Artist: B. Kliban
I’m sorry, I don’t get it.
Can somebody explain it?
I want to understand it because I love elephants (and mammoths as a consequence, though perhaps the type of animal is not important for the joke)
I’m in the same boat.
…Maybe we’re just trying too hard and it’s a Cow tools moment?
The joke I think is that she seriously underestimated the task. This is the moment where she’s realizing “Well, that didn’t work” while the mammoth is still processing that a tiny woman has apparently stabbed it and will presumably kill her in a second.
It’s not necessarily a woman - it’s just primitive clothing
True. I was just judging by the way Gary Larson tends to draw cave women vs cave men. Obviously, since this isn’t made by Garry Larson, they could very well have intended it to be a man or even gender neutral.
I thought it was “Woman being a pain in the ass since the dawn of man.”
Hyuk Hyuk! wiFe bAd, aMiRiTe?
My best-guess interpretation: “This human is history (doomed) because they tried to attack a large animal and no longer have a weapon.”
Best case, this is an absurd warning about hunting large animals on one’s own. The humour would be that this woman, rather than killing the mammoth, is about to get stomped. Or a at the very least, a terse “Do you mind?”
Worst case, this is intended as “Strong independent (cave)woman don’t need no (cave)man.”, and in acting without said man, she has proven said maxim wrong.
I’d like to think there’s enough wrong with that thinking that even the most ardent misogynist ought to find a step too far (people hunt in groups, so she would have taken friends along, surely?), so I expect the intended humour is closer to the former than the latter.
The choice of a female protagonist is an interesting one though.
It must have been “Do you mind?”. And absurdness of hunting alone. Also i see nothing interesting on choice of female protagonist. Contrary to popular myth, women hunted together with men (based on evidence of broken legs) and had no strongly separate roles (like women being gatherers and men hunters).
That’s how I interpreted it.
I thought it was “Woman being a pain in the ass since the dawn of man.”
Wasn’t funny the first time either. Welcome to my blocklist.
Edit: looked at their post history. Not a moment too soon.
👍, I really don’t care about your opinion.
I recognize the style from Gary Larson’s The Far Side. It turns out Kliban was an inspiration of his!
That does make a lot of sense!
Whack your porcupine!
Buying a copy of this in '86 was the pre-Internet way of getting memes.
I got a boxed set of most of his books off of Amazon a couple of years ago and have been supplementing it since when I have a few extra dollars to spend. I think I have one book left to get.
