This Far Side rhino comic is laugh-out-loud funny, once again because of the way the image and the caption – in this instance, rendered as a thought bubble above the rhino’s head – work together. Here, a rhino is shown on its hind legs in the background of the image, while a box labeled “tap shoes” lies in the foreground. Struggling to get the hang of the technique, the rhino thinks: “Dang! I think I just wasted fifty bucks.”

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Most people will be able to recognize the phenomenon of making an impulse purchase, in an effort to pursue a new hobby, only to find it doesn’t suit them. In his proprietary way of mixing the silly and the profound, Gary Larson articulates that shared experience – but rather than a dancing bear, he uses a dancing rhino to get his point across.

Related

12 Far Side Comics From 1982 That Make Readers Go “What The?”

According to Gary Larson, his notorious comic The Far Side was often designed to leave readers scratching their heads, wondering “What-the?”

6

The Far Side’s Strangest (And Sweetest) Pet-Parent Dynamic

First Published: August 6, 1984

The Far Side featured its share of unusual pets, with this panel holding the distinction of being both one of the weirdest human-pet interactions Gary Larson ever depicted, and somehow at the same time, one of the most touching.

The cartoon depicts a man who can be inferred to be on a business trip, calling back home, where his wife holds the phone up to their pet rhinoceros, trying to coax it to give just “one grunt for Daddy.” Once again, Gary Larson depicts a familiar scenario – a person who is out of town talking to their pet on the phone – in the most unusual possible way, with the way the pet rhino fills the frame, looking harmless at the same time it is being uncooperative, coming across as particularly funny.

5

Okay, This Is The Strangest Far Side Comic About Pet Rhinos

First Published: June 20, 1984

As clear as some Far Side punchlines are, other panels fall into the category of “confusing, obtuse, esoteric, and strange” that Gary Larson’s comic became synonymous with. That is the case here, in a comic that features an adolescent boy being put upon by his mother to show their guest his “rhino tube farm.”

Despite its reputation, The Far Side was generally more tethered to reality than most critics and fans alike would readily give it credit for. That said, this cartoon is as inexplicably bizarre as any that Gary Larson produced in the fifteen-year run of his strip. Larson himself was the first to say that his comics had no meaning, this is at least one instance where it is best to take his advice and not look much deeper into it.

4

The “Mimic” Still Has The Most Dangerous Part Of The Rhino

First Published: January 14, 1984

This is another example of a Far Side comic that can best be described as perplexing. In it, two people on safari carefully appraise a guidebook as they face down a rhinoceros – only to be relieved that it is simply a “rhino mimic,” they are dealing with. Meanwhile, the head of a rhino is depicted sticking through a board with a painted-on rhino’s body.

It is a head-scratcher, to say the least, but in a way that makes it funnier, as it leans fully into the non-sequitur in a way that Gary Larson only seldom ever truly did. What exactly the “mimic” looks like behind the board, and how it should be considered non-threatening despite still having the rhino’s characteristic horn, are all questions better left unasked, let alone unanswered.

3

This Far Side Rhino Wins “Best In Show”

First Published: January 28, 1983

Now, for another example of a Far Side comic that does benefit from the reader digging into it deeper, there is this panel, featuring a woman being awarded first place trophy at a rhino show. Lampooning the tradition of having dogs compete in dog shows, Gary Larson substitutes rhinos, resulting in a scenario the comedy potential of which far exceeds the capacity for a single panel to capture it.

In other words, while the idea itself is amusingly presented here, this Far Side becomes truly hilarious when it instigates the reader’s imagination, causing them to picture what it would be like for the rhinos to do tricks, and prance around for the judges the way that domesticated dogs have learned to do.

2

In Comedy, Knowing Your Audience Is Half The Battle

First Published: July 7, 1982

In this Far Side, a stand-up comedian is depicted bombing so bad that it might put him in physical danger – considering that his audience consists of a thoroughly unamused rhinoceros, which the caption helpfully explains is, “an animal with little or no sense of humor.”

Gary Larson, like any good humorist, developed a sense of his target audience over the course of his career – but given the solitary nature of being a newspaper cartoonist, he did not have the connection with his fans in the way other creators do. In a way, when Gary Larson worked on The Far Side, it was almost as if he were a solitary comedian, performing to the harshest critic possible: a rhino prepared to gore him if he couldn’t find the right punchline.

1

More Marital Drama In The Far Side’s First Rhino Comic

First Published: June 2, 1980

The first appearance of rhinoceroses in The Far Side is also one of the funniest, at least from the 1980s. In it, an angry looking rhino father comments to his nervously-grinning wife that there is “something different,” about their child – hilariously leaving unstated the fact that the offspring has the body of a rhino but the head, and more critically the neck, of a giraffe.

This distinct image, along with the tension-charged comedic payoff, was an early indicator that Gary Larson was willing to go to unexpected places with The Far Side, in order to get a reaction out of his readers. Time and again, his use of rhinos in The Far Side paid off to great comedic effect, making it clear they should be held in the same esteem as the rest of the comic’s rost of iconic animals.

The Far Side

The Far Side is a humorous comic series developed by Gary Larson. The series has been in production since 1979 and features a wide array of comic collections, calendars, art, and other miscellaneous items.