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This Is the Only 'Far Side' Comic Gary Larson Ever Apologized For
Alyson Lewis
March 23, 2024
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The Far Side was never the kind of comic strip to pull its punches, but Gary Larson is a big enough man to admit when he got it wrong – they could have used that kind of attitude while making Ishtar.
Over the course of fifteen years, Larson produced a total of 4,337 single-panel Far Side comics that aspired to elevate the medium to surrealist, science-fiction-y, intelligent heights that other strips could only hope to reach. Through The Far Side, Larson garnered a wide range of cultured comic strip-readers, which often included the influential and well-educated – he even unintentionally coined the term “Thagomizer” as the semi-official name of the spikes on stegosaurian dinosaurs among the paleontological community. So, it stands to reason that, when the historically trashed box office disaster Ishtar premiered in 1987, at least one member of its cast or crew could have been a Far Side fan and, when they saw the comic Larson published on September 25th, 1991, their heart sank.
Apparently, when the McPoyle brothers gave Sweet Dee Stockholm syndrome in the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode “The Gang Gets Held Hostage,” they also gave her the key to their apartment.
Up until a couple of hours ago, I had always thought that, out of five members of the Paddy’s Pub crew, Sweet Dee had the least insane living situation by a wide margin. Charlie and Frank’s situation demands no lengthy explanation for why the piles of garbage, cans of urine and knives of toe make their apartment an absurdist hellhole. However, Dennis and Mac’s flat may have been even more nightmarish than Charlie and Frank’s place, even before it caught on fire, considering the traps Dennis has installed for his targets. But Dee’s place, where Mac and Dennis crashed for a couple of seasons while their own abode was out of commission and where cat food is eaten exclusively by cats, had always been the most normal home in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia — that is, before we learned about its previous tenants.
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