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Far Side Collection #12
Unnatural Selections
Hot on the paws of the howling success of Wiener Dog Art comes the new Far Side masterpiece Unnatural Selections. Including more than 100 cartoons in their book debut, it also unearths an original four-color insert created by Gary Larson especially for this twelfth collection. Journey back in time as Larson does for evolution what he previously did for art.
107 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1991
46 people are currently reading
354 people want to read
About the author
Gary Larson
146 books712 followersGary Larson was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. His parents were Vern, a car salesman, and Doris, a secretary. He attended Curtis High School before attending Washington State University and graduated in 1972 with a degree in communications. In 1987, Larson married Toni Carmichael, an archaeologist.
Larson credits his older brother Dan for his "paranoid" sense of humor. Dan would pull countless pranks on Gary, taking advantage of his phobia of monsters under the bed by, for example, waiting in the closet for the right moment to pounce out at Gary. Dan is also credited with giving Gary his love of science. They caught animals in Puget Sound and placed them in terrariums in the basement; even making a small desert ecosystem, which their parents apparently did not mind. His adept use of snakes in his cartoons stems from his long-standing interest in herpetology.
Since retiring from the Far Side, Larson has occasionally done some cartooning work, such as magazine illustrations and promotional artwork for Far Side merchandise.
In 1998, Larson published his first post-Far Side book, There's a Hair in My Dirt!: A Worm's Story, an illustrated story with the unmistakable Far Side mindset.
Larson credits his older brother Dan for his "paranoid" sense of humor. Dan would pull countless pranks on Gary, taking advantage of his phobia of monsters under the bed by, for example, waiting in the closet for the right moment to pounce out at Gary. Dan is also credited with giving Gary his love of science. They caught animals in Puget Sound and placed them in terrariums in the basement; even making a small desert ecosystem, which their parents apparently did not mind. His adept use of snakes in his cartoons stems from his long-standing interest in herpetology.
Since retiring from the Far Side, Larson has occasionally done some cartooning work, such as magazine illustrations and promotional artwork for Far Side merchandise.
In 1998, Larson published his first post-Far Side book, There's a Hair in My Dirt!: A Worm's Story, an illustrated story with the unmistakable Far Side mindset.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
October 24, 2022
Finding this for a buck on a Polish second hand book site was a treat for me this week. My purchases usually cost more and are different. Classics and French novels top my list. Vintage Penguins fill my shelves. War and Peace (yes,the pandemic gave me the time for it at last) and other tomes test the strength of Ikea cases. Now, this one is mine.
It may not be Larson's best as others have said. Still, the best in Unnatural Selections is great. My favorites are ghost newspapers (p. 12), bowling ball killer (p.36), Swiss army rock (p. 36), snow cone couple (p. 38), math phobic nightmare and the desert island three (p. 43).
But if I had to choose one, it's on p. 69. A breakdancing George Washington is a sight to behold. I can't tell you why it works. Only that it does. It makes no sense in the least. It just makes me think, I might not be as crazy as I thought.
It may not be Larson's best as others have said. Still, the best in Unnatural Selections is great. My favorites are ghost newspapers (p. 12), bowling ball killer (p.36), Swiss army rock (p. 36), snow cone couple (p. 38), math phobic nightmare and the desert island three (p. 43).
But if I had to choose one, it's on p. 69. A breakdancing George Washington is a sight to behold. I can't tell you why it works. Only that it does. It makes no sense in the least. It just makes me think, I might not be as crazy as I thought.
January 13, 2019
I love how the cows and Elvis heads pop up. I love his illustrations and his jokes. I love his sense of humor and that my husband and I can both laugh at it. Of course I will look at one and burst out laughing, point at it and keep laughing and pointing.... yes. I do that. My favorite T-shirt had two cows standing outside in the yard. One had on a Chef’s hat and apron and the other was standing on the other side of him looking down at the grill between them at the hamburgers saying “You’re sick, Jessie! Sick, sick, sick!”
Instalove🐄❤️
Instalove🐄❤️
October 29, 2022
A very pleasurable afternoon spent flicking through this book
I didn’t get all of the cartoons – but those were overwhelming outnumbered by the very funny ones. Once again, Gary Larson has produced a winner. I particularly liked his Evolution of Life on Earth pages: Age of Invertebrates; Age if Fish and Amphibians; Age of Reptiles; Age of Birds and Mammals; followed by The Future – where the cows take over. Only in a Far Side world would the apex of terrestrial evolution be bovine.
I didn’t get all of the cartoons – but those were overwhelming outnumbered by the very funny ones. Once again, Gary Larson has produced a winner. I particularly liked his Evolution of Life on Earth pages: Age of Invertebrates; Age if Fish and Amphibians; Age of Reptiles; Age of Birds and Mammals; followed by The Future – where the cows take over. Only in a Far Side world would the apex of terrestrial evolution be bovine.
January 7, 2018
While they are deliberately silly, some of the Far Side comics still resonate with truth. I'm a fan.
May 23, 2017
Trump drops a $20,000,000 bomb on Afghanistan and kills 3 dozen ISIS fighters. He uses his hotel properties to meet with foreign statesmen, his close advisers are his daughter and son-in-law. He still hasn't released his taxes though he promised. More of his campaign people are found to have had previously denied contacts with Russian diplomats and agents..... This book is a good night time antidote.
February 15, 2025
Yet another Far Side collection. Weird to have one in such good shape. And not flimsy. As expected pleasant but not super compelling. Some of these led to a bit of a chuckle. Many just a smile. Fine. Readable. 3.5 of 5
November 3, 2024
3.5
I look for humor that focuses on science, but not when it's human life from an animal POV.
June 21, 2025
This book was okay as the comics were sometimes funny especially jokes surrounding fleas. However, a lot of the jokes fell flat which made the book a less than ideal read.
January 20, 2012
Things start off a bit strained in this 12th collection of Far Side toons. Larson was nearing the end of his run by the time this early 90s compilation came out, and the ideas overall seem weaker than in the early days. But, people, this is the Far Side, the funniest panel comic ever, and Larson does not disappoint for long. Once again we have dumb humans with names like Bob, Russell, Gus, Rex and Stuart (I suspect there's probably a bluehaired bespeckled Edna in there somewhere as well) suffering the effects of their own stupidity to our collective delight. In the middle are some full-color panels of various stages of the evolution of life on earth, as only Larson could render it. The last spread of that section includes a vision of a future populated entirely, of course, by cows.
Some favorites include: Scientific cavemen Thak and Gork materializing and floating above modern New York City on their "time log;" members of the "Didn't like Dances with Wolves Society" at their convention complaining about the movie's insensitive treatment of the cavalry; Serengeti lions choking in disgust while eating a "healthy" antelope composed of tofu; Bob the clumsy janitor accidentally unplugging a cryogenic chamber filled with humans; a man whose left hand does not know what his right hand is doing (his right hand is contemplating the murder of the left hand); three old men sitting on a porch predicting the weather based on the hideously large swellings of their various body parts; a family of dining T-Rex dinos having trouble passing the bowl of mashed potatoes because of their short useless forearms; fish homeowners sticking their head out of their water-filled upstairs into a waterless basement below and fretting about the basement being too dry; a large spiky-haired scalp atop a pole in an Indian village with the caption: "Don King's great great great grandfather;" a sperm getting a competitive advantage on his colleagues as he dashes toward the egg with an outboard motor on his tail; a venus flytrap primping and flossing its teeth in front of the bathroom mirror; Charlie Parker in Hell screaming in agony as the Devil forces him to listen to the "greatest hits of New Age music;" baseballer Sigmund making a "Freudian slide" into home plate; pioneers saving money on covered wagons by travelling cross country on "covered skates"; Tarzan swinging through the trees nervously contemplating various elaborate introductions to Jane and then blowing it by saying: "Me Tarzan, you Jane;" a mosquito carrying a sky-ad behind its tail that reads: "Suck at Bob's;" a truck made of pressed ham in dog heaven; a selection of Disney nature films that failed, including Debbie the Cicada and Floyd the Liver Fluke; "baby toys to avoid" including a life-size collapsible piano and a full-sized mechanical bull; a "weiner dog distribution center" where the canines are being stuffed into long mailer tubes; St. Bernards that wear toilet rolls around their necks to save distressed outhouse users with empty rolls; Leon Redbone's workout video (which consists of sitting on a stool and crossing your leg); and a line of preying mantises outside a movie theater getting ready to watch "Honey I Ate the Kids."
Some favorites include: Scientific cavemen Thak and Gork materializing and floating above modern New York City on their "time log;" members of the "Didn't like Dances with Wolves Society" at their convention complaining about the movie's insensitive treatment of the cavalry; Serengeti lions choking in disgust while eating a "healthy" antelope composed of tofu; Bob the clumsy janitor accidentally unplugging a cryogenic chamber filled with humans; a man whose left hand does not know what his right hand is doing (his right hand is contemplating the murder of the left hand); three old men sitting on a porch predicting the weather based on the hideously large swellings of their various body parts; a family of dining T-Rex dinos having trouble passing the bowl of mashed potatoes because of their short useless forearms; fish homeowners sticking their head out of their water-filled upstairs into a waterless basement below and fretting about the basement being too dry; a large spiky-haired scalp atop a pole in an Indian village with the caption: "Don King's great great great grandfather;" a sperm getting a competitive advantage on his colleagues as he dashes toward the egg with an outboard motor on his tail; a venus flytrap primping and flossing its teeth in front of the bathroom mirror; Charlie Parker in Hell screaming in agony as the Devil forces him to listen to the "greatest hits of New Age music;" baseballer Sigmund making a "Freudian slide" into home plate; pioneers saving money on covered wagons by travelling cross country on "covered skates"; Tarzan swinging through the trees nervously contemplating various elaborate introductions to Jane and then blowing it by saying: "Me Tarzan, you Jane;" a mosquito carrying a sky-ad behind its tail that reads: "Suck at Bob's;" a truck made of pressed ham in dog heaven; a selection of Disney nature films that failed, including Debbie the Cicada and Floyd the Liver Fluke; "baby toys to avoid" including a life-size collapsible piano and a full-sized mechanical bull; a "weiner dog distribution center" where the canines are being stuffed into long mailer tubes; St. Bernards that wear toilet rolls around their necks to save distressed outhouse users with empty rolls; Leon Redbone's workout video (which consists of sitting on a stool and crossing your leg); and a line of preying mantises outside a movie theater getting ready to watch "Honey I Ate the Kids."
February 23, 2014
This is the twelth Far Side collection (originally published in the UK in 1991 - I read the 1992 Warner Books edition) and although it starts slowly, it soon finds its rhythm and includes some real gems. There’s also a great little joke on the “other books…” page, where ‘Moby Dick’ has an apparently hand-drawn line through it. Of the panels themselves, my favourites included “Big Bob’s Ballbearings, Bananas, Roller Skates & Floor Wax inc.”, “The Dam Bursts” (the fall out when you put a Migraine studies institute next door to a Marching Bands school), Dog names, “You never see it coming…” (a man gets run over by the ‘old age truck’), the Click Beetle (serves Kyle right really), the Institute for the study of emotional stress (“Hey, I feel better already!) and two bystanders ruining the funniest cartoon ever. There’s also a five-page, double-spread colour section detailing the evolution of life on earth and some of the incidental details (such as Fred Flintstone) are superb. Brilliantly done, great fun to read and highly recommended.
June 9, 2017
I found the rhino fortune teller comic to be most interesting.
August 9, 2025
Much of the humor in these comics wasn’t my style, but a few of them were very funny. Overall, it balanced out to be a pretty average book for me.
December 18, 2023
Growing up, my grandfather and I bonded over The Far Side. We would hunt through garage sales and book expos looking for collections, and then would sit together for hours reading and cackling. Grandpa would let me scan and print out my favorite ones, which we hung on the fridge for Grandma to find.
This is the first Far Side collection I've read since high school, and I had a wonderful afternoon leisurely looking through and sharing them with my spouse, Abby. As I read, I tried to think about why Grandpa enjoyed them so much, and how I could define Larson's work. After a few hours of *really* thinking about what I was looking at, I had no idea. Larson's panels range from groan-inducing plays on words to truly absurd to simple subversions. So often, there is a dark underside to what is otherwise an oddball joke. I ended up appreciating both Larson and Grandpa's sense of humor more, because neither of them fit within a small box. The moment you think you have them figured out, they drop something that shocks and surprises you.
In this collection specifically, the panels were good but not the best. A number of them had references to dated ideas or products which carried the humor at the time. Others had more layers than I ever remember there being for the Far Side, and I'm certain that as a kid, Grandpa was laughing at a totally different set of jokes than I was - even within the same panel.
I'm really glad I took this trip down memory lane, and I'm looking forward to digging in again. The Far Side is not just a great way to relax and chuckle for a few hours, but also a fascinating look into what makes things funny (or not, a la "Cow Tools") and why laughter is such a bonding force.
This is the first Far Side collection I've read since high school, and I had a wonderful afternoon leisurely looking through and sharing them with my spouse, Abby. As I read, I tried to think about why Grandpa enjoyed them so much, and how I could define Larson's work. After a few hours of *really* thinking about what I was looking at, I had no idea. Larson's panels range from groan-inducing plays on words to truly absurd to simple subversions. So often, there is a dark underside to what is otherwise an oddball joke. I ended up appreciating both Larson and Grandpa's sense of humor more, because neither of them fit within a small box. The moment you think you have them figured out, they drop something that shocks and surprises you.
In this collection specifically, the panels were good but not the best. A number of them had references to dated ideas or products which carried the humor at the time. Others had more layers than I ever remember there being for the Far Side, and I'm certain that as a kid, Grandpa was laughing at a totally different set of jokes than I was - even within the same panel.
I'm really glad I took this trip down memory lane, and I'm looking forward to digging in again. The Far Side is not just a great way to relax and chuckle for a few hours, but also a fascinating look into what makes things funny (or not, a la "Cow Tools") and why laughter is such a bonding force.
November 17, 2021
This book brings back memories from my teenage years. The Far Side along with A Prairie Home Companion were some of the very few cultural items that my dad and I could both enjoy during my formative years.
I appreciate the peculiar and intellectual humor found in these comics, though even as I approach middle age, there are still a handful that I still don't get. Many of the jokes are timeless since they cover more scientific concepts or topics that people know about no mater what year you are born. Others require knowledge about a specific cultural reference that I fear my young nephew will not understand.
I don't plan to keep this book. If I really need to scratch my Far Side itch, I can either borrow the complete collection from my local library or get a daily does from thefarside.com.
I appreciate the peculiar and intellectual humor found in these comics, though even as I approach middle age, there are still a handful that I still don't get. Many of the jokes are timeless since they cover more scientific concepts or topics that people know about no mater what year you are born. Others require knowledge about a specific cultural reference that I fear my young nephew will not understand.
I don't plan to keep this book. If I really need to scratch my Far Side itch, I can either borrow the complete collection from my local library or get a daily does from thefarside.com.
November 26, 2018
The first Far Side book I ever read, when I was a kid, it twisted my mind. There were jokes I didn't get, jokes I laughed at for the wrong reason, and illustrations that were so strange even my young crazy mind couldn't comprehend them. I loved it. And I still do, it's what introduced me to the hilariously charming, twisted, and odd humour of Gary Larson. I've read it countless times, sometimes pulling up a random page and others going through the entire book. I'm not sure if people consider this to be the best collection of Far Side comics, but it has a personal connection to me so it is by FAR (heh, that was a great pun) my favourite!
September 10, 2025
We have had this book around forever. It was once a gift for our son when he was a teen. I had not read it straight through, so I did. it is everything you would expect from the Gary Larson, including ridiculously beautiful (or beautifully ridiculous) two-page spreads on topics like "The Age of Reptiles." Gary Larson retired while he was ahead, but I miss him!
December 18, 2020
This is a fun collection of Farside comics!
The drawings and humor are consistent and funny. It's enjoyable to read and Larson's humor is as relevant as ever. It's the kind of book that makes you laugh and think. Overall a fun read that fits in with the other Farside collections.
The drawings and humor are consistent and funny. It's enjoyable to read and Larson's humor is as relevant as ever. It's the kind of book that makes you laugh and think. Overall a fun read that fits in with the other Farside collections.
September 9, 2024
This is my book, and I hadn't read it for years. I used to love Far Side. I don't know if I've lost my sense of humor or changed, or the cartoons are dated, but I didn't really laugh at any of these.
October 19, 2017
I miss The Far Side.
November 30, 2017
Picked up at the local transfer station yesterday and "read" last night. I do love Gary Larson. My favorite ... the names dogs give themselves.
August 1, 2018
I love the Far Side, they always make me laugh. But as we all know there are exceptions, this is one of them.
December 14, 2018
I understand the genre ... it is just not Larson's best work.
August 19, 2020
Gotta love a Gary Larson comic book!
September 27, 2020
Someone reminded me of this - a favorite picture book that I bought years ago. I don't know what ever happened to my copy of it, so now I MUST buy it again! It is priceless!
November 13, 2020
Love Far Side!!!!
May 7, 2022
Dad bathroom reading essentials.
December 31, 2022
A few in this volume aged *extremely* poorly, sad to say.
January 3, 2023
God makes the snake: "Boy... These things are a cinch!"
January 5, 2025
good art, but only got a couple giggles out of me at best. which could be because i first read this when i was like 10 but yk
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews