With the exception of an incident involving Dr. Jane Goodall, Gary Larson’s The Far Side wasn’t exactly the most controversial comic. But one panel landed the artist in hot water with a number of readers – specifically, those readers with filthy minds.
In 1988, Larson published a comic in which a sleeping dog visualizes itself perched on top of an overturned car. “When car chasers dream,” the caption reads.
“I drew this cartoon in an attempt to capture the ultimate fantasy of any dog inclined to chase cars,” Larson explained in The Prehistory of the Far Side. “That fantasy, of course, would be to actually one day succeed in making a ‘kill.’”
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In Larson’s mind, the dog was howling in triumph, the way a wolf might do after catching its prey. Which makes sense, considering that The Far Side regularly found humor in the absurdities of animal life. The canine penchant for chasing passing cars was an ideal subject for the beloved strip. But that’s not how many people saw it.
In a scandal that caught Larson “totally off guard” many people were offended by the dog cartoon. “I made one mistake,” Larson later reasoned. “Since the car was supposedly ‘dead,’ I put it on its back never to run again.” With the car flipped over, he drew in the transmission for realism’s sake. “I never should have done that,” he admitted. “The place where the transmission would normally go conflicted with where I wanted to place the dog straddling the car – so I just worked them both in as best as I could.”
What neither Larson nor his editors caught was that the image made it seem as though the dog was going full Titane on the vehicle. “The dog and the car appear to be ‘romantically’ entangled,” the cartoonist clarified. “Or as a friend of mine phrased it, ‘Hey! That dog’s humpin’ the car!”
The public “outcry” found readers complaining to their local papers. One person wrote that the strip went “beyond the bounds of decency,” adding, “I’m at a loss of words to describe it.” Another claimed that they were canceling their subscription “immediately.” Someone who was particularly upset suggested that The Far Side had “exceeded being sick and became offensive,” arguing that it should never have been published in a “family newspaper.”
Even newspaper staff members criticized the comic. “The Far Side is getting too far out,” a publisher griped. “This particular cartoon should have appeared in Playboy or some such magazine.” One editor noted that it was “too raunchy” for their publication. “Please tell me this dog isn’t doing to this car what the entire staff … believes it is doing to this car,” a Pennsylvania editor pleaded.
Larson pointed out that the risqué interpretation doesn’t even make much sense. “What would the point of the cartoon be?” he asked. “Every dog’s fantasy is to make it with a car? I don’t get it.”
To be fair, if the comic was about a dog humping a car, it would still make more sense than “Cow Tools.”
