Gary Larson'southward The Far Side volition ever be on my comedy Mountain Rushmore. This legendary strip, which ran from 1980 to 1995, is fondly remembered for its clever humour, bent sensibility, biological diverseness, and moo-cow-centric comics.

But let's take a moment to capeesh Larson's ducks. Oh, what ducks they were!

I'll never forget the cartoon showing a sad, paranoid office drone with the caption "Anatidaephobia: The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching y'all"—as a tiny duck looks on from another building. Larson tapped into a more universal fear when he penned the comic with this caption: "Of a sudden, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come up to the seminar without his duck." We've all been in that location.

My favorite Far Side drawing too features a duck. This is the scene: As a boat sinks in the background, a drenched, labcoat-wearing human stands on a tiny island, having just swum to shore. He is confronted by a duck, who has this to dishonest:

"So, Professor Jenkins! … My old nemesis! … We run into again, but this fourth dimension the advantage is mine! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

For my money, that's the best Gary Larson joke.

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson discussed this comic, saying, "Personally, I enjoy cartoons of this type because they lack the obvious 'cymbal crash' at the cease of the punch line." Me too. Ever since I was lucky enough to see a student performance of Waiting for Godot at SUNY Fredonia most 20 years agone, absurdist sense of humor has been my favorite kind. There'southward beauty in a perfect punchline, but there'due south too beauty in using a joke to open up upwards space that allows the audience to make full in the blanks. This kind of joke may not immediately strike your funny bone, only information technology volition seductively and comically massage that funny os for a longer fourth dimension.

This detail comic also reminds me of comic books, where the applesauce of spandex-clad heroes fighting crime is ane-upped past the applesauce of such battles going on forever (or at least since the '30s for Batman and Superman). Larson evoked the superhero world when he wrote, "What kind of a sordid, bizarre past a scientist and some duck could possibly have is for anyone to surmise, but I enjoyed the drama in suggesting that, once again, their lives have become entangled and a new chapter is nearly to exist written." Sounds a lot like Superman and Lex Luthor, Thor and Loki, or Batman and the Joker, doesn't it?

Call up of the history between two long-running archenemies, similar Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus, who have clashed hundreds of times since their debuts in the early sixties under creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. At i point, Octopus almost married Peter Parker'south Aunt May, which would take fabricated him the creepiest uncle ever. In another story, the metal-tentacled menace develops arachnophobia, due to a specially roughshod beating past Spidey. Doc Ock was the sole highlight of the unbelievably horrible movie Spider-Man two, during which I cheered for this vicious villain to murder anybody in the world, including me, just to finish the pain. In a current storyline, Dr. Octopus has successfully switched minds with Spider-Man, condign the so-called Superior Spider-homo, as penned by Dan Slott. (Spoiler alarm: This story line is whacked, absorbing, hilarious, and awesome.) The Spidey-Ock history is rich, tangled, silly, and epic: merely like what I imagine has been doing down between Larson's duck and professor.

Who's the good guy? Who'southward the bad guy? Professors are normally eviler than ducks, simply the duck is the 1 cackling like a supervillain. This duck may have escaped from Jenkins' lab. Both might have been in love with the aforementioned chicken. Perhaps both Jenkins and the duck have been battling each other since World War Two, like Captain America and the Cherry Skull. Perhaps they were lab partners who cooked meth together: the Walt and Jesse of the comics earth. Mayhap their brains were switched, similar the electric current Spider-Human state of affairs, which would explain why the duck cackles and gloats just Prof. Jenkins is silent. Would the next console exist the professor proverb "Quack"?

Facilitating this kind of speculation is an underrated and underutilized power of jokes. Most jokes are a closed loop. "Have my married woman" sets it upward and "delight" shuts it down. Boom. Joke over. This Larson comic is a reminder that jokes can suggest things without naming them, opening upward instead of closing off. In these cases, a joke is more than a little exact machine that surprises you lot: it's a portal to another earth.

This isn't the only Larson drawing that opens up such huge, evocative, preposterous territory. The drawing with the caption "Scene from Render of the Olfactory organ of Dr. Verlucci" depicts a crack of lightning, a disembodied nose in a doorway, and a man proclaiming, "Egad! It's the severed nose of Dr. Verlucci—returned from the grave on the anniversary of the night we all betrayed him!" In some other, ii butterfly collectors confront a black-clad peer, and ane says, "Egad! It's Professor DeArmond—the epitome of evil amongst butterfly collectors!" (Manifestly, Larson loved the word egad, and who can blame him?) I'd beloved to know their backstories, and I can by inventing them.

In fact, I like to retrieve Dr. Verlucci, Professor DeArmond, Professor Jenkins, and even the duck-less Professor Liebowitz all teach together in the same Department of Evil. That about makes me want to get back to schoolhouse.

In other words, "Quack quack."