Gary Larson’s ability to marry cheesy puns with genuinely funny drawings is proof of the man’s genius

One of the best possible recipes for comedy is to have incredibly dumb characters written by incredibly smart people. Homer Simpson, for example, has often been written by Harvard-educated writers staffed at The Simpsons. Fry on Futurama is the same kind of character, as is Michael Scott from The Office, and basically every character on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

In the medium of comic strips, the best example of dumb characters written by a genuine genius is The Far Side, where Gary Larson features some hopelessly stupid subjects. That’s where the funny comes from. But Larson would also use that smart/dumb dynamic in another way unique to The Far Side. He did this by making use of the occasional pun or intentionally lame bit of wordplay. While Larson often made jokes with deep scientific knowledge or subtle gags that acted like a puzzle where you have to look hard to find the punchline, sometimes he simply took a turn of phrase and put some truly stupid spin on it.

I don’t know Larson’s motivations for these kinds of jokes — other than to make people laugh — but for me it kind of works as a bit of a Far Side palette cleanser. After a bunch of overly smart jokes in a row, it's fun to see Larson do something delightfully dumb. Here are seven great examples of the highbrow genius Gary Larson making use of the most lowbrow turns of phrase.

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