Before the internet, comic strips were mostly found in print newspapers. Almost all of them were worthless: plodding, sanitized, superannuated, visually unambitious, and never aiming at anything higher than the lower middle brow.
The only two comic strips that ever seemed worth a read to me were Calvin and Hobbes... and the Far Side. Both were great, but the Far Side was my favorite. As a young kid I would clip out especially good examples and keep them under glass or tape them to my door. It seemed impossible that the newspaper could continue, week after week, to print a page of total garbage... punctuated by this. The Far Side was so good that it felt almost surreal. Like something had to give.
Eventually it did, but not until we all stopped subscribing to print newspapers and learned how much better comic strips are without them.
Unfortunately, the Far Side's author, Gary Larson, has spent much time since his 1995 retirement trying simply to keep his creations off the internet. This is a crying shame, because the Far Side pioneered a lot of what's great about comic strips in the post-print world.
It's easier to show this than it is to explain it, so here you go:
