In another, called “Fly whimsy,” a fly, hovering over a picnic, says to a friend, “Wait a second, Leonard . . . “Well, this may not be wise on a first date, but I just gotta try your garlic wharf rats,” a snake says in one cartoon, looking psyched. So did its attention to the natural world. Its specificity alone, on the comics page, felt radical. It could depict anyone or anything, and Larson seemed to take it all in, from office worker to water buffalo, chimpanzee to psychiatrist, Martian to snail. Within its single panel, its contents were entirely unpredictable: it had no recurring characters, no ongoing narrative other than life on earth. Then came “The Far Side.” It was confidently modern and confidently weird. Several strips, like homesteaders, had claimed real estate on the comics page and passed it down from generation to generation, their humor forgotten or incidental, providing pleasure via familiar images in a familiar world. I read them in fascination, every day, in their glorious two-page spread in the Hartford Courant, amid other stodgy forms of fun: Ann Landers’s advice (“Wake up and smell the coffee!”), a bridge column, Sydney Omarr’s self-serious horoscopes, and “Jumble,” which looked like something that you’d be served alongside peanuts in a veterans’ bar. Andy Capp’s snooker shenanigans, Dagwood Bumstead’s hair style, elaborately illustrated melodramas such as “Rex Morgan, M.D.” and “Mary Worth”-all of them seemed to speak a visual language of a bygone postwar world. The strangest thing about the funny pages was how fascinatingly antiquated they were. Some strips mocked political structures (“ The king is a fink!”), but most served to accept, if not reinforce, the status quo. In that context, the comparative grumpiness of “Garfield” felt edgy the loose-lined, loose-ponytailed earnestness of “For Better or For Worse” stood out, as did the sharp, satirical “Doonesbury” and the ever-brilliant “ Peanuts.” But creative daring was generally in short supply. At the time, most of them were clean-lined and cute, whether set amid suburban families (“Hi and Lois,” “Blondie,” “The Family Circus”) or on Viking raids (“Hägar the Horrible”), and strenuously safe. When it came out, the strip was so different from other nationally syndicated daily comics that it was a near-provocation. Those three jokes land softly now, but, in the early eighties, Larson’s impact was seismic “The Far Side” became, arguably, the smartest and most inventive daily comic of the late twentieth century. How shall we receive the return of this mammoth? Perhaps by considering it in the context of geologic time.
FAR SIDE SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED FULL
In one cartoon, bears gathered around a picnic table are eating honey-covered Cub Scouts in another, aliens out looking for humans discuss plans for “probe and release” in the third, a man on a city sidewalk hails a yellow vehicle full of stiff-looking animals, and yells, “Taxidermist!” The images are richly colorful, almost painterly, but his style is otherwise the same his humor is the same. He’s working in a digital medium now, on a tablet, which has renewed his “sense of adventure,” he wrote. Larson didn’t publish another original “Far Side” cartoon for twenty-five years, until this month, when he published three, online. Then he disappeared almost entirely, like a funny-pages Salinger or Pynchon, busying himself with jazz guitar and presumably enjoying life. Its creator, Gary Larson (no relation!), retired in 1995, after having been syndicated in more than nineteen hundred newspapers and selling more than forty million books. Recently, like a woolly mammoth emerging from a melting glacier, “The Far Side,” the single-panel comic that débuted in 1980 and helped make the Reagan era more bearable, reappeared from the mists of time. in certain countries.“The Far Side,” the single-panel comic that débuted in 1980 and ran for fifteen years, was confidently modern. The Far Side ®, the Larson ® signature, and the Cow ® logo are registered trademarks of FarWorks, Inc. To place an international order for unframed prints, please visit this page. We do not currently offer framed prints for international shipping. 11 x 14-inch – the comic panel is enlarged to approximately 6.9 x 7.7 inchesĪll framed comic art prints are custom please allow two to three weeks for delivery in the United States.8.5 x 11-inch – the comic panel is enlarged to approximately 5.6 x 6.3 inches.“Midvale School for the Gifted” is available in the following sizes: The watermark will not show on the actual art print.
Image sizes vary in accordance with the size of the comic itself, but all are printed, centered, on acid-free, archival paper. You may choose to have your print framed or unframed and if framed, with or without a white or black mat. This is the black-and-white version that was originally syndicated. “Midvale School for the Gifted” originally ran on November 24, 1986.
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