This Collider opinion piece by Collier Jennings argues that the finest science-fiction entry in Gary Larson's long-running comic strip The Far Side is also its cleverest. The writer sets out why the strip, a Sunday-paper fixture of the late 1980s and early 1990s, was so well suited to science fiction: like the genre itself, Larson's humour used absurd imagery and metaphor to explore serious ideas, allowing a single panel to carry both a laugh and a deeper point.

The article focuses on a strip published on 2 September 1994, titled "The often romanticized image of cowboys and aliens", which depicts a cowboy on horseback firing at a group of flying saucers. Jennings praises how the cartoon mocks the way Westerns romanticise gunslingers and open plains while also puncturing the idea that any alien encounter would be an even fight, noting that real visitors would likely wield far superior technology. He further reads the strip as a sly comment on the "Manifest Destiny" narrative underpinning many Westerns, which often overlooks that settlers were intruding on land already occupied, concluding that few artists could layer so much humour and social commentary into one panel.