Comebacks we'd like to see: #1 -- The Far Side

This post is part of our series ranking the top 25 bygone products and trends we'd like to see return.

The comics page of my newspaper lost interest for me on January 1st, 1995. That was the day that Gary Larson, author of the single-panel strip The Far Side, put down his inking pen, leaving those of us devoted to his warped sense of humor bereft.

It is impossible for me to choose my favorite cartoon from his decade and a half of brilliance. The farm wife walking toward her house carrying a basket of eggs, passed by a chicken leaving the house carrying a baby? One deer telling another deer, whose flank is covered by a target circle, 'Bummer of a birthmark, Carl?" Cows lined up at the slaughterhouse door, one complaining about another cutting in line? The boneless chicken ranch? Two alligators sunning their full bellies, one saying, "That was incredible. No fur, horns, antlers or nothin'... just soft and pink?"

I wonder how the next generation will learn the lessons taught by Larson's genius. That nature has a way of eventually evening up the score. That the difference between looking ridiculous and suave is merely the point of view. That there is indeed something under your bed. And that you are the something under another's bed.

You'll never learn that from Ziggy, Garfield or Blondie.

What comics would you like to see return to the funny pages?