I refuse to believe anything new will come of this. I suspect it’s going to be nothing but a remarketing of old strips.
Besides, if Gary Larson were to come out of retirement, or even reveal a cached archive of 25 years of secret strips, I’m pretty sure that would be so momentous it would have to be a prelude to the end of the world.
Might be worth it, though.
You can tell it’s dated content because the guy actually needs a flamethrower to thaw that ice rather than just letting global warming do the job for him.
Or it could be enough ice has melted to see there is something there.
I’m getting quite old so I don’t remember every cartoon from 20 years ago.
I’ll probably laugh anyway.
Maybe it’s time for us to share our favorite Far Side cartoons? Mine is this one (I’ll describe it the best I can, from memory). You see the front part of a jet airliner, flying, with the cockpit visible (with two characters) and the first few passenger windows (showing passengers with a surprised/horrified look). The caption: “Look Frank! The fuel light is on! We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!!! Oh wait, my mistake, that’s the intercom light.”
I like this one because there are several layers. 1) pilots aren’t supposed to panic right away 2) the passengers hear it all and also think they’re going to die 3) at the end, the passengers are still left the knowledge they they have an incompetent at the front (two different surprises back to back).
It looks like a scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Udder Terror
@4 I like to think that he flipped the switch the moment he noticed what the light really is.
My favourite is also an airplane one. To this day I don’t know if it works better with or without the caption.
“Sandwiches!”
My favorite is kinda fitting for this news.
Cicada in robes at podium giving commencement address:
“And so, as you enter the adult phase of your life, you will thank God that these past 17 years of being stuck in the ground and unable to move are over. Congratulations, cicadas of ’94!”
Callinectes@7
I had never thought about it – it does work without a caption…
My favorite:
God as a kid tries to make a chicken in his room.
Close second:
MIVALE SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED
“. . . please, please refrain from putting The Far Side out on the Internet. These cartoons are my ‘children,’ of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone’s web site is like getting the call at 2:00 a.m. that goes, ‘Uh, Dad, you’re not going to like this much, but guess where I am.'” -Gary Larson
Didn’t happen that way. Sorry, Gary.
“Car!”
Berke Breathed has resurrected “Bloom County” because the internet allows him to create new material without the worries of deadlines and editors. Maybe Larson has decided to go the same route.
It means one of two things:
1. An online archive (hooray!)
2. New strips (also hooray!)
It can’t just be the announcement of a complete collection in print, because they’ve already done that, years ago. (Although it actually turned out to be missing some content, because it didn’t reprint the stuff in Prehistory of the Far Side, and I think it also missed some of the extra content which had been in the earlier print collections.)
I LOVE Far Side…and most of the labs in the Biol. Research Bldg back in my day must have too, because every lab door was covered with their favorites…
“The real reason dinosaurs became extinct.”
One word: “Skwoodwivuh”
I love finding out where Elvis Presley is hiding*.
*In every time-travel cartoon, you see him perring out from the bushes.
My fav is the one with the cows with milking equipment heading up to the farm house .
Adding to #14 above about Bloom County’s resurrection in online form, Breathed has seen a great amount of success from this. Possible that Larson has been observing from the wings and seeing the freedom that Breathed has without all the restrictions and crap that goes with syndication and might think it’ll be a lark. Breathed publishes when he wants. Sometimes 7 days a week, sometimes not for weeks on end. But, he’s published several print books of the new strips as well as re-released the old strips as well as books of his artwork, which I’ve always loved.
I think Larson couple experience a great renaissance following a similar path.
Now if they both could convince Watterson to come out of retirement, that would be something.
All:
Non sequitur here, but the best remains the FFFBs. Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Fat Freddie, Freewheelin’ Franklin, Phineas Phreak, et al.
And Fat Freddie’s cat, of course.
“Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope”–Freewheelin’ Franklin.