the Prehistory of the Far Side

This book by Gary Larson is a highly interesting account of how he came to be one of the most highly-respectly and widely-syndicated comic artists of the late 20th-century (see for proof, the books of respective galleries one, two, three and four - as example).

   The first third of the book is a fairly sketchy but endearing autobiography of how Gary grew up with a fascination for nature, all its oddness and darkness; while also having a fairly odd and dark sense of humour - and naturally these things came together. He includes a few scans of drawings he did as a kid, several of which are fairly horrifyingly graphic - but you can see where the roots of the comic he become famous for came from. It's illuminating to say the least.

   The second third of the book is a dryer and more methodical walkthrough of his efforts to get published, then syndicated, then bigger - and so on. This sheds a great deal of insight into what exactly late-20th-century comic publishers were expecting from their artistic contributors and what they weren't, and it does largely seem that whatever Gary Larson was, they weren't expecting and didn't really want.* It took him a while to find his feet in the industry, and even when he did, the people managing his strips for the syndicates often didn't even understand the comics he was sending them - to the point that, if he sent in a batch of comics for a weeks' worth of newspapers, sometimes they would even mix-match captions between one or the other strip without even noticing, and often with no reader complaints that they "didn't get it" either. Gary Larson's style was simply that weird that people just took it as a given if it made close to zero sense. Though the dryest part of the book, I enjoyed this bit the most. It gives a great light into the inner and outer struggles of a cartoonist trying to get recognised and then successful; and with an honesty and humour throughout, never a bitterness.

   The final third is a compilation of Gary's favourite strips from his tenure, though most of these have already been featured in the galleries linked in the first paragraph. Anyway, if you not only have decided that you like The Far Side as a comic but are interested in the artistic, personal, and economic processes by which one becomes as weird a cartoonist as he, then this is definitely worth a read.

* I'll tell you what they wanted. They wanted Marmaduke: a dog who never made a noise or a mess or a fuss, only a vaguely sardonic thought-bubble in response to a borderline completely normal situation. They wanted Garfield: a cat with a big personality comprising of a whole four jokes under his belt that could be recycled ad nauseum at the expense of his obviously manic-depressive owner Jon Arbuckle... what they DID NOT want was a completely off-the-wall unhinged rumination on anthropology or natural history or fuck-knows-what every week with a completely different joke every time that most days even the editors wouldn't understand. But still, The Far Side remains a classic. How many people do you know that own a collection of Marmaduke strips? Exactly.

the Far Side Gallery 4

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

the Far Side Gallery 3

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

the Far Side Gallery 2

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

the Far Side Gallery

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

There's a Hair in my Dirt!

This book, written and illustrated by the inimitable The Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, is another of the old kids' books left at my parents' house that I've binge-read out of pure unfettered nostalgia, and of the three so far thusly describable it is by far the best on a number of levels.*

   It features a family of anthropomorphized earthworms, the child of whom promptly sets off the story by making its eponymous complaint. The father worm responds by telling him a fable about the true nature of nature, in which animals don't always understand what other animals are doing, trying to do, or even for, and the anarchic cycles of ecology roll ever onwards, illustrated through myriad amusing examples with rich visual humour (the main character of this story is a nature-loving maiden called Harriet, whose final attempt to save a mouse from a snake results in her [SPOILER ALERT] getting a virus from the mouse, dying, and rotting, hence the hair in the dirt). The young worm finishes his reception of the tale with an emboldened sense of a worm's place in the world, then finishes his dinner.

   Very very very funny, surprisingly educational, and you can spend longer looking for all the detail-jokes in the drawings than it would take you to read the text. Certainly a book to crack out for kids who say they like nature, but aren't nearly morbid enough in their worldview yet to display that they properly understand its workings.

* Larson being a favourite humourist of the scientific community, this even features a celebratory foreword from esteemed ecologist Edward O. Wilson, which must be a first for a kids' book.

The Chickens Are Restless

This book, one of the many collections of The Far Side cartoons that lay so ubiquitous around my family's home that they are outnumbered on the bookshelves there only by John Grisham novels, Beano annuals and books on childcare, is, like all other collections of Gary Larson's superb comic, amusing and bizarre.

   I've moved back into the Stovell family home for the week surrounding Christmas, which is very generous of my parents (even though they did convert my bedroom into some sort of waiting lounge in my absence), and has the added benefits of free food and warmth, pushing my negligible budget that extra bit further until student loans come back in. I jest, material security is but an extra gratefulness; I love my family. Even the new dog, though she may never live up to the standards set by the brilliantly useless mongrel preceding her.

   Anyway, I hadn't unpacked yet and everyone was busy, so the first hour or so after getting home and making a brew I spent perusing this collection of comic strips. This blog is for any book I read, after all, not just the intellectual or deliberately interesting ones that I ostentatiously purchase and progress through.

   For those of you who don't know The Far Side, it's hilarious. A single-panel newpaper comic that ran from 1980 to 1995, it never fails to be weird. Comics are hard to discuss without dumping loads of links to examples them; the pictures and words are inseparable in most of the jokes, so I'll try to explain what characterises them. Mad existential retorts and logical fallacies, anthropomorphism and civilisation run amok, childishness and maturity blended together in the pits of half-recognisable awkwardness, the familiar and common turned inside-out and upside-down and still comprehensible enough to provoke a chuckle - these are the styles Gary Larson uses in his distinctive style of surreal comedy. The content of each strip is thoroughly unpredictable, even within this short collection of (still very random) ones, and there are no recurring characters, though regularly featured are overweight suburban humans, insects, nerds, monkeys, men trapped on desert islands, farmers, aliens, fish, dogs, scientists (including mad ones), exotic wildlife, amoebas, hunters, farm animals (yep, including chickens), and a plethora of others that I cannot possibly hope to list. Each strip is as unexpected and yet as similar as every other; the main thing you can rely upon The Far Side to do upon reading is a brief moment of uncomprehension followed by a strange lateral click when you notice a particular choice of word or frame of situation or detail of image that propels the whole comic into something so utterly odd (and occasionally genuinely witty) that you cannot help but laugh. This of course goes for the comic as a whole, and so if surreal humour does tickle your fancy and you weren't already aware of this comic, simply googling it will yield thousands of strips online, and collections of them such as this one are almost always to be found in the discount cheap section of comedy shelves in second-hand shops.

   Anyway, it's mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve and here I am talking to a handful of future strangers on the internet about a weird comic I've just read. I'm going to go get a refill of tea and see if my brothers want a Mariokart tournament. Merry tomorrow, dear whoever.