THE FARTHER SIDE

For those wondering what else 2020 might bring for surprises, try this: dinosaurs, cavemen, talking insects, gloppy space aliens, invading and otherwise, philosophical cows and bears.

And it’s all good — no, great — because The Far Side’s Gary Larson is producing cartoons again, 25 years after hanging up his pen. The “New Stuff ” cartoons — two of the three are pictured here — are, per Larson, “the result of my journey into the world of digital art” and not a bid to resurrect his Far Side drawings.

But the world will take what it can get, and the new ’toons certainly show his trademark lunacy — an eye for the absurd, or maybe just an absurd eye — that brought daily joy to hundreds of millions who found them in newspapers in the 15 years up to Jan. 1, 1995.

The original single-panel etchings ranged from the surreal to the bizarre to the just plain weird. Sometimes the gag was completely visual — a badger staring at a fridge full of branches — sometimes it was mainly in the caption or the thought balloon.

By bringing a touch of the absurd into every home that bought the right newspaper, he offered fans a reliable moment of entertainment in even the gloomiest day — and alerted kids reading the funnies that humor could take turns stranger than anything else in their lives.

In the process, he created something like a half-billion dollars in wealth, thanks to the sale of merchandise.

Larson quit when it stopped being fun anymore, citing “fatigue and fear that if I continue for many more years my work will begin to suffer, or at the very least ease into the Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons.”

But now he’s offering old wine (but fresh jokes!) in new bottles, his images generated via a tablet, not pen-and-ink.

It’s unclear how often he’ll drop one of his new-style ’toons, but the first three show that he hasn’t lost his edge (or his curve?).

And, he teases with a nod to Sherlock Holmes, “the game’s afoot” — a strong hint that much fun is ahead.

When Gary Larson says he’s “just exploring, experimenting and trying stuff,” there’s a lot of good stuff to come.