The Far Side is Coming Back

[Dent6084]

https://www.thefarside.com

Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen.

A new online era of The Far Side is coming!


Uh, holy crap. This was out of absolutely nowhere.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, wow, didn't see that coming.

Interesting notion - I have no idea what to expect from this, but since the last twenty-four years have seen a million would-be heirs to the throne come and go while the original remains often imitated, never duplicated, I say let Larson have another go.

[vtran]

Picking up and leafing through one of my many Far Side books always makes me chuckle out loud and makes me forget about whatever crappy thing that's currently bugging me.

Far Side cartoons are a pen and ink, single-panel anti-depressant.

The world NEEDS more Gary Larson cartoons...now more than ever.

[ravi]

Oh man, this and Calvin & Hobbes were two of my favorite comics back in the early-mid 90's. 

Can't wait to read new ones!

[Reasor]

Am I jinxing us if I hope out loud that Larson hasn't turned into Scott Adams?

[commodorejohn]

Am I jinxing us if I hope out loud that Larson hasn't turned into Scott Adams?

I'm not too concerned about what's become of him. For starters, Adams was (I think) always essentially the person he is now, the trouble just started when blogs took off and he had a platform to air his views on anything other than corporate drone culture, and the inevitable echo-chamber feedback loop (plus his own natural inclination to double down rather than ever admit being wrong about something) turned him from "basically kind of a jackass" into "quasi-rationalist apologist for the Fourth Reich." If you go back and read his writings from the early 2000s to the present (you know, if you're really bored and/or hate yourself,) you can pretty much watch that happen in real time.

And I never got the impression that Larson was anything like that to begin with - if you read Jane Goodall's account of meeting him, he comes across much more positively than anything anyone ever said about Scott Adams.

[Dent6084]

The only thing Larson has been known to do in his retirement is occasionally do drawings and fundraisers to support environmentalist causes, in terms of what that suggests about his politics. I suppose he could just come back cranky about various newfangled things like other old Boomer comedy icons, but in his writings he showed a pretty good balance of standing up for himself when people would complain about his cartoons versus conceding "Yeah, in this case I was just being a jackass". So fingers crossed.

[hammerhead]

First Bloom County returns, now The Far Side! Who do y'all have for the 80s Comic Reboot trifecta?

[commodorejohn]

First Bloom County returns, now The Far Side! Who do y'all have for the 80s Comic Reboot trifecta?

Well, Bill Watterson's already poked his head out of his wilderness hidey-hole a couple times in the last decade or so, so he's probably due for another twenty years of hibernation.

[catartik]

Oh man, this and Calvin & Hobbes were two of my favorite comics back in the early-mid 90's. 

Can't wait to read new ones!

Calvin and Hobbes was the peak of literature and it will never be eclipsed.

[Amos]

Am I missing the announcement somewhere that Larson will be producing new content?

Because this just looks like the collection will be more readily available online than it was in the past.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, it's not immediately clear what this portends. Guess we'll see.

[Neil Spurn]

Article in the NY Times indicates that Larsen himself is coming back:

https://nyti.ms/30pnSQO

[Evi]

I am so looking forward to this. Even the silly new cartoon on the front page makes me laugh.

[commodorejohn]

Hot damn!

[doc happenin]

Oh god yes. Fantastic news.

[vtran]

up and running...

A Letter From Gary Larson