Far SideGary Larson
Far Side
by Gary Larson · first published 1998
10mentions
3recommended by
10HN commenters
2015–2026first – last mentioned
30% recommend70% neutral
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> even though I only understood maybe 30% of them. My parents got me a Far Side collection when I was younger, and I understood maybe 15% of the comics tops. But it's still a great read; as an adult I'm stupefied by how much mileage Larson squeezed out of single-pane comics. He…
on “Tales from the Far Side” ↗For me, Calvin and Hobbes was usually good and occasionally great. The comic I miss the most though is Gary Larson's Far Side.
on “Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return? (2014)” ↗For me Gary Larson is a close second to Watterson. That said, this is probably one of my favorite Far Side comics and there's a ton more that are just as great: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... Third in line would be either the Gaston universe (Franquin) or Goscinny's oeuvre…
on “New Stuff” ↗I found the madness unleashed by the "Cow tools" panel hilarious. No one got the joke and it generated so much confusion the strip made the news. Larson talks about it The Prehistory of The Far Side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools?wprov=sfla1
on ““The Far Side” Returns to a Weird World” ↗That's one of the fun little oddities Gary Larson talks about in "The Prehistory of the Far Side", where syndication captioning errors led to a couple of swaps of Far Side and Dennis the Menace cartoons, with weird results.
on “Calvin and Markov: Randomly generated C&H comic strips” ↗> I also enjoyed Far Side. Gary Larson has started drawing again! He's still "retired" but has started self-publishing on an irregular cadence. https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff
on “It’s Not Just You: Garfield Is Not Meant to Be Funny (2013)” ↗Haha that’s a good one thanks for the link! Just pulled “Hound of the Far Side” off a shelf last night after not looking at a Larson comic in a long time - reminds me of the one where a car of cows are driving by a field of humans yelling “yakkity yak yak” out the window
on “TikTok has an open computational chemistry position” ↗>He's the only artist I can think of to achieve that level of fame and success and not sell out. Gary Larson of The Far Side comes close but never touched the highs of Calvin and Hobbes
on “An Interview with Bill Watterson (1987)” ↗I think he's also directly implementing color, if you see color "original Far Side" it was added post-hock usually (though maybe some color Sunday strips exist colored by Larson).
on “New Work by Gary Larson” ↗It's scandalous that no-one has yet posted Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon "Bullknitters". https://www.instagram.com/p/C2OQtokvzCa/ (or google image search)
on “Knitting Bullshit” ↗