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Is 'The Far Side' Comic Strip Coming Back? (theguardian.com) 47

Posted by EditorDavid from the when-clowns-go-bad dept.
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!"
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Is 'The Far Side' Comic Strip Coming Back? More

Is 'The Far Side' Comic Strip Coming Back?

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  • Probably just for buying shit

    • 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.

  • but I really miss Doctor Fun much more....

  • Obligatory Favourite "Far Side" (Score:3)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:09PM (#59224842) Homepage

    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.

  • I sympathize with Gary being a recluse. One wrong step these days and you become the target of the professional character assassins and paid shill morons of this world. I would like to see Gary do a take on this theme, perhaps with the ghost of Robbin Williams as one of the cows. How's about an ex soviet cow now in charge for life of the pastures of the few remaining farms around Sochi surrounded by used Dacha's and their pig owners that always steal the milk production of the farms? I'm sure Gary could eas

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:16PM (#59224874)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • i want back Calvin and Hobbes too!

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • It's not coming back, we've entered it's Universe (Score:3)

    by rednip ( 186217 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @06:11PM (#59224998) Journal

    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.

    • 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.

    • I would buy those in collection, and Bloom County, Dilbert, Fox Trot, and some lesser knowns like Willy & Ethyl, and Guindon, another single-panel.

  • Next you'll be telling me Nancy is back, and Nog died.
  • Calvin and Hobbs and The Far Side are neck and neck for the two greatest newspaper comics ever made. Coincidence that both authors had a strong sense of integrity? Garfield may be the worst. Jim Davis has gone on record saying that he only made the strip as a way to sell merchandise...

    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pyrrho ( 167252 )

        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.

    • 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.

  • "Simmonds"? His name was "Thag Simmons" and we should honor his memory.
  • I'd love to see a return of regular Far Sides coming out. Reading through some of the old cartoons reminds me of how good they were and how timeless their humor is. Mr. Larson's unique take on the world through cartoon animals and human archetypes are certainly missed.
  • Glad to see it coming back presumably. I've gone through most if not all the books and have some favourites ('my dinner with Andy', 'ship of fools, car of idiots', 'inside the sun' and the one where the kids are hiding beside the house when the liver and onions truck drives by playing music.) but the later books it seems like he was trying too hard and didn't seem as good as earlier drawings. Hopefully the many years off has give him good ideas again as there are currently some cartoons being made that are

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