Is 'The Far Side' Comic Strip Coming Back? (theguardian.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
Fans of the surreal, the bizarre and sardonic anthropomorphic cows are in a fervour after The Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson's website was updated last weekend with promises of "a new online era", 24 years after the reclusive creator retired at the age of 44.
Larson's iconic Far Side cartoons were syndicated in more than 1,900 daily newspapers from 1980 to 1995, treating readers to daily offerings from his offbeat visions of the world... His image of a caveman pointing to the tail of a stegosaurus and letting his audience know that it is called "the thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmonds", led paleontologists to adopt the invented term.
Larson retired The Far Side in 1995 , citing "simple fatigue and a 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". Hugely publicity-shy -- he has long refused to have his picture taken -- he has since then released a compilation of Far Side cartoons, but worked to keep his pictures from being reproduced digitally, explaining in a letter the "emotional cost" of having his work "offered up in cyberspace beyond my control... These cartoons are my 'children' of sorts, and like a parent, I'm concerned about where they go at night without telling me," wrote Larson. "And, seeing them at someone's website is like getting the call at 2am that goes, 'Uh, Dad, you're not going to like this much, but guess where I am.'"
But the updating over the weekend of thefarside.com, which had previously remained virtually unchanged for more than a decade, has left many fans hoping for Larson's return. A new image, in which some of Larson's most iconic characters -- the cow on two legs, the bee-hived woman, the nerd -- are being defrosted from an iceberg, has appeared on the site, along with the promise: "Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!"
Larson's iconic Far Side cartoons were syndicated in more than 1,900 daily newspapers from 1980 to 1995, treating readers to daily offerings from his offbeat visions of the world... His image of a caveman pointing to the tail of a stegosaurus and letting his audience know that it is called "the thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmonds", led paleontologists to adopt the invented term.
Larson retired The Far Side in 1995 , citing "simple fatigue and a 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". Hugely publicity-shy -- he has long refused to have his picture taken -- he has since then released a compilation of Far Side cartoons, but worked to keep his pictures from being reproduced digitally, explaining in a letter the "emotional cost" of having his work "offered up in cyberspace beyond my control... These cartoons are my 'children' of sorts, and like a parent, I'm concerned about where they go at night without telling me," wrote Larson. "And, seeing them at someone's website is like getting the call at 2am that goes, 'Uh, Dad, you're not going to like this much, but guess where I am.'"
But the updating over the weekend of thefarside.com, which had previously remained virtually unchanged for more than a decade, has left many fans hoping for Larson's return. A new image, in which some of Larson's most iconic characters -- the cow on two legs, the bee-hived woman, the nerd -- are being defrosted from an iceberg, has appeared on the site, along with the promise: "Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!"
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* I tried numerous times to create an account on Plenty of Fish (dating site). Every single time, no matter what information I inputted into the registration form, it would give fake error messages about how the "username is already taken" (even when trying impossible, ridiculous ones full of random alphanumeric characters).
That's because there really are "plenty of fish"!
Also, the Far Side! Yay!
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And you keep flaunting your ignorance by re-posting this load of horse shit over and over.
You're either seriously incompetent or lying.
I'm gonna go with the former, just for shits and giggles.
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Nobody cares about privacy nowadays dude. I'm surprised people even close the bathroom door anymore.
Probably (Score:2)
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Well I wonder. Is this site going to recycle/repackage the old stuff or is it going to publish new stuff. Either way though.. I might check it out.
Ir was at times amusing (Score:2)
but I really miss Doctor Fun much more....
Re:Doctor Fun (Score:1)
Obligatory Favourite "Far Side" (Score:3)
https://www.cardcow.com/366795... [cardcow.com]
It would be great to see Gary doing more comics - that man simply doesn't think like a normal human being.
Re:Obligatory Favourite "Far Side" (Score:5, Funny)
Theres a lot of good ones but these are a couple of my favorites:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AZN... [blogspot.com]
https://postmediaedmontonjourn... [wordpress.com]
Re: Obligatory Favourite "Far Side" (Score:1)
Hah, the video game one. That more accurately captures my son's hopes. :)
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My favorite was Larsen's captioning of animal behavior. You see two monkeys sitting in a tree, grooming: "Aha - another blonde hair! You been doing some more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp again?"
Re:Obligatory Favourite "Far Side" (Score:4, Informative)
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Funny thing is some people do actually make a decent living playing Mario these days. Guys like Grand Poo Bear and Barbarian on Twitch/YouTube play man hours of Mario (and a few other games) a day as their full time job. The release of Mario Maker and the endless supply of new user-generated levels really made it viable about 4 years ago.
With the door one, I guess the joke is the kid pushing when the sign says pull, but I found the concept of an outward opening door at the top of a flight of stairs more amu
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https://pics.me.me/anon-dont-b... [pics.me.me]
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Those are all good, but the one that really floated my boat was the great Dennis the Menace crossover [imgur.com] episode
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But he couldn't even take credit for that!
Difficult to do real comedy these days. (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
No fair! (Score:2)
Re:No fair! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd love to get Calvin and Hobbes back as well; but getting new Far Side cartoons would be pretty awesome.
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i want back Calvin and Hobbes too!
Start another thread...
Like C&H? Try Cyanide & Happiness (Score:2)
If the sled [explosm.net] let you down, there's plenty more new C&H to be found on Explosm.net.
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iq145 demanded:
i want back Calvin and Hobbes too!
FWIW, Berkeley Breathed's current revival of Bloom County [gocomics.com] (which has been quietly featuring all-new strips for a couple of years now) has, on occasion, included several crossover collaborations with Bill Watterson (who's, like, 400 years old now) featuring the spikey-haired, part-time spaceman and his faithful, anthropomorphic, feline companion.
Also, if you love The Far Side as much as I do, you may also enjoy Dave Blazek's Loose Parts [gocomics.com], which started out as a Dollar Store version of TFS, but
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IF we get both of them back I might reconsider my belief the world is going to end.
Keep telling kids about those butterflies (Score:2)
Not those butterflies; these butterflies with tattoos and gnarly wings, and they smoke cigarettes in dark alleys. That image alone exorcised the demons from my childhood. I could not ever watch a show that featured unicorns at all.
Pulling a Disney (Score:2)
So he "pulled a Disney" by retiring himself to engender sentimentality and then returning many years later, and coincidentally he's angered by the possibility of anyone else profiting from his cartoons? There's a shocker.
Re:Pulling a Disney (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that tired old trick of quitting in your prime and not producing any profitable work for 24 years, just to make a comeback when you're almost 70. He can't fool us.
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I thought he quit because he was out of ideas for new strips. Presumably enough time has passed that he's got some now.
It's not coming back, we've entered it's Universe (Score:3)
A printed collection of Far Side cartoons is literally the only book I have out in my living room. I so hope this comes to fruition.
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Honestly - I think he may just be trying to preserve what he already made online rather than creating a new era of content. Maybe there will be *some* new strips, along with stuff that didn't get released, but mostly this may be about archiving his existing stuff as available online before he gets *too* old.
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I would buy those in collection, and Bloom County, Dilbert, Fox Trot, and some lesser knowns like Willy & Ethyl, and Guindon, another single-panel.
pshaw (Score:2)
I'm sure this will start a fight (Score:2)
Lots to fight over (Score:2)
You're leaving out Bloom County and the first few years of Dilbert. Doonesbury has had a number of great years.
I just rediscovered "Tumbleweeds" from a pocketbook I discovered at a used book store.
Lots of great strips, I'm really sorry that this art form seems to be in decline right now.
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I loved bloom county at the time, but it doesn't really stand the test of time the way calvin and hobbes and the far side do.
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After hearing about this, I showed my younger son some The Far Side comics online. We laughed at all of them and I suddenly realized just how much of an impact The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes had on my weird sense of humor.
If it's new comics, great, but whatever it is, I'm taking this opportunity to introduce my son to the weirdness of The Far Side.
Umm... (Score:2)
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Gary Larson named it. That part of the Stegosaurus did not have a name until the cartoon. Paleontologists like it and started using it and it stuck. Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Please come back! (Score:2)
Will it still be as good? (Score:1)