A Whodunnit, according to The Far Side

Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic strip (if you can call it a strip… it was always single-panel) ran in syndication throughout American newspapers from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995. I was too young to read it in the paper, but I read every single cartoon in the giant, two-volume, cloth-bound box set of The Complete Far Side when I was growing up.

But the cartoon below (which came out in January 1993), I first saw on a monthly Far Side calendar that my mom had hanging up. It quickly became my favorite. BEHOLD:

Copyright Gary Larson, 1993

When I saw it, at age eight or so, I was confused by the scene. “It’s because in mysteries, the butler always does it,” my mom told me. And then everything clicked… the hilariousness of the prospect of a butler being murdered at a convention of butlers.

I think about this cartoon often, about how this conceit would make a perfect meta murder mystery, which of course is my favorite kind. Can you imagine? A murder at a Butler convention?

This cartoon contains one of the best exemplars of Far Side humor… the fact that the punchline is one degree removed from the joke of the whole conceit. It’s not an observation about the funny thing, it’s a remark that already absorbs and acknowledges the funny thing. Of course the detective wouldn’t want to start a Monday with a case like that. Who would?