The Far Side: Classic or D.. well, no, it's just Classic really

Or is that Bill Watterson?

Nick: Surely he retired a good few years ago? (Unless Gary decided to jump back into game with renewed vigor and I missed it.) I don't get TFS in the daily paper, but I'd imagine that the papers still running the feature would be re-using older cartoons. Larson also noticed a decline in quality in his later work and decided to call it a day instead of running it into the ground.

Of course Far Side's Classic - and that [short] FS film is genius.

It does have to be said that there are a lot of Far Side cartoons, and a lot that are classic, but really there's just the Scientists and Ice-cream Van and then there's everything else.

Coming back?

https://www.cnet.com/news/the-far-side-could-be-back-from-extinction-and-the-timings-so-right/?fbclid=IwAR3a2iM0kNelQzkAizdSwDsDQP3WwpeYlU-0x2rnMYvUQUiAuc31vwGJKe4#ftag=COS-05-10aaa0i

timings so right fbclid=IwAR3a2iM0kNelQzkAizdSwDsDQP3WwpeYlU-0x2rnMYvUQUiAuc31vwGJKe4#ftag=COS-05-10aaa0i

yes!

thefarside.com

was going to say nickn, from my recent reading of these threads, when you link from facebook you should delete the part of the link starting with the question mark before you post it. It doesn't change the link itself, but according to sic it eliminates a tag that is sent to advertisers and other third parties

like this? https://www.cnet.com/news/the-far-side-could-be-back-from-extinction-and-the-timings-so-right/

👍as far as I know

yes! it's cool and easy to do, and is better for the site you're linking to, & for ILX (though that ship may have long been holed), and means that Facebook are not parasitically stealing money and credit

If you search for 'fbclid' on the addons (firefox) or extensions (chrome) sites, you'll find simple addons that automatically remove parameters like 'fbclid', 'gclid', 'utm_source=' etc

He's back

https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff

Larson coming back after 25 years with such a groan-worthy gag does my heart good.

The alien one is the best

seeing those made me happy for a minute, which is good enough for me

Yes!

Bears Eating Cub Scouts is kinda perfect

Am I missing the joke there or is it just like a descriptive painting title?

imo, it's the best kind of inscrutable Far Side silliness where a dumb idea is fully executed and well rendered; of course they eat them at a picnic table and pour honey on their completely clothed, bespectacled chubby bodies.

Yeah that one really hits the zone

These are good, but I can only truly appreciate them if I also have my Letterman Top 10 List books sitting next to them on the bookshelf.

For me, it'll always be about how Larson nails certain expressions - the bug-eyed stuffed moose and raccoon, the prone boy scout - and also the reserve: like, he could have drawn the bears with the tongues out doing "look at this tasty sandwich" expressions, but instead, it's their lack of joy and intense concentration that makes the cartoon funny (and creepy)

And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food.

Actually, I can see a lot of overlap between the Larson and Herzog view of nature, and Larson is really at his best when he's capturing that sort of mundane, blank-stared cruelty of life.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-far-side-returns-to-a-weird-world

Its creator, Gary Larson (no relation!), retired in 1995, after having been syndicated in more than nineteen hundred newspapers and selling more than forty million books. Then he disappeared almost entirely, like a funny-pages Salinger or Pynchon, busying himself with jazz guitar and presumably enjoying life.

Or, I dunno, maybe like a certain noted contemporary who just about the same thing at the same time?

Jazz guitar? Uhh

After he retired, Larson studied guitar with Jim Hall.

Who?

Like Bill Watterson, if Bill Watterson had been an NYT-respected literary author, and had worked & retired decades earlier.

https://youtu.be/ZIq5w-NogWA

xp to calstars

Humbled
Thanks

🔥🔥🔥

https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/155/frank-dale

I like the parthenogenesis one

How often does the “new stuff” come out?

What percentage of Far Side cartoons do you think involve death or imminent death? Twenty percent?

Are some of these remakes of classic strips? The one of the bears in the cave telling ghost stories looks awfully familiar. Maybe just a common Larson trope though.

Love Frank & Dale.

Is the joke in the Frank & Dale one just that chicken can't fly, or am I missing some deeper meaning?