Polygon has ranked ten of the greatest single-panel strips from Gary Larson's The Far Side, which ran in newspapers from January 1980 and was eventually syndicated to around 1,900 titles, making it one of the most widely read comics of the decade. The countdown celebrates Larson's distinctive dark humour and visual timing, which stood apart from the cutesier styles common in 1980s newspaper comics.

– A sick chick being fed chicken soup by its mother (18 May 1984)
– A botched execution scene (11 May 1981)
– A wordless gag of a woman bounced by a trampoline into a burning building (31 March 1981)
– A surreal "Mack the Knife" joke featuring anthropomorphic cutlery
– An oblivious musician remarking on "little black dots" before a huge concert (29 October 1984)
– The "Boneless Chicken Ranch" strip (12 January 1983)
– Cows standing upright on their hind legs (6 January 1984)
– Two lab scientists, one rigging a missile, the other about to pop a paper bag (4 June 1983)
– A chimpanzee grooming gag referencing Jane Goodall (26 August 1987), which drew criticism from the Jane Goodall Institute at the time