Is he or isn’t he?
We don’t actually know, but a change to cartoonist Gary Larson’s bare-bones website has led to rampant speculation that the 69-year-old cartoonist is reviving The Far Side, the uber-popular single-panel strip that featured absurdist humor and ran from 1980 to 1995.
Over the weekend, fans noticed that the website, static for years and maintained by syndicator Andrews McMeel Universal, had been given a facelift. The homepage now showcases an original drawing by Larson of a man using a blowtorch to free well-known Far Side characters from a block of ice. Under the drawing is the notice: “Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!”
Now, maybe this “new online era” means the website will start offering Far Side T-shirts and other tchotchkes. But fans believe otherwise, and publications from The New York Times to the conservative journal National Review have heralded the comic’s likely return.
“[A]t a time when tragedy and cruelty seem to dominate headlines, one thing is certain: We could use Larson’s oddball humor now more than ever,” wrote CNet.
Offered Nerdist: “Unfortunately, the foolishness of 2019 isn’t nearly as enjoyable as sentient chickens and oversized suburban bugs.”
The end of the 20th century proved to be the end of newspaper comics’ golden age. Berke Breathed shut down Bloom County in 1989, and Bill Watterson stopped drawing Calvin & Hobbes the same year Larson put aside The Far Side. Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz died in 2000, closing his strip’s 50-year run.
-- Douglas Perry
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