Gary Larson was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. His parents were Vern, a car salesman, and Doris, a secretary. He attended Curtis High School before attending Washington State University and graduated in 1972 with a degree in communications. In 1987, Larson married Toni Carmichael, an archaeologist. Larson credits his older brother Dan for his "paranoid" sense of humor. Dan would pull countless pranks on Gary, taking advantage of his phobia of monsters under the bed by, for example, waiting in the closet for the right moment to pounce out at Gary. Dan is also credited with giving Gary his love of science. They caught animals in Puget Sound and placed them in terrariums in the basement; even making a small desert ecosystem, which their parents apparently did not mind. His adept use of snakes in his cartoons stems from his long-standing interest in herpetology. Since retiring from the Far Side, Larson has occasionally done some cartooning work, such as magazine illustrations and promotional artwork for Far Side merchandise. In 1998, Larson published his first post-Far Side book, There's a Hair in My Dirt!: A Worm's Story, an illustrated story with the unmistakable Far Side mindset.
The Far Side by Gary Larson was one of the two comic strips I've loved most (the other being Calvin & Hobbes). In my opinion, Larson was a twisted genius. I had cut his one-panel comics out of the newspaper on a regular basis. They were taped and tacked to my bulletin board, walls, refrigerator, etc. Then I could look my favorites for a chuckle – 100 times I could look at the same comic and still laugh.
I was really bummed when Larson announced retiring The Far Side in 1995. But to his credit, he thought the series was getting repetitive and did not want to enter what he called the "Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons."
The Far Side Gallery 4 is one of many book collections showcasing his cartoons. It includes 150+ pages of monsters, mad scientists, four-eyed kids, goofy wildlife and a foreword by Robin Williams. I found it at a local thrift shop, and snapped it up. Overall, I give The Far Side 5-stars, but this book does not typify Larson’s incredible humor. It did transport me back in time. And, there were a few favs in there.
There are a number of clever yet simple (as in pen and ink) cartoonists out there today who I think can capture on one small box the simplicity of life, its absurdity and pass a humours twist on it, without being vulgar, demeaning or repetitive. The far side (along with in my view Dilburt and Calvin and Hobbs) is one of the masters of this and as such is a joy to read. The book has a lot to get through over 160 pages with on average 4 images a page, this is a book you cannot wade through but to dip in to when time allows. I know this is not my usual fair however sometimes a change is good and since I have been trying to rearrange my library I stumbled across it and though why not give it a go.
Who knew cows could be so funny...and sneaky, not to mention, dogs, cats and so on. The Far Side is probably a never to be repeated comic that stands as one of the few unique examples of what cartoons can be. These may not be for everybody, but try them. If you haven't been introduced to these you'll thank me (or whoever introduced you).
I probably should open this review with a Far Side cartoon, as is probably appropriate in the circumstances, though as it turns out Gary Larson really doesn’t like his cartoons appearing on the internet, so instead of posting it on Goodreads, I’ll just provide a link.
It is pretty clear that in the world of the Far Side, God is God, or at least the lovely old man that we all picture him to be, and hell is hell, with cold coffee and demons and devils making fun of us and getting us to do silly things. In fact, Gary Larson’s hell is a particularly unpleasant place, well at least for the humans that end up there, and it certainly isn’t portrayed as the type of place that sounds to be much more fun that heaven, even though Gary Larson’s heaven, once again, is the heaven that we probably all picture heaven to be, you know clouds and all that.
It was a bit of a shame that there were no scientist jokes in this particular volume, but that probably has something to do with the collections that were included. Still, the scientist jokes were actually particularly amusing, namely because we picture scientists as being very serious people, working on very serious projects, yet Larson pictures them as, well, just normal people like everybody else, who laugh, joke, and play tricks on each other (though of course some of these tricks are probably the type of tricks that might actually find yourself on the wrong side of the unemployment queue, or in the middle of a smoking crater).
Yet his animals are particularly impressive, especially since, like the scientists, he pulls aside the curtains to show us a world that we rarely see – in a way animals are simply living their lives just like us, getting jealous over who they are seeing, wandering into the wrong bar, throwing cocktail parties, and even sitting in the lounge reading the newspapers. Yet there are two things that stand out – each of them have their own little eccentricities, or the true reality of their world is being purposely hidden from us, namely because we, humans, really don’t deserve to see this wonderful world. This is why, with the cows, there is always a lookout for a car, so that they can quickly end their cocktail party, and go back to appearing to chomp grass in the way that us humans have witnessed them doing throughout the ages.
Well, as I started with a cartoon, I probably should finish off with one as well (or at least a link to one).
Looking back on these years after Ive last taken a look at them, I find them that much more poignant and hilarious. Many of them were lost on me in my youth and now, knowing more, are even funnier than the first time around. Its always good to go back and take a look at things like this, even if only to remind yourself that life shouldnt be taken too seriously.
My trek to The Far Side and back is finished for now. I've read through all the galleries... I want to read the 10th anniversary edition. That looked pretty sweet.
I love... LOVE Gary Larson. Seriously, what's that guy doing these days? I bet he's accumulating mountains of Far Side water colors in his basement... one of a white whale yukking it up with Ahab and a giant squid. One of Pluto making some obscene gesture at the other "planets." And there definitely have to be cows and cavemen. Possibly cave-cows.
One of the benefits in reading every word in a book is that I come across stuff like this: "No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews." That was written in Galleries 1, 2, and 4... I'm not sure why it wasn't in 3, but it wasn't there... In my reviews of the previous 3 galleries, I described my favorite Far Sides. Alas, I just don't do them justice. A picture is worth a thousand words, or in Gary Larson's case - far more.
Time travel fascinates me, but I'd also be interested in observing how the views of time travel have changed with time. This is why Cowboys and Aliens could have been so successful. (From what I hear, it wasn't worth it... I still want to see for myself.)
Anyway, thank you Far Side. I'll be back sooner this time, I promise.
When dad jokes meet sardonic absurdities, you get "The Far Side." I loved this comic growing up and looked for it every day. This and "Calvin & Hobbes" are the only two collections I own, and while I haven't looked at this in years until today, the humor still works. We need more people like this today who can look at the world and point out its ironies and eccentricities with humor and self-awareness.
Amusement and Uproarious fun for A Long Rainy Summer
The Far Side Gallery is hilarious, most of the time. There are jokes, lines that I did not get and others that are not my cup of tea…and we are talking about drawings here.
The uproarious parts make up for the tasteless, cryptic or hard to understand slices of a strange world, or is it Gallery at the Far Side. Come to think of it, we can’t say we haven’t been warned- we are invited at the “far side” of amusement and positivity, with dark undertones.
- Gary Larson is included in a top of best humor.
- Somewhere…
- I just do not remember where.
This is the way I read lately- if a book is included among the best, I go for it, with disappointing results sometimes. But it is all a matter of probability and professionalism.
The job of a critic is to tell you if a book is worthwhile or not. So you’re better off looking for the acclaimed literature, than for Dan Brown.
- If you ask me
- But I am no professional.
- So we’re back to square one.
The humor is weird, for the most part? Go ahead and write to me
- What is your opinion?
Take the first cartoon: two bears are under a bed. As I look again, they might be monsters, and a guy is in his bed, above them. The caption reads:
- “I’ve got it again, Larry…an eerie feeling like there’s something on the top of the bed”
So either you feel amusement or you’re just puzzled. I am a little perplexed which may just mean I am slow, do not dig or have no (or a miniscule) sense of humor.
The second is in the same vein- and do not worry, I am not taking you through all of the pages. It is probably a hope that writing it, I may make sense of the joke. Psychology proved that when we write down, we make more sense of things that seemed…well, crazy or pure aberrations.
And it worked!
Not because writing it, the lost significance just blew in my face, but because I now observe a lost detail. A guy has a scorpion on his face and there’s another one on top of him, saying:
- Hold still, Carl…Don’t…move…an…inch
- In the first place I saw no joke, but at a second look I see that Carl’s friend has a rock in his hands, that will take care of the scorpion and of Carl’s head. In the first instance I did not notice the rock.
Here is another that is as clear as daylight this time. On the two sides of the ravine we have some cowboys and on the other a group of Indians – we used to call them- and they are Native Americans in the politically correct formulation of the present. The future will definitely argue with this label: why Native Americans? There were no Americans to speak of when the Natives ruled supreme…
Between the two groups, there is a cowboy, with his head hanging on his chest, with about ten arrows sticking out of his apparently inert body- and we can assume he has another thirty in his back. One of the cowboys says:
- “Now stay calm…Let’s hear what they said to Bill”
This is one of the obvious, sadistic amusements –perhaps even a mental case study? It is plain what they said to Bill, who looks like he’s long gone to meet his Maker…in the words of Monty Python.
Amusement and humor are vital for our life satisfaction. In the Positive Psychology lectures at Harvard, humor is given a prominent role.
And we all know how good it feels to laugh. Not only that, but research has showed that we increase our satisfaction just by thinking about the comedy show that we will watch tonight.
The simple anticipation of an amusing moment makes us feel happier.
So there’s a happy thought for you: get this funny book and laugh out loud…at what you get, the unexplained or odd drawings can be ignored…and hey man, perhaps you get it all in and let me know about it or just say like the famous
Groucho Marx, who, upon leaving a party sometimes said:
- Thank you, I had a wonderful time...only not THIS TIME
A lot of these comics were a repeat from Wiener Dog Art, which I really didn't like. If I didn't like them the first time around, I liked them even less the second.
This collection contains Larson's usual mix of brilliant gags, good gags, pedestrian gags, and gags that make me roll my eyes. Fortunately, there are more of the first two than the latter.
Squares and rectangles of the Far Side comic are spread out to give you a laugh. Far Side is known for its absurdist look at animals, social situations, ironic juxtapositions. This is an old school comic, so some of the references won't be understood to newbies.
I really enjoy the Far Side comics. It's always nice to see what creativity you can see in a one-panel comic. This collection wasn't as good as some of the other collections, but it still gave me a few laughs. This collection was definitely a little more inappropriate than I'd like it to be, and some of the material was quite boring. I enjoyed some of the other Far Side collections a lot more than this one. There is some decent material in the collection, but you have to comb through some boring material to get to it.
When I was 12 years old, I picked this book up at the W&M campus bookstore in Colonial Williamsburgs on a school trip. I remember reading it everyday for months after. I never realized until I was much older how much it actually steered me towards my love for comedy and the arts. I still have the book and enjoy reading it on a nice summer morning on my porch. Just something about the way Gary Larson creates his cartoons that is unlike anything else. Clever, funny and just all-around enjoyable.
This is the fourth collection of Far Side comics. This collection covers Wiener Dog Art, Unnatural Selections, and Wildlife Preserves which were released from 1990-1992. The Far Side comics are a masterclass is bizarre and surreal humor. If you're not a fan of its certain type of strange humor then you're obviously not going to like this type of work.
The Far Side Gallery 4 is just as enjoyable as many of the previous collections. What makes this collection stand out is the inclusion of some colored pages as well. As one who really does enjoy color I really enjoyed the addition of these. It also seemed like some of the art both color and black and white would be done in a different style which looked really good.
I have still really been enjoyed the collection. It maybe didn't include as many Far Side panels that I had seen before, but they were still enjoyable, funny, and strange as previous Far Side collections. Which is all you can really ask for.
More hilarity, more fun, and many things surprisingly still relevant / more relevant than ever! Plus there are still some that I definitely didn't understand or fully appreciate until being older and learning more. Larson's work just hits on so many levels, and probably even more that only scientists, farmers, or those who just know more random facts will understand. I realized that when there was a joke I didn't laugh at, it was because I either knew it to well, or have seen it done somewhere else. Which is an even better testament to the cartoons, because I could also appreciate that it WAS funny before. Every frame is a classic, and the forward here from Robin Williams is something to treasure.
The fourth gallery collection of Larson's comic strip. This volume collects his books Wildlife Preserves, Wiener Dog Art, and Unnatural Selections. Robin Williams provides a short foreword for this one, and as he writes, Larson is "the best of a weird breed." Larson certainly proves that in this series. Two of my favorites in this volume are the primitive think tanks and the vaccination man, which I think may be just what we need to get more people vaccinated for COVID-19. Larson may have been a visionary with that. As always, the comics have that nice blend of the bizarre and humorous, and for me, they make for nice comfort reading. Another volume I really liked.
I've been seeing Far Side comics from time to time on social media, so why not check them out in a book form. Especially since the book had just stumbled into my possession. Sure enough, it's plenty amusing. And not all that dated, considering that it's over three decades old. Larson definitely has a talent for the whimsy, be it foibles of people or peculiarities of animals. The full color comics were especially nice. These comics and their inimitable style can be recognized immediately as Larson's and enjoyed easily by a wide audience. Fun.
In terms of percentages, I would say it was 75% simple, fun jokes I enjoyed, 5% jokes I didn’t understand, and 20% jokes that were either racist or made about subjects I don’t think should be joked about. It’s not a bad ratio, but the small group of stinkers did take the wind out of my sails every once in a while. Of the funny ones, only a small number really made me laugh, but most of them earned at least a small smile. Overall, it was a fair collection.
As a fan of Gary Larson's success in connecting clever images with commentary, I knew I would give this collection of his work five stars. His ability to match diverse and clever images with clever language is extraordinary. His ability to create comedy from history, literature, biology, and other themes is remarkable. It takes only an hour to read the book and it is time well spent.
More Far Side goodness. This time with a very interesting (and in retrospect sad) forward by Robin Williams. (Sad because he discusses how he looks forward to a world envisioned by Gary Larson. This collection came out in 1993.)
There was several classics in this one, and this is the first paperback collection to use some of his colored cartoons.
There are quite a few laughs in this book. As usual with this kind of document the flood of comics dilutes them. They’re funnier if they’re spaced a week apart.
But it is a fun read.
What can I say? There are still some laughs that make it worth reading.
Well, that was fun, more hits than misses. I’ll give this 4 stars, but it’s not something I’ll keep.
This is the 4th one of these I've read in a row in this form. So I kind of know what to expect. So either this volume was simply better. Or just having some of the cartoons in color and some of them bigger just made a big difference to me. Or perhaps I was just in the right mood for this today. And very few of these were ones I recognized. Weird. But I'll take it. With an intro by Robin Williams.
I’m sure I read these multiple times as a kid, but Gary Larson never fails to delight with his signature bizarre, morbid, cheesy, nerd humor. While some gags don’t age well, most of the absurdity is timeless.