Gary Larson’s The Far Side ran for 14 years, from 1980 to 1994, and yet September 1984 might be the single definitive month of the entire comic series. Not only are these comics, which just turned 40 in 2024, as funny as any of Gary Larson’s best, but all of his biggest obsessions are front and center, from Stone Age inventions to hunter vs bear to silly scientists, soon-to-be-extinct dinosaurs and even the comic’s recurring giant squid.
