Recently, we added another Far Side tee to our collection. Set on a safari, the graphic shows a large wild animal using a hanger to break into a car of two tourists, with the caption reading, "Drive, George, drive! This one's got a coat hanger!" 24 years ago, Larson retired the strip from syndication, leaving Far Side followers devastated.
The Far Side brought dark and irreverent humor to nearly 2,000 newspapers, syndicated internationally for 15 years, from 1980 to 1995. Now, 24 years since the final daily panel was released, Larson's return to The Far Side looms.
Back in September, his website was updated for this first time in over a decade, reading, "A new online era of The Far Side is coming," featuring the first new Far Side comic made public by Larson since 1995. The comic shows iconic characters in a block of ice being defrosted by a flame torch, reading, "Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen."
Larson's career as a cartoonist began when The Seattle Times agreed to publish his comic, "Nature's Way," as a weekly strip in 1979. Soon after the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Stan Arnold, got the comic strip syndicated across the country, and the name of the project was changed to "The Far Side."
First debuting in January of 1980, The Far Side did not follow the comic strip mold of recurring characters; instead, Larson's characters existed in a single-panel, which Larson claims attributed to their humor. Among them, cows are the most frequent.
With a background in biology, much of Larson's humor is influenced by science. As a traveling show, "The Far Side of Science: Cartoons by Gary Larson," was on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in 1987. The special exhibition featured 527 Far Side panels.
2019 has been a year full of remakes, and comics are no exception. What will be featured in the return of The Far Side? We will just have to wait to find out.
In the meantime... Check out our wide collection of vintage comic strip t-shirts here!