When "Far Side" cartoonist Gary Larson announced in 1988 that he was going to take a 14-month break, a great many fans groaned in disappointment, but others probably wondered if he might be going somewhere to recharge . . . say, another dimension populated by bizarre humans, conversing cows, prankster snakes and anthropomorphic bugs with down-to-earth names like Bob and Frank and Mary Jo.
Thankfully, Larson didn't stay gone. During his sabbatical, cartoons from his early years continued to be published, so we were able to get a daily dose of his zany, off-the-wall, out-of-nowhere humor. And his latest book, "The PreHistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit," is a current best seller. But as of Jan. 1 new cartoons started rolling our way and are featured daily in the Deseret News.So just where did Gary Larson go, if it wasn't the fifth dimension?
"My wife and I did some traveling - Africa at the start of my time away and the Amazon at the end," Larson says. "In between, we moved to New York for four months, where I took advantage of an opportunity to study jazz guitar with a couple of great musicians."
Larson, 39, raised in Tacoma and still a Washington state resident, began drawing "The Far Side" in 1980 and saw his creations zoom to popularity during the subsequent decade. His cartoons, full of surprise and raising head-shaking questions ("How did he come up with that!" "What will he think of next?"), were eventually syndicated in 900 newspapers and began to decorate refrigerators, office walls, professorial doors and other handy spots. Today they also appear on T-shirts, calendars and even Christmas cards. He's the engine powering a whole "Far Side" industry.
No wonder he started to burn out from the grind.
But he's back behind the drawing board, and to help us celebrate, his Universal Press Syndicate sent us some excerpts and illustrations from "The PreHistory" for your perusal.
So, ladies and gentlemen: Heerrrre's Gary.
Origin of the species
GARY LARSON loved to draw as a kid. "But I need to emphasize that I never once thought about being a cartoonist. Likewise, I never studied art other than the required classes in grade school and junior high (to some people, that's immediately obvious). My love was science - specifically biology and, more specifically, when placed in a common jar, which of two organisms would devour the other.
"Since `The Far Side's' story really begins in my childhood, I thought it might prove interesting to include a few of my earliest drawings. My mother was kind enough to provide a few of the things she saved from my kindergarten days, and I've provided a brief explanation (as best I can recall) of the catalyst for each one.
"One day, a long, long time ago at a retail music store where I had been working for almost a year, I had an unexpected revelation. As I stood next to the cash register, the sky seemed to suddenly open up over my head, and a throng of beautiful angels came flying down and swirled around me. In glorious, lilting tones, their voices rang out, `You haaaaate your job, you haaaaate your job. . . .' And then they left. But I knew it was true - angels don't lie. I hated my job.
"There was nothing really that terrible about it but, without prior warning, it came over me that this just wasn't what I wanted out of life. (We didn't even get good employee discounts.) I wanted something more. Insurance saleman, ice cream vendor, gravedigger - many things occurred to me, but I was pretty much rudderless.
"So I took a couple of days off, went home and thought about it. Of course, thinking about a career crisis for two whole days was more than my attention span could handle (a clue to why I do a single-panel cartoon instead of a strip), so I sat down at the kitchen table and started to draw. Exactly why, I'll never know. Other than an interest in Mad magazine during my adolescence and an appreciation for Gahan Wilson's work, I knew nothing about the cartooning world. But, on the other hand, cartooning is not exactly a field that requires a graduate degree, complete with upper-division courses like `Noses 401' and `Crossed Eyes 502.' I gave it a whirl and drew a half-dozen cartoons. The net result was six of the worst little drawings cartoondom has ever seen.
"The following day, I took these six little `gems' to a local magazine in Seattle called Pacific Search (now Pacific Northwest) and, amazingly enough, hit paydirt. The editor liked them, and I received a $90 check. Immediately, I was surrounded by angels singing, `You looooove cartooning, you looooove cartooning. . . .'
"I worked up a little creation called `Nature's Way,' a single-panel cartoon probably best described as a Mesozoic `Far Side,' and summoned up the courage to show it to the editor of a small, weekly newspaper (the Sumner News Review). He liked it and began publishing it on a regular basis.
"The sheer excitement of being published was enough to live on for a while, but the three bucks a cartoon I was getting began to have a sobering effect on my vision of doing this professionally. I'm not sure if it was the fear of rejection or what, but I effectively avoided knocking on other doors or submitting my work to various publishers.
"Eventually, I hung cartooning up and went out and got a `real' job - an investigator for the local Humane Society, to whom I never disclosed the fact that on the way to the job interview I ran over a dog.
"Things went along for a while about as close to normal as my life had ever seemed and then, in 1979, a reporter I had met showed my cartoons to her editor at the Seattle Times. `Nature's Way' was resurrected and began appearing weekly in their Saturday edition - next to a kid's crossword puzzle called `Junior Jumble' (a hint that trouble was ahead)."
For almost a year, Larson contributed one panel a week to the Seattle Times, and, during a vacation that year, submitted his work to an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. The editor there loved his work, and on Jan. 1, 1980, a single-panel cartoon called `The Far Side' was born and was soon offered to newspapers through Chronicle Features.
Two years later Andrews and McMeel published the first collection, `The Far Side,' which was a great success. Subsequent books have also been popular, selling more than 10 million copies collectively. Universal Press Syndicate, the parent company of Andrews and McMeel, began distributing the panel to newspapers in 1984.
The Creative Process
" `Where do you get your ideas?' has always been the question I'm most often confronted with. (`Why do you get your ideas?' is a close second.) I've always found the question interesting, because it seems to embody a belief that there exists some secret, tangible place of origin for cartoon ideas. Every time I hear it, I'm struck by this mental image where I see myself rummaging through my grandparents' attic and coming across some old, musty trunk. Inside I find this equally old and elegant-looking book. I take it in my hands, blow away the dust, and embossed on the front cover in large, gold script is the title, `Five Thousand and One Weird Cartoon Ideas.'
"I'm afraid the real answer is much more mundane: I don't know where my ideas come from. The idea for any cartoon (in my experience, anyway) is rarely spontaneous. Good ideas usually evolve out of pretty lame ones, and vice versa. (I've destroyed a few good cartoons by reworking them to death.) There's only one cartoon idea I ever got that came directly from my own personal experience" - the panel here with the chin-up bar.
"And some of my cartoons (some would argue most), I realize, are not always understandable. I mean, I know what I was going for - I just have to face the fact that I don't always quite get there. `Off days' are a part of life, I guess, whether you are a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon or an air-traffic controller.
"Some cartoons spring forth from just staring stupidly at a blank piece of paper and thinking about aardvarks or toaster ovens or cemeteries or just about anything, and others come out of `doodles' that I continually enter into a sketchbook.
"I drew a cartoon quite a few years ago entitled, `The Real Reason Dinosaurs Became Extinct." The drawing involved a small clique of dinosaurs hanging out together and smoking cigarettes.
"That cartoon stayed in my sketchbook for almost a year until, pressed for ideas one week, I dug it out and submitted it for publication. And, lo and behold, it became one of the most popular cartoons I've ever drawn. Obviously, if I'd had any idea of its potential impact, I never would have sat on it as long as I did."