Despite beginning publication in 1979, Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic remains an enduring fixture in the age of internet meme culture, inspiring everything from paleontological terminology to the scientific names of multiple insects. However, despite Larson's characteristic appreciation for the animal kingdom, there's one creature he was surprisingly never able to include in his work. Often featuring all manner of critters and creatures, Larson's work is famous for drawing surreal humor from the animal kingdom, but he was too frightened of censorship to use one specific species.
Serializing his final strip in 1995, Larson has published numerous collections of his cartoons in full-sized books, including his anthologies, dubbed The Far Side Gallery in parody of high art. One of these comic collections, published in 1989, is slightly different from the rest, and features a detailed account by Larson on his creative process and history, along with other curiosities of his career. Entitled, The Prehistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit, the book is full of many interesting minutia and factoids regarding the acclaimed series, including a section of rejected cartoons, with one comic featuring an insect unused in the entirety of the strip: the dung beetle.
Why The Far Side Couldn't Use Dung Beetles
While it may seem quaint nowadays, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when The Far Side did its original run, the idea of an animal handling dung was too far beyond the pale for a family-oriented syndicated cartoon. Larson himself explains, "I've spent the last ten years dying to do a cartoon about dung beetles (hasn't everyone?) but I've always known their very name would present editorial problems - let alone what I'd have them doing.” Presenting a panel that never saw publication in the strip itself, Larson explains, “I guess I just drew it for my own amusement."
Scatological References Were Forbidden in The Far Side
The "Rejected Cartoons" section of the book includes many strips slightly-too shocking for publication, including an infant being loaded into an anthill, a dog being fed leftovers from a surgeon performing an operation, and a lobster attempting to wake up from a “nightmare” of being boiled by repeating the line, “there’s no place like home” a la The Wizard of Oz. While these certainly do trend towards the darker side of what the target public audience might accept for all ages, Larson makes it clear that anything scatological - including even the depiction of outhouses - was totally forbidden in the strip's early days, and persisted so consistently he knew nothing including dung beetles would ever make it past editors. Despite this, he does note that while he disagreed with some editorial calls, he feels his editors have kept him from genuine missteps more often than they've hampered harmless work (even though one strip still got him in trouble with Amnesty International.)
Throughout his tenure as a globally syndicated cartoonist, Gary Larson pushed the boundaries of what fans expected from single-panel comics. In retrospect, it's therefore bizarre that the dung beetle was too controversial to fly in The Far Side, only appearing once Larson was free to include it in a retrospective of the series' history.
Source: The Pre-History of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit