As strange as The Far Side could be, the essential formula for Gary Larson's comic was simple: his cartoons comprised a drawing, plus words. Except, sometimes, Larson let his illustrations speak for themselves, eschewing a caption entirely. Throughout The Far Side's history, captionless comics proved to be some of the strip's most perplexing but also, some of its funniest.

Whenever Larson chose to forego a caption when crafting a Far Side cartoon, he was in effect forfeiting 50% of a panel's ability to explain itself to the reader. Sometimes, he did this because the image was self-evident; in other instances, he wanted readers to be puzzled, and to have to study the comic closer.

In other words, some of Larson's captionless Far Side comics could have used words to help get across their humor, some were able to get a laugh on the strength of the visual alone.

With The Far Side,...