Chicken jokes are one of the most beloved recurring elements from The Far Side, meaning that by developing a better sense of how artist Gary Larson used chickens in his cartoons over time, and how that usage changed over time, can afford readers a greater understanding of his work as a whole.

Given their ubiquity during the halcyon days of The Far Side's fifteen-year run in publication, chickens were surprisingly slow to become a staple of Gary Larson's work. By the time of Larson's retirement, though, his chicken jokes were as ambitious and outrageous as anything he produced late in his career.

In fact, Larson continued to produce high-grade Far Side chicken jokes right up until the end, with some of his funniest coming in the final stretch of the comic's run.

10 The Far Side's First Chicken Comic Hinted At Ther Potential For Comedy

First Published: February 28, 1980

Readers might be surprised to discover that chickens were almost an afterthought in their Far Side debut. That is, in this , they are not the focus of the punchline, though they play an integral role in making it funny. "The next trail drive I sign onto, I'm readin' the fine print!" a disgruntled cattle rustler says, having taken this job expecting cows, and instead herding chickens.

The role of chickens here stems from Gary Larson considering what the funniest substitute for cows would be, and choosing an animal he could easily populate an entire frame with. Overall, this early Far Side cartoon is just a taste of chickens' capacity for comedy, as Larson would make clear with subsequent comics.

9 Gary Larson's Second Chicken Comic Helped Establish More Than One Classic Far Side Trope

First Published: July 15, 1980

The Far Side's chickens take center stage for the first of many times in this , which also provides an early example of two formula for many hilarious Far Side comics.

That includes this one, in which a chicken points at an image of a grown man, next to that of a baby, and lectures its cohorts, "now here's one of the mysteries of the universe...which came first?" in a pitch-perfect Far Side inversion of the perennial "chicken or the egg" question.

8 The First Full Color Far Side Chicken Comic Uses It To The Joke's Advantage

First Published: June 16, 1981

"Don't encourage him, Sylvia" one chicken tells another, as they sit having a drink in a bar – while from an adjacent table, a peacock tries to get their attention with his brilliantly rendered blue-and-green plumage. It is as straightforward a joke as The Far Side ever delivered, which is why it sticks with fans of Gary Larson's work, who embraced confusion by necessity, if not by choice.

Here, the notable thing is the way color makes it stronger; while the joke still works in black-and-white – as it would have appeared in many newspapers originally – the visual gag lands more effectively in color, as the peacock's feathers draw the reader's attention just as they are tempting Sylvia.

7 The First Time A Far Side Chicken Threatened The Life Of A Farmer – But Not The Last

First Published: December 30, 1981

"Well, that does it," one hen says to another after a farmer takes one egg too many from her, "tomorrow he dies." It is a shockingly terse, callous declaration of the intent to murder a man, with the brevity and bluntness of the line making it all the more of a sharp, laugh-out-loud punchline.

The relationship between chickens and humans would only grow more convoluted and contentious as The Far Side progressed, with this essentially acting as a prelude to all that was to come. In this sense, Gary Larson's chicken humor takes another step forward here, setting a precedent for a joke the author would return to frequently, one that notably holds up as one of the best examples of it.

6 The Fifth Far Side Chicken Comic Is An All-Time Great One

First Published: January 2, 1982

This Far Side is peak absurdity, featuring a woman walking along the path back to her house from her chicken coop with a fresh basket of eggs – while a chicken heads in the opposite direction carrying a baby. Without needing a caption, this Far Side comic executes its punchline at a high-level, and in the process, offers one of the best examples of a perennial Far Side theme.

Gary Larson often highlighted the innate strangeness of human behavior by swapping in animals, but here he takes that one step further by actually having the human character, mid-behavior, confronted by her warped mirror, in the form of a chicken making off with an infant. It is strange and surreal, and it shows another leveling up of Larson's Far Side chicken jokes.

5 The Far Side's Final Stretch Of Chicken Jokes Starts With A Vision Of A Bleak Future

First Published: April 26, 1994

Apropos for a comic that was less than a year from ending, this Far Side chicken comic is all about impending doom, as a barnyard fortune-teller looks into her crystal ball and finds nothing good coming for any of her clients. As the caption reads:

Whoa! Another bad one!...I see your severed head lying quietly in the red-stained dirt, a surprised expression still frozen in your lifeless eyes...Next!

There is a lot going on in this Far Side joke, from the base-level absurdity of the chicken soothsayer given all the other hens the exact same bad reading, to the evocative, detail-filled dialogue, and the matter-of-fact tone it is delivered in. All of this amounts to a solid Far Side comic, one that shows how much more sophisticated Gary Larson's style of humor became over the course of his career.

4 The Far Side's "Stackable Livestock" Comic Is One Of Gary Larson's Weirdest "What If?" Questions

First Published: May 9, 1994

This Far Side cartoon stands out as particularly strange, even among Gary Larson's notoriously weird ouvre. "My life's changed, ever since I discovered Stackable Livestock" a farmer tells his friend, showing off his neatly stacked sheep, cows, and of course, chickens.

Seemingly the result of Gary Larson asking himself, "how much space would farmers save if they could stack their livestock?" this Far Side cartoon is a deliberately ludicrous "What if?", one that reminds readers Larson had to amuse himself with an idea before it could be realized and published, so that it could amuse anyone else. ittedly, the imagery is undeniably funny, and the concept is so bizarre that it will stick in readers' minds.

3 One Of The Far Side's Last "Bedtime" Cartoons Starred Chickens

First Published: August 10, 1994

Kids being put to bed at night was another semi-regular Far Side trope, and this is one of the final ones Gary Larson produced. Here, a mother hen stands at the foot of her kids beds, as one chicklet blames the other for making noise past their bedtime, saying "no way it was me, Mom – you must have heard a peep out of Eddie!"

Larson's playful over-literalization of a popular saying will elicit a smile from most readers, even if it doesn't strike them as laugh-out-loud funny. Though it is undervalued as one of the many emotions The Far Side could elicit from any given , it is possible the intention of this cartoon was more to tug on the reader's sense of sentiment, rather than to get a huge laugh.

2 Gary Larson Uses Chickens To Make A Dig At The Exploitation Of Labor

First Published: October 10, 1994

"Oh yeah! They work real hard, all day long, seven days a week," a human factory owner tells a visitor, as they look down at his work force, which consists entirely of chickens. "And here's the best part," he adds, "for chicken feed!" Though the pun here is obvious enough, this Far Side also clearly has something to say about very real labor exploitation.

Though Gary Larson denied Far Side comics had deeper meaning, his opinions and feelings saturated the cartoon, and as a result, a form of social critique can be readily extracted from at least some of his work. That is certainly the case here, as Larson comments on inhumane labor practices by making his characters literally not human.

1 The Chickens Of The Far Side Mourn The End Of The Comic

First Published: October 28, 1994

The Far Side's final chicken features a funeral, which is fitting considering it is the last of the birds' iconic appearances in Gary Larson's magnum opus. The funeral in question is for a chicken named Norman, who "was beheaded, cleaned, and plucked" – with a cooked chicken hilariously sticking out from an open casket.

Just as readers shouldn't mourn the end of The Far Side, the speaker at the podium here suggests that those gathered "take comfort knowing he would have gotten a kick out of this," as apparently the deceased had "a wacky sense of humor." It is a deliriously funny response to death, making it a fitting note for The Far Side's chickens to go out on.