this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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The Far Side
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Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bloom County !bloomcounty@lemm.ee https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield !garfield@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side !thefarside@sh.itjust.works https://lemmy.world/c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
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I’m trying to figure this one out. Is it simply a cult that dresses up animals instead of sacrificing them? Is there a pun there I’m not seeing?
The comic is copyright 1993. I see that Waco (Branch Davidian Cult) occurred in 1993. On a quick search, It looks like they dressed nice but simple, which doesn’t seem to fit with the fancy hat and jewlery.
There was a whole ass Satanic Panic during the '80s and '90s in which parents were afraid of their kids playing Dungeons & Dragons, listening to Judas Priest records, and participating in human sacrifices. A lot of sociopathic behavior (like the "human sacrifices" that were garden-variety murders and animal torture) was blamed on it. Like, this nonsense was written about in newspapers without journalists saying, "But before we start looking at ritual human/animal sacrifice, we should probably look at who hated the dead person/look for patterns of animal torture first"
It was a really weird time to be a rational kid.
Yeah, makes sense that it’s just a general commentary on the moral panic of the time.
I remember my (amazing) grandma giving me birthday money and saying “but it’s not for Magic (the Gathering) cards. I’m afraid those are Evil.”
Even at 10, I was just thinking “money is money, I’ll just spend different money on MTG cards…”
Yes!! Hahah that was exactly how weird it was. A friend of mine bought a D&D monster compendium, and his mother gave him a bible to keep him safe after buying such a sinful witchcraft manual.
I got in a pretty big argument as a kid while volunteering at achurch garage sale I found a DnD card game(?) that was for sale. I was willing to pay for it but some other kid started on about how it was satanic. I could tell the youth pastor thought he was being a shit, but he also didn't want a bunch of satanic panic making his job harder, so it went into the shitcan. All it did was make me think the other kid was dumb and so maybe his beliefs were too. It definitely feels like something that allowed me to open my eyes and find my own (lack of) faith.