Gary Larson’s The Far Side treated death, the afterlife and everyday misery as reliable sources of comedy. While Peanuts and Garfield usually kept their darker jokes relatively mild, Larson’s newspaper strip regularly explored hangings, murder and the peculiar punishments awaiting people beyond the grave.
Hell appeared especially often. Heaven occasionally featured, but Larson seemed far more interested in the absurdity of the underworld and its sharply irritated ruler. The Devil was one of the few recurring figures in a strip where most characters appeared only once.
These six examples show how Larson used wordplay, impossible situations and oddly specific forms of eternal punishment to make the underworld funny.
1. Jerry’s Pizza delivers to Hell
In a comic dated June 11, 1988, a pizza delivery reaches Hell and Satan immediately rejects it. He says the order is going straight back before he has a conversation with the person who placed it.
The joke turns on the pizza shop’s slogan: “Jerry’s Pizza: We Deliver Anywhere.” Jerry has apparently taken that promise literally. Satan’s frustration is understandable within Larson’s strange logic. Pizza represents one of life’s great pleasures, making it an unsuitable meal for Hell despite the abundance of pizza ovens in the background.
2. A holiday snapshot from the underworld
Larson often converted familiar expressions into literal visual jokes. He once interpreted “ride off into the sunset” as a cowboy riding directly into the sun, while another strip turned “dressed to kill” into a scene featuring sharks in formal clothing.
In this 1982 example, “to Hell and back” becomes a holiday destination. A man shows vacation slides, including one of his wife posing beside the Devil. The Devil looks delighted to meet them, while the wife appears thoroughly unimpressed. The contrast makes the ordinary holiday presentation even funnier.
3. A bowler’s personal Hell
Hell does not have to look the same for everyone in The Far Side. Several strips imagine specialised versions of the afterlife, each designed around an individual’s most painful frustration.
In this 1990 comic, a bowler faces “Bowler’s Hell”: an endless succession of impossible splits. The Devil watches another difficult setup and reacts with a disappointed “Whoa! Another split?… What a bummer!” For anyone who has endured a frustrating frame at the lanes, the punishment is remarkably precise.
4. An orchestra of banjos
If endless splits torment bowlers, Larson suggests that an orchestra filled entirely with banjos would be a conductor’s nightmare. Banjos appeared repeatedly in his work as the butt of musical jokes, although accordions often received even less sympathy.
In another strip set outside Hell, a conductor panics over a banjo in the orchestra, demanding to know what the sound is and telling the musicians to stop. That reaction helps establish the imagined banjo orchestra as an especially cruel punishment for a classical musician.
5. Heaven gets harps; Hell gets accordions
One strip presents a simple musical division between the afterlife’s two destinations. New arrivals in Heaven receive harps, while Hell equips every inhabitant with an accordion.
The premise is deliberately unfair to accordionists and banjo players, who may reasonably have questioned Larson’s musical preferences. Still, the recurring jokes suggest that accordions occupied an even lower place in his comic hierarchy than banjos.
6. Dogs condemned to work as mail carriers
Another specialised Hell assigns condemned dogs the job they would hate most: working as mail carriers. The gag depends on the familiar rivalry between dogs and postal workers, turning that neighbourhood conflict into an eternal sentence.
It can resemble a parody of All Dogs Go to Heaven, the animated film directed by Don Bluth. However, the dates do not match: this comic appeared in 1986, while the film was released in 1989. The strip therefore predates the movie, and the premise stands on its own. Larson may send dogs to Hell for the joke, but dog lovers will likely side with Bluth on their final destination.
Why these comics still work
Larson’s Devil is rarely frightening in these scenes. He is a dissatisfied customer, an enthusiastic holiday photo subject, a specialist in bowling misery and the manager of wildly impractical punishments. That ordinary, sometimes petty characterisation is what makes the supernatural settings effective.
For more offbeat entertainment and gaming culture, browse RETROCADE’s Arcade Blog or explore the latest arcade videos. If this darkly comic view of Hell has inspired a home setup, the arcade machine buying guide is a useful place to start.
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