11 Hilarious Far Side Comics Starring Mummies & Egyptologists


Summary

  • Gary Larson’s
    The Far Side
    featured a number of memorable panels starring mummies and Egyptologists over the years, often relying on ancient curses for a punchline.
  • Larson’s humor was shaped by his interests in science, anthropology, and archaeology – with his Egyptology cartoons being among the more underrated recurring bits in
    Far Side
    history.
  • According to Gary Larson, every
    Far Side
    comic was a process of discovery for him – almost as if he were prying open an ancient casket to find what was inside.



The Far Side featured its share of mummies and Egyptologists throughout the course of its run in publication; the exploration and excavation of ancient Egyptian tombs is perhaps one of the less frequently cited, though no less routinely hilarious, recurring bits that creator Gary Larson returned to repeatedly over the years.

As exhibited by The Far Side on a daily basis for fifteen years, Gary Larson was never short on ideas, and part of that came from his cultivation of a wide range of exciting intellectual interests.

Before becoming successful as an artist, Larson came from a science background, and he was also fascinated by fields like anthropology and archeology. All of these things found their way into The Far Side in a variety of forms – including numerous Egypotologists who found themselves in trouble after disturbing the dead.


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11 Gary Larson Put A Bow On It With This Far Side Mummy Panel

First Published: September 27, 1980

Far Side, egyptologist opening up a sarcophagus to find the female mummy has a bow on their head.

The joke in Gary Larson’s first Far Side comic featuring a mummy is incredibly straightforward – to the point where it might slip by readers at first. In this panel, after having pried open a sarcophagus with a crowbar, an Egyptologist discovers a mummy with the slight flourish of a bow tied at the top of its head.


According to Larson, every Far Side comic was its own process of discovery; once he had an idea, it was a matter of developing it into a suitable illustration, a process through which his initial idea tended to evolve to some degree or another. Readers might imagine him sitting down at his desk with the idea of drawing a man discovering a mummy, and working through a series of possible punchlines before landing on the subtly amusing “bow on the head” visual.

10 Always Check The Label Before Opening A Sarcophagus

First Published: February 6, 1981

Far Side, February 6, 1981, Egyptologist shines flashlight on side of casket, which says No Preservatives Added

One of Gary Larson’s funniest techniques in The Far Side involved mash-ups of disparate elements – often, the familiar markings of the present would be mapped onto some aspect of the past, in order to triangulate its punchline. That is the case here, as an Egyptologist shines his flashlight on the side of a sarcophagus, revealing “No Preservatives Added” stamped on it in clear, English letters.


Some Far Side panels cast the reader as something of an omniscient observer, privy to a scene, but from an outside perspective; others utilized “focal characters,” so to speak, in which the audience’s reaction should in some way mirror theirs. That is the case here, as the reader is likely to be as surprised and confused by the “No Preservatives Added” label as the Egyptologists are bound to be.

9 Gary Larson Thought Ancient Curses Were Peak Hilarity

First Published: March 11, 1982

Far Side, March 11, 1982, Egyptologists starting to melt as they invoke an ancient Egyptian curse

Almost as often as Egyptologists appeared in The Far Side, they found themselves on the receiving end of a curse for meddling with the resting places of ancient Egyptian rulers. This panel is a particularly hilarious example, as one explorer turns to the other and says:


Ha! Check this out Andrews. Seems there’s some kind of ancient curse on those who defile this crypt.

Of course, as the Egyptologist is saying this, both him and his compatriot Andrews are depicted rapidly melting, having clearly triggered the supernatural defenses of the tomb they have defiled.

What makes this cartoon so funny is the dissonance between the speaker’s casual disregard for the curse, while the illustration shows that the duo have already succumbed to it. Whether the look on Andrews’ face is one of stoic acceptance, or panicked incredulity, is not a question to be answered; rather, the ambiguity adds to the comedic effect.

8 Ancient Egypt’s Equivalent Of The Matryoshka Nesting Doll

First Published: March 1, 1984

Far Side, March 1, 1984, archeologists puzzled by a Matroshkya Russian Doll-style casket


Most readers will be at least somewhat familiar with the concept of the nesting doll, a series of hollow dolls holding progressively smaller versions of itself. In this Far Side panel, Gary Larson offers an ancient Egyptian take on the idea, as a pair of Egyptologists find their effort to uncover a mummy stymied when they open a casket that instead contains tinier and tinier caskets.

While the caption of this comic – “What the?…Another little casket?” – drives home the punchline, it can be argued that it is unnecessary. This could have functioned as one of The Far Side’s many captionless installments, as the visual of the sarcophagus lids stacked up in front of the increasingly more compact versions of the casket clearly communicates the humor in its own right.


7 Gary Larson Liked To Leave A Lot To The Reader’s Imagination

First Published: September 22, 1984

Far Side, September 22, 1984, mummy audience yelling at mummy on stage to unravel

Though Gary Larson’s humor did result in more than one controversy during The Far Side’s time in newspapers, he rarely featured anything overtly salacious in the comic. In fact, this panel is about as risque as Larson’s humor tended to get – as a crowd of mummies shout at a female mummy on stage, asking her to “Unravel! Unravel! Unravel!

One of the hallmarks of The Far Side was the way that even its most obvious jokes tended to raise more questions than provide answers. To a degree, Gary Larson’s humor was designed to leave room for interpretation, or extrapolation, by the reader. While the artist advised fans not to look too deeply for meaning in his cartoons, the preconceived ideas, notions, and knowledge that audience members brought to any given Far Side comic invariably informed how they reacted to it.


6 Sometimes Deciphering The Far Side Was Easier Than Others

First Published: October 19, 1984

Far Side, October 19, 1984, a pair of Egyptologists are perplexed by ancient Egyptian graffiti

In this panel, two Egyptologists hold a torch up in front of a column featuring depictions of ancient Egyptians. The archaic art has three rows, with figures walking in lines – except one is depicted “breaking the fourth wall,” so to speak, staring back with large googly-eyes, along with archaic graffiti that says “Hi Mom!”

Any theories on this, Cummings?” one of the archaeologists amusingly asks the other, as if they have found something inscrutably difficult to decipher, rather than blatant anachronism. In a way, this reflects a simple truth about reading The Far Side: just as often as it went over readers’ heads, or was too obscure to understand, Gary Larson’s humor was hit-over-the-head obvious and unvarnished by the need to interpret it.


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5 The Far Side’s Egyptologists Were Overly Casual About Curses

First Published: October 12, 1985​​​​

Far Side, October 12, 1985, Egyptologists drop a mummy down crypt stairs and brace themselves to be cursed

The humor in this panel comes from the Egyptologists’ casual disregard for the supernatural punishment they have called down on themselves. After dumping a mummy out of its sarcophagus, down a flight of stairs – causing it the indignity of having its bandages come loose – all one of the two archaeologists has to say is “Whoopsies!”

The speaker in the caption goes on to say:


If this tomb does have a curse on it, Webster, I daresay we’ll be the first to find out.

Once again, the caption and the art of this Far Side panel are in perfect harmony, allowing Gary Larson to maximize the potential of this panel’s punchline. The Egyptologists’ cool response to their potential doom hilariously adds to the memorable image of the two men at the top of the stairs, open casket between them, staring down at the huge mess they have just made.

4 You Get A Curse! You Get A Curse! You All Get Curses!

First Published: May 14, 1986

Far Side, May 14, 1986, a freshly reawakened mummy curses the Egyptologists who opened his sarcaphogas

Once again, this Far Side panel extracts a great deal of humor from the juxtaposition between the abstract horror of the idea of an ancient Egyptian curse premise, and the casual tone with which the comic approaches it.


Okay let’s see,” a freshly unearthed mummy says, pointing at the trio of Egyptologists that disturbed its eternal resting place. “There’s a curse on you, a curse on you, and a curse on you.The mummy’s matter-of-fact delivery, paired with the rigid “we messed up,” posture of the archaeologists, make this one of Gary Larson’s most laugh-out-loud Far Side comics set in an ancient pharaoh’s tomb. Of course, readers will be left wondering what kind of curse the mummy has in mind – considering that, as exhibited in The Far Side, some were worse than others.

3 This Dancing Mummy Just Needs Some Time To Limber Up

First Published: March 10, 1987

Far Side, March 10, 1987, woman admonishes her mummy dance partner to stop dragging his leg


As previously mentioned, Gary Larson approached every Far Side comic as an opportunity to discover the funniest variation on any given idea. This was essential to the process of creating The Far Side – and once again, readers can picture Larson sitting down to work at night, imagining a dancing mummy, but not knowing exactly how that would manifest on the blank page before him.

Ultimately, the answer was the mummy being admonished by his dance partner for dragging his leg, while other dancers surrounding them look on in concern. The idea that a mummy dancer is amusing in its own right, but in this case, Larson elevates the joke by putting it in an entirely ordinary context. In this way, readers might even feel a pang of sympathy for the mummy – as surely, its joints are stiff after millennia in a casket.


2 The Difference Between Short Term Vs. Long Term Curses

First Published: September 29, 1987

Far Side, September 29, 1987, archaeologist knocked out by spring-loaded boxing glove in sarcophagus

As other entries on this list have made clear, ancient Egyptian curses in The Far Side were a total wild card – while earlier adventurers found themselves melted, the character of Belsky in this panel is told to “consider [himself] fortunate” when a giant spring-loaded boxing glove pops out of a sarcophagus and wallops him.

His compatriot goes on to point out how much worse it could have been, noting:

As curses go, that sure beats having your descendants strangled in the night by a walking corpse.

As far as Gary Larson’s use of the “ancient curse” bit as a punchline, this is perhaps the most memorable, given the way that it adds a layer of slapstick humor to the joke. Adding a layer of comedy are the respective reactions of the two Egyptologists, with Belsky’s frustration – as he lays under the door of the casket, knocked off its hinges – delightfully contrasted by his companion’s amusement.


1 It Takes A Village To Raise A Mummy Child

First Published: February 1, 1990

Far Side, February 1, 1990, mummy parent admonishes its kids to stop putting curses on one another

This Far Side comic hilariously depicts a mummy parent at their wits end, as two mummy children are admonished to “stop putting curses on each other!This panel offers another great example of Gary Larson’s penchant for fusing the past and present, for merging together the supernatural and the natural, for jumbling the exceptional and the mundane together, all to form truly idiosyncratic art.

The setting of the scene in this Far Side installment is a modern-looking kitchen, with the mummy kids sitting at the table as the parent attempts to get them to eat breakfast. Artfully framed just outside the kitchen window, however, is an Egyptian pyramid – given the illustration an even stronger sense of place, and suggesting that upon being reanimated, this mummy family unit moved into a nearby contemporary home.


The Far Side Complete Collection Book Set

The Far Side Complete Collection

$71 $125 Save $54

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. 

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