WHY I LIKE GARY LARSON

I'm a huge fan of Gary Larson's "Far Side." I even bought the 2 volume set that contains almost everything he ever did. I and the rest of my family pick it up all the time, and it comes in handy for killing water beetles and black widow spiders. Come to think of it, it would kill just about anything it was dropped on. The paper's the heavy kind that's made by melting powdered rock into the page. The result is a book that's as heavy and indestructible as a cinder block. I know it'll be a comfort to Gary that, long after his bones have turned to dust, people will still be killing bugs with his books.

Gary doesn't like to see his work on the net, but I want to talk what he does and I don't know how to do that without illustrations. I thought I might strike a balance by using only illustrations that are already on the net, that I got off Google Images. That way I'm not adding to what's already out there. I hope that's OK.



Well, Larson was the best newspaper cartoonist of his time, was he not? What I wonder is how he managed to get along with the syndicate. Didn't they try to censor him? Didn't he get notes like: "Nix this! Nobody'll understand it!" Maybe doing one panel cartoons helped. Maybe they come under less scrutiny.



And I can't figure out how the syndicate let him do cartoons without regular characters. Syndicate people can't be too different than the kind of people who run TV animation, and those guys (women, actually) want nothing but repeating characters in repeating locales like "The Simpsons." How did Gary manage to talk them into doing different characters and different situations?




Larson is the king of funny and deliberately ignorant staging. I love the way those two tall slabs (above) are awkwardly jammed up against each other in the middle of a ridiculously huge, empty plain. And look at the people! Larson must have watched a lot of old black and white animation. This cartoon (above) reminds me of old animation where people pour out of giant, deflating buildings like hordes of ants.

It's funny to think that, while TV executives were telling us that modern audiences required talking heads, Larson was out there making a fortune by doing broad, cartoony humor. His characters don't run around like the ones in the old cartoons, but the concepts are broad as they come.







Larson is frequently cited as an artist who can't draw well, but whose subject matter is so weird that it doesn't matter. I disagree. Larson's a terrific artist. If you don't think so, compare his work to imitators like Shuster and McPherson above. Unlike his imitators Larson's layouts are always clear and funny, and built around pleasing shapes and interesting negative spaces.

A lot of Larson's humor is in the backgrounds. I like to think that's because he thinks the world that characters inhabit is weird and funny, not just the characters. In the kitchen cartoon above Shuster draws a completely generic room. he doesn't seem to have an opinion about it. If Larson, who does have an opinion about kitchens, had drawn the same room he would have let us know how weird it was that people cook their food in a funky, boxy place like that.



One-panel newspaper cartoons used to be fairly flat. If all you're going to do is have a guy sit on a chair and make droll comments to his wife, I guess flat is all you need. Not so with Larson. He often deals with big, flamboyant subjects that need room and 3 dimensions to play. His characters are almost flat but his backgrounds go way back!

BTW, I notice that Larson uses a clean Rapidograph-type line. No thick and thin, no scratchiness. Apparently Crumb isn't the only artist who draws that way. Me, I usually prefer thick and thin, but I admit that there's something obsessive and weird about lines with uniform thickness, and that perfectly compliments Larson's type of humor. It's a case where the medium exactly matches the message.



Terrific staging (above)! Clampett did something similar toward the end of "Book Review." Chaplin did it in "The Rink." It's a deliberately unnatural and ignorant background that obviously exists just to put across a gag!






Here's (above) some weird Larson people bunched unnaturally close together and talking underneath an absurdly empty and bleak ceiling. You're laughing before you read the punchline. That's the way cartoons are supposed to be. The art is supposed to be funny, not just the words. The mood of the room is supposed to be funny, all by itself.

How do you like the patterns on the women's dresses? How do you like their hair styles and glasses? Isn't it a relief to see women who are drawn funny, and not cute or beautiful? Let serious people draw beautiful women. We're cartoonists. We're above that. Women should only be attractive when that's necessary to motivate the gags, as it frequently was in Tex Avery and John K cartoons. The same goes for men. No attractive men unless the gag needs them!!!

I love the way Gary uses windows. In his cartoons we're frequently looking into a room or out of it. We humans love to be inside our boxes, which we decorate with little knick-knacks, but we have a great curiosity about what's going on outside the box. We can't seem to make up our minds about where we want to be, inside or outside. Inspired by Larson, I'd love to do a cartoon with lots of window action.

A closing note: I didn't mean to slam Mc Pherson as hard as I did. He's a Larson spinoff, but he puts a lot of work into everything he does and manages to be funny much more often than most of his peers.