It’s no mystery what happened here: Mr. Peabody accidentally killed Sherman.
But what on earth is supposed to be funny about it — the fact that a dog is running over a boy instead of a man running over a dog??
- Comment
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Remember the news advice — which is a story to run with, Dog Bites Man or Man Bites Dog?
Yeah, it’s just bottom-scraper Family Guy-level “satire” that requires only a faint understanding of the subject matter, but not too much – otherwise you see all the contrived circumstances that lead to the punchline. Rather than lecturing on time travel, Peabody is going somewhere in his car for some reason, and Sherman was… playing in the driveway (?) for some reason, and Peabody is too dumb to put two and two together, somehow…
To me the worst Far Sides hands-down were the ones that made references to popular culture. With a couple of exceptions (Elmer Fudd at the screwdriver factory is a personal favourite), they were usually just off-putting and not funny, and Larson usually couldn’t draw the characters well enough or seemed only vaguely aware of the material to begin with, unless it was something ridiculously universal, like the Wizard of Oz. There is one cartoon, with the cast of the original series of Star Trek encountering an image that is supposed to be Zsa Zsa Gabor’s head, which may well be the worst and most baffling Far Side ever published.
Short version: Larson had many strengths as a cartoonists, parody was not one of them.
I agree with Jordan @2 that Larson’s topical panels were quite weak, but I would not classify this one as such. It’s certainly not great, but the reason it works (at least for me) is the slow parallel process of dawning comprehension that takes place in the minds of both Mr. Peabody and the reader.
I also think the matter-of-fact tone and the tension brought on by the never-realized reveal make it amusing, if not laugh-out-loud funny.
He time travels, so maybe he ran over himself?
That’s where I went. He is sitting there contemplating that he just ran himself over… But when will it happen??
I would call this one of Larson’s better pop culture parodies, as the dry and incessantly wordy caption mirrors Peabody’s dry and incessantly wordy narration on the television show.
Larson was no stranger to sick humor like this, in fact “you’re sick” are among the first words he recalls hearing from his first successful meeting with a syndicate. I mean, this is a guy who tried to get a bird with scrambled human babies on its plate past the censors.