Summary

• Gary Larson's Far Side loves to combine laugh-out-loud humor with surprisingly dark themes, making the mob perfect subject matter.
• Larson's gangsters exist in a world of criminal clowns and sentient sandwiches, turning violent organized crime into an unlikely source of surreal humor.
• Be sure to vote in our end-of-article poll for your favorite, and to see which strip was voted #1 by other readers.

Gary Larson's Far Side loves to combine laugh-out-loud humor with surprisingly dark themes, making the mob the perfect subject matter. Larson's gangsters exist in a world of criminal clowns and sentient sandwiches, turning violent organized crime into an unlikely source of surreal humor.

Here are the 10 funniest Far Side comics that include mobsters, from across Far Side's original 1980-1994 run. Be sure to vote in our end-of-article poll for your favorite, and to see which strip was voted #1 by other readers.

10 Primitive Mobsters

Far Side Loves Its Cavepeople

One of Far Side's best recurring jokes sees cavepeople inventing various tools and gagets with an uncanny idea of how they'll be used in future. In the case of Larson's prehistoric gangsters, Far Side takes the iconic image of 1930s mobsters hiding their tommy guns in violin cases. However, with no access to metallurgy or gunpowder, the hominids have hidden clubs rather than guns. However, the early gangsters at least retain their telltale fedoras.

Other Far Side cavepeople comics see the invention of the milkshake and an incredibly simple version of checkers with only two squares. This is The Far Side's oldest recurring gag - in fact, it appeared in the first ever Far Side comic, where the gag of a caveman chiseling a wheel is revealed to actually be the debut of the hammer and chisel.

9 The Sandwich Mafia

Larson Revisited 'Concrete Shoes' Multiple Times

Another iconic aspect of the '30s mobster aesthetic appears here, with the idea of gangsters using 'concrete shoes' to send their victims to a watery grave. In the case of Far Side's 'sandwich Mafia,' hungry kids can be trusted to remove all evidence of their crime far more than hungry fish. It's worth noting that even in sandwich form, the mobsters still have their iconic fedoras, showing Larson's love of giving instantly recognizable archetypes a new spin.

Larson revisits the 'concrete shoes' idea throughout The Far Side, finding new twists like a spider being given eight 'shoes', a fish getting the opposite treatment with 'styrofoam shoes' and the Godfather's dog receiving a mob execution after biting him.

8 Kneecaps from Hell

Larson Loves Messing with the Human Body

Two Mafia leg-breakers get way more than they were bargaining for after being sent to 'deliver a message' to a guy with gigantic, seemingly unbreakable kneecaps. It's an incredibly goofy gag, while also exemplifying how Larson was able to take subject matter way too dark for his contemporaries and turn it into belly-laugh humor. Of course, this wasn't the only time Far Side gave a character a single gigantic body part.

In The Complete Far Side, Larson says that he couldn't always be sure he'd make the reader laugh, but he could always make them exclaim "What the--?" That's definitely the case in these 'giant body part' gags, where the rules of the human body fly out of the window in favor of creating the weirdest situations possible.

7 Slapman

Gary Larson's Love of Worldplay Creates a Goofy Comic

Despite claiming in The Complete Far Side that he never worried about The Far Side being "witty," Larson has a love of wordplay, and especially of taking common idioms and unusual to their logical conclusions. In this case, Larson takes the idea of murderous mob hitmen and invents a lesser variant, slapmen, who deliver a slap across the face before running out of the door to their waiting getaway car. Showing the other diners' reactions helps sell the moment, since they react as if the poor victim has been gunned down, rather than just slapped.

6 Living Room

Far Side's Gangsters Aren't Exactly Terrifying

In the same vein as the slapmen, Far Side's mobsters threaten their victim by adjusting the feng shui of their living space. This appears to be a play on the threat to 'rearrange your face' as a threat of violence. Larson increases the humor by including a six-strong team of mobsters to enact this incredibly low-stakes shakedown.

5 Secret Knock

Far Side's Recurring Character the Detective Busts Some Mobsters

Far Side's gangsters don't always get to win, and in this case their terrible choice of secret knock ruins their intended bank job. 'Shave and haircut' has a long history in Vaudeville performance, which is very much a forebear of Larson's sense of humor. This strip also includes the Far Side mobsters' natural enemy - Larson's recurring Noir detective.

While unnamed, the Detective appears across Far Side history, acting as the straight man for many of Larson's most bizarre crimes (indeed, we already met the detective in Larson's "brains of the operation" comic.)

4 The Farmers' Mafia

Larson's Movie References Are Still Genius Decades Later

In this strip, Larson combines mobster aesthetic with his love of pop culture, referencing the iconic 'horse's head' scene from Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Of course, this being The Far Side, the dark scene gets a goofy twist, as the farmer's Mafia uses the head of a chicken to make their threats. Larson often referenced classic movies in The Far Side, putting his surreal twist on instantly recognizable scenes.

It's notable that - in a comic published in the '80s and '90s - almost all of Larson's pop culture references still hold up today. The Far Side creator had a great eye for which movies and TV shows would still be relevant to readers decades later, and the most iconic scenes that would live on in the public imagination.

3 Wipe That Smile Off Your Face

Far Side Loves Clowns as Much as Mobsters

The Far Side loves clowns even more than it loves gangsters, and here the two meet in an unfortunate moment for the restrained entertainer. This is another wordplay gag, as the threat to "wipe that smile off your face" no longer means to silence a mocking adversary but to literally remove the clown's make-up. Larson enjoyed combining tragedy and humor in his comics - indeed, this is why he used cows so often, claiming they perfectly combined the two elements - and this is clear in his clown comics, where the merry jokesters often meet horrifying ends.

Larson's clowns are gunned down by cowboys, hunted by polar bears, and taken (still grinning) to the electric chair. Considering what's possible for clowns in Far Side's universe, being captured by Larson's incompetent mobsters is actually one of the best outcomes they could hope for.

2 Death by Mime

Far Side's Mobsters Finally Get Scary

Sometimes, The Far Side's humor crosses over into genuine (if still surreal) horror territory. Here, a victim of the mob is encased in a glass prison to run out of air, with ersby ignoring them (and even taking pictures) because they believe they're a mime. As twisted as this joke is, it's a gag that Larson clearly intended Far Side readers to take with them into the real world, giving them an extra laugh the next time they see a 'mime' on the street.

1 Organized Crime Informant

Far Side's Best Mobster Comic

The Far Side's best mobster joke doesn't actually include any mobsters, as an organized crime informant's identity is accidentally revealed to the world by a careless janitor. The Far Side always made fans work just a little bit harder for the joke than other newspaper comics, and here Larson lets the reader make the final connection of what just happened. Sadly, it seems the well-meaning informant is now heading for any of a number of punishments, ranging from rearranged furniture to asphyxiating in public while dressed as a mime.

Those are Gary Larson's 10 funniest Far Side comics making fun of mobsters - be sure to vote in our poll below for your best of the bunch, as well as to see how your pick matches our other readers.