‘Far Side’ finally returns, sort of
Beloved cartoonist posts 3 new panels
Fans can finally return to “The Far Side.” Yes, Gary Larson has brought his beloved comic strip out of a long retirement and has published his first new “Far Side” cartoons in 25 years. The three new strips can be seen on the website thefarside.com and clicking the “new stuff” tab. But before fans get too excited about the development, thinking that perhaps they can once again count on enjoying a new “Far Side” cartoon each morning while they drink their cups of coffee, Larson warns that this does not signal a return to the way things use to be. “I don’t want to mislead anyone here,” Larson says in a post on the website. “This corner of the website — New Stuff — is not a resurrection of ‘The Far Side’ daily cartoons. (Well, not exactly, anyway — like the proverbial tiger and its stripes, I’m pretty much stuck with my sense of humor. Aren’t we all?) The thing is, I thoroughly enjoyed my career as a syndicated cartoonist, and I hope, in spirit at least, we had some laughs together. But after 15 years of meeting deadlines, well, blah blah blah … you know the rest.” “The Far Side” launched on Dec. 31, 1979, and ran through Jan. 1, 1995. At the height of its popularity, the syndicated single-panel strip was reportedly carried by nearly 2,000 newspapers and translated into multiple languages. Revered for its surreal and somewhat twisted sense of humor as well as Larson’s fondness for drawing animals, “The Far Side” was a smash success, resulting in several popular compilation books as well as calendars, cards and other signature items. But, by 1995, Larson was ready to move on. “The day after I retired from syndication, it felt good not to draw on a deadline,” Larson says. “And after moving on to other interests, drawing just wasn’t on my to-do list.” Yet, he also notes, “things change.” “But then a few years ago — and returning to the subject at hand — something happened in my life, and it started with a clogged pen,” he says. “Despite my retirement, I still had intermittent connections to cartooning, including my wife’s and my personal Christmas card. Once a year, I’d sit myself down to take on Santa, and every year it began with the same ritual: me cursing at, and then cleaning out, my clogged pen. “So a few years ago — finally fed up with my onceloyal but now reliably traitorous pen — I decided to try a digital tablet.” And that ultimately led him back to “The Far Side.” “The ‘New Stuff’ that you’ll see here is the result of my journey into the world of digital art,” he says. “Believe me, this has been a bit of a learning curve for me. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. (True, I don’t get out much.) But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something familiar there — a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with “Cow tools.” “But as a jazz teacher once said to me about improvisation, “You want to try and take people somewhere where they might not have been before.” I think that my approach to cartooning was similar — I’m just not sure if even I knew where I was going. But I was having fun.” Now, he’s ready to share the fun with the public. The initial offering is three strips, but where it goes from here is anyone’s guess. “So here goes. I’ve got my coffee, I’ve got this cool gizmo, and I’ve got no deadlines,” he says. “And — to borrow from Sherlock Holmes — the game is afoot.”