The Far Side is one of my two most favorite newspaper comic-strip collections. The other one is incomparable Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Both artists have retired and have stopped sketching for a while. What do you call “hanging up the boots” in artists’ parlance?
Gary Larson had sketched his last cartoon in 1995 in San Francisco Chronicle. I discovered The Far Side somewhat late, in college as a teenager, and since then, it has ascended to the top of my favorites. I think that I now own much of the collection, and my kids have discovered them early. Much too early in fact. I am a chagrined and proud.
The Far Side is often gruesome, delightfully acerbic, almost always apolitical and exceedingly scientific. The cartoon was usually a single panel with a pithy observation that wittily take down bumbling humans and folly of the scientists while elevating anthropomorphic animals. Inside all the gallows humor, like in all the greatest works, there was an understated love of life, and a humanistic view of the world.
Any way, its seems Gary Larson has returned, thanks to a clogged pen. Welcome back!
I leave you with an example of the costly trials in early human transportation. We will still do this with automated cars, no? (Cartoon credit: The Far Side. Only for illustration).
