A Tribute To The Far Side

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0:15Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's here too. She just had to step away for a second, but she'll be back, we imagine. And when she gets here, it'll really be Stuff You Should Know. That's right. I'm excited about this one because it's sort of filed under our tribute series to things we love. Tribute to your taste. I don't know how you feel because we didn't even talk about this, but the cartoon from the funny pages in the books and more, The Far Side by Gary Larson. Yeah. It spanned from like fifth or sixth grade to me through the end of college, which is just kind of crystallizes to me the perfect time to be awakened to something like Gary Larson's sense of humor.

1:00Yeah, for sure. He definitely, the far side, I should say, definitely helped shape my sense of humor just from being exposed to that and finding it funny. You have to kind of find it funny to begin with. But once you do, it definitely can, especially during formative year, help shape your humor. And if you go back and look at them now, they're still great. But there's something that's just, it just had something before that it's not like it lost it now, but it's just diluted now. And I was looking around to try to figure out what the deal is. And the best explanation I could come up with is that it had such an impact on culture that it actually normalized and spread that sort of humor so far and wide that it became less, I guess, humorous in and of itself because it made it, well, normal to be funny in that way.

1:56that people weren't really, nobody was doing anything like Gary Larson was when The Far Side came out. But it was so popular, he made it a thing. Yeah. The only thing you need to add about that statement is to me. Because I still think it's amazing, and I have had the best time over the past couple of days just reading these over and over. Oh, good. Yes. No, I like them too. But yeah, there's just something, I guess it's, I don't know what it is. I think I already said it. Yeah, but we're talking about one of the best cartoons ever. The difference between a cartoon and a comic, generally, I mean, they're kind of interchangeable in a way, but a comic is generally a strip of several panels that tell a story and have a bit of an arc.

2:38A cartoon is a single panel thing that tells all you need to know in one picture, sometimes with words, sometimes without words. It's kind of like comparing a book to a poem. like a good poem is really, really hard to write compared to prose because it has to be more efficient and economical. And so a one panel cartoon has to have the same impact or in the case of Farsight, a far, far greater impact than a strip because you have to figure out how to get things across like the movement of time or what's like cause and effect in just one single image. So when you take that into account too, it just makes it even more impressive what he did, I think.

3:19Yeah, for sure. It's a cartoon that ran for 15 years. It's been gone for about 30 years, but it's still one of the most like just his style is so instantly recognizable as Gary Larson. And he's not a guy that used, you know, characters. It wasn't like family circus where, you know, you knew these people. But he had a certain way of drawing and he had certain sort of stock characters he would bring in, like the beehive lady with the cat eye glasses and the little freckle face glasses kid with the crew cut. Lots of animals. So he would kind of bring in these, you know, kind of characters in and out, but they were never like named characters with any kind of story.

4:01No. And sometimes they would have names, but it was totally inconsequential. It'd be somebody addressing them and just using a name. Like you wouldn't point to that person and be like, oh, there's Barry or something like that. Like they were just interchangeable archetypes that he created. Yeah. And as we'll see, you know, toward the end, a great intersection of comedy and art and science. Because Gary Larson was a bit of a science nerd. He was born in 1950 and raised in Tacoma, Washington, and got his sense of humor apparently from his family. He said my older brother and his parents, his dad was a car salesman, his mother was his secretary, and they just had a really wacky sense of humor.

4:44But he hasn't done a ton of interviews over the years, but in the interviews he's given, he said that was just my family's sense of humor, and I didn't hear things like wacky and left of center until much later. right yeah like people would describe his family like that it's not like the family was like look at how wacky we are right yeah yeah so um i one of those big influences in addition to like his just his mom and his dad was his older brother who i think he called out but i saw that one of the things his older brother did was introduce him to like a love of nature um they would go around the beaches of puget sound and collect live animals when they could and then bring them home and put them in cages or terrariums or aquariums.

5:28And later on, he was like, I don't think you're supposed to do that. I don't think you should keep animals captive. But growing up as a kid, he had a real interest in animals and developed a real love of biology. But his brother had a dual influence on him. I saw a quote where he said his brother introduced him to like the beauty of a jellyfish and then also used that same jellyfish to smack me in the face with. Which I think that's a good big brother right there. Yeah, he sounded like kind of the classic tormenting big brother, but in a loving way is what I gathered at least. But yeah, he's always been into animals.

6:05He's very much into nature and animal, the treatment of animals and conservation now since his retirement. He's gotten really into that. But he went to school at Washington State in 1972, go cougars, and was initially a biology student. But he realized he didn't want to go to school for more than four years and he wasn't sure what he could do with a biology degree. So he switched to communications, but apparently always regretted that switch and feels like he should have stayed a biology major. Yeah, so it's one of the most idiotic things I ever did. Yeah. We should all be pretty grateful, though, that he did switch because it's not clear that he would have still made the far side.

6:43One of the reasons he did make far sides because he had a lot of time on his hands. So after he graduated with a communications degree, he got jobs like playing banjo or working in a music store. I think very coolly, he became a Humane Society investigator. And that's what he was doing when he created a strip called Nature's Way, which if you look at the original Nature's Way cartoons, it's just early Farside with a different name, essentially. Yeah, it was the far side. The San Francisco Chronicle changed the name, which, you know, they've asked him about that because I remember Charles Schultz was very particular about naming it Peanuts and keeping it that.

7:25And Gary Larson did not mind the name change. But he sold, he got a few days off from work apparently and realized like, boy, I don't like my job. So I'm going to try something else. And he didn't have any formal art training at all. And I love his style, but none of that was like from art class or anything like that. Right. And in 1976, sold six cartoons to Pacific Search, a regional science magazine for 90 bucks. sold another handful to another local magazine for, you know, three to five bucks each. And then eventually got in 1979, got a weekly gig at the Seattle Times for Nature's Way at$15 a week.

8:10Right. Which is, I think, 85 bucks, something like that now. Yeah. So not money to live on. But he did have a place in the local paper. I mean, Seattle Times is big time, right? Yeah. I think that same year in 1979, he said, I think I can do bigger. I can do better. And he took a trip to San Francisco and he took his portfolio with him, just one copy of his portfolio. He managed to get it to the right people at the San Francisco Chronicle. And they said, hey, we really love your stuff. Apparently the same day they got in touch with him and said, hey, come in here. We want to talk to you. And they said, not only do we want to run Nature's Way, which we're going to change to the far side, we have a syndication company.

8:56So we can get you in 30 different papers across the country automatically. This is like beyond life changing. And Laura Claussen helped us with this. And she went on to really kind of, I think, point out just how nuts it was that this happened to him. Not just because he had no experience, no art training, that he'd only made, you know, a handful of cartoons to this point, but just the way that comics pages are and how stodgy and rooted in non-change they tend to be. That really, it's just crazy that he got this chance that it just all fell together for him like this. Yeah, absolutely. It was, and it's still an industry where it's hard to get in.

9:44You know, the comics section is only so big. It's like it's real estate, you know, and there's just not room. And the classics just don't go away, seemingly. There's an artist, a cartoonist named Georgia Dunn, who does Breaking Cat News. And she and this is, you know, sort of a point about women in the industry. But she said there are more dead men than living women in the funny pages, but also just sort of illustrates how how hard it is to break in to the funny pages. So the fact that he got his chance with such a weird cartoon, like the person that that would take it out to the different newspapers to syndicate it and try and, you know, sell it to him, has some pretty great stories on like the reactions he got.

10:28Because Farside is one of those things that you kind of get or you don't. Earlier you said, you know, you have to to really grow to love, you know, love it. But some people never do. Some people hate the Farside still. Yeah, one of the comments that the salesman got when he was out beating the pavement was, this is not a Buffalo product. Yeah. I could just see that scene, like whatever the Buffalo newspaper is, the guy's just like, this is not a Buffalo product, like very sternly. Please leave, sir. And apparently he said the initial response has been quite funny and uneditor-like. Like, and he was basically like, they were so diverse and unpredictable.

11:06Like, even from people he knew really well, from editors, he really knew. He's like, I never knew if they were going to offer me, like, to stay and have a cup of coffee or to, like, say, get out of my office. Yeah, because people would have a visceral response to it. Either they thought it was great, they didn't like it. The idea that the far side was ever divisive is just hilarious to me. but it just really kind of goes to show how much Gary Larson changed the culture with the far side that it was just totally far out off the wall offensive to some people and now because he kind of laid the groundwork and launched that kind of humor and made it far and wide in the United States especially um it's just it's that much funnier now when you look back and think like people were offended by the far side.

11:56Yeah, there's another good quote here from one of the editors. I don't know what this is, but it's not for us. Right. But other people would say, like, what a mind this man has. Yeah. He's brilliant. Yeah, yeah. Again, it's just one of those things. It was a very divisive cartoon. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll be right back with more on the brilliant Gary Larson. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know

12:50So one other thing happened to Gary Larson that week that he went down to the Chronicle. He got news from the Seattle Times that they were dropping him. And he went on to blame the placement in the paper. Apparently they put it next to a kid's crossword puzzle. That's not the place for the far side. Of course you're going to get complaints, right? But he also said that had the Seattle Times fired him a week before, he never would have gone to San Francisco or to the Chronicle. It would have just completely deflated any self-confidence he had. So the timing of it was just amazing. when you put it all together.

13:25One other thing, too. Apparently, one of the Chronicles syndication heads tried to talk him into turning it into a comic strip with recurring characters. And he was like, I think I'm just going to hold with this. So if you put all the components together, the fact that we even have the far side is significant. It also makes it seem like we are probably the only version of the universe that has the far side. all the other multiverses didn't get it because nothing fell into place quite right. Multiverse, huh? Mm-hmm. All right. So because it was so divisive, it wasn't like wildfire out of the gate.

14:05It was in 30 papers initially. I think three years later it was up to 80. And you might be thinking, like, hey, 80 newspapers is pretty great. Not bad. But for syndication, that's small beans. It really just sort of took a very natural path to growing. in three years. It went from 30 to 80. Then a couple of years later, it was up to 200 and really kind of launched after that. And at its peak was in 1900 newspapers, which made Gary Larson a very, very rich guy because he started putting out books and calendars in 83, 84 and 85. He had books on the New York Times bestseller list. And eventually, I believe all but one of his 23 books was on the New York Times bestseller list and sold a combined 41 million copies and almost 80 million calendars.

14:55Yeah. Wow. Those books were like, when you had that book in your hands at the time, it was the greatest thing in the world. Yeah, and those books were coming out when I was like 12 and 13. So it was just Christmas morning at the Bryant house, I would just grab that thing and basically run to my room. And it was also in 17 different languages, which I just— I know it's not even a terribly American thing, but I'm just trying to imagine the far sides, weird sensibilities going over in a foreign language country. I don't know. It just sort of surprised me. Yeah, you'd think way, way more languages, right?

15:36No, I'm just surprised it went over at all in other countries. So, yeah, I gotcha. Yeah, I know. I could see there being 17 different languages that could find it humorous. Oh, you could? All right. Yeah, because there's like two or three million languages, you know? Yeah. So he was also very unsurprisingly an award-winning artist and cartoonist from the beginning of his peak. I think around 1985, he won the first award for Best Newspaper Panel, all the way up to the end in 1994, winning for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. And like you said, he was like the calendars, the books, like he was making mad bank as he puts it every time he's interviewed about it.

16:23But he he he really kind of drew the line of a lot of merchandising like they wanted to do everything. And he was like, one of my rules is you can't take these things out of context. Like you're never going to see a T-shirt with just a picture of the beehive lady, beehive hairdo lady with cat eye glasses. Like, that's out of context. Doesn't make sense. I don't want to do that. No dolls, nothing like that. But just as much as, like, kind of protecting what he created, he also didn't want to seem like he was making any kind of cash grab to the fans of the far side. He was a very sensitive person who was really probably, from what I can tell, overly aware of what people thought of him or how they took his work.

17:08Yeah. I mean, you could have a T-shirt or a mug or something, but it was just like a cartoon. Right. Like a far side panel, which was pretty brilliant because, I mean, that's where the humor is. And also, since they weren't characters, I think that kind of helped that decision along. Right. Although I got to say, like, if I had the doll of the little crew cut kid, I wouldn't mind that. I'm sure Etsy might be ripping them off and doing something like that. So I'm not sure. I'll bet you're right, actually. and I know somebody's got a Christmas coming up. He was also very sensitive to offending people, even though he did that all the time.

17:44It's not something he ever set out to do. He very famously always would feature God as a character, and it wasn't even like, oh, let me make God some sort of wimpy weirdo. It was this sort of big, all-powerful God with long, flowing hair, but religious people didn't like that. And that's, I guess, still sort of some sort of craven image. Cat people definitely didn't like him because there was a lot of dogs preying on cats in various ways. But he just didn't want to ruffle feathers. He said, I just ended up doing it. Yeah, he was just being humorous. And one of the great, great, great things about the far side is it's not making a comment on anything.

18:28Yeah. It's just dropping in on an absurd moment in life somewhere in the universe or somewhere on Earth, which is why those characters are all interchangeable. They're not specific someone. It could be anyone who's having an absurd moment. Right. And the best description I saw came from Cary Soper, who's the biographer of not just Gary Larson, but the far side. He said that the point of far side is that we're all just fools flailing against the universe. and that the far side is just basically a camera dropping in on those moments where it's most pronounced, I guess. Yeah, that's brilliant, actually.

19:07That kind of says it best. We should probably illustrate a couple of, verbally illustrate a couple of cartoons. Just if you haven't seen the far side so you kind of know what we're going for here, you should definitely look these up because these are some classics. But one that really kind of crystallizes what he does is early experiments in transportation. And that is a panel. And at the bottom, that's all it says, early experiments in transportation. And it features these cave dudes, these three cave guys holding an early kind of stone wheel with another cave guy strapped to the top of it, just sort of sitting there with his legs out.

19:44With obviously the idea is it's going to be pushed down the hill and they haven't thought it through. and this guy is going to be rolled over, you know, with his wheel crushing him. And that's sort of the brilliance of the far side. It's just a single panel. He doesn't have the next one showing the wheel rolling and the guy going, oh, my bones. Right. Like you have to put it. It's up to the viewer and the reader to put all this together in your head and imagine what comes next. And that was sort of the brilliance of it was he tapped into your imagination. The other thing I think was very Larson-esque is it could have just been that.

20:18these guys on the hill. But then about halfway down the hill, he adds a guy, a cave guy looking up with a little stone tablet to record the results. And it was those extra little bits in the frame for me that just took Farside over the top. Yeah, for sure. Another good one is the Midvale School for the Gifted. My favorite all time. The best known. Yeah, it's just amazing. There's no quote. There's no anything. There's no cut line or caption or anything like that. It's just that little glasses crew cut kid with freckles pushing on a door to get into the Midvale School of the Gifted where he ostensibly goes to school.

21:03And it clearly says on the door, pull.

21:08And if I may comment on this one, the brilliance of that one to me, like you could do that. You could have a kid's hand on the door. pushing that says pull, but it's the way that he's leaning in his whole body. Right. And you get just when you see it, I remember when I was a kid seeing that, thinking it looks like that kid has been standing there for an hour. Right. With his hand against that door expecting it to open. Right. And how he conveys that with just the way he drew that kid leaning in, I don't know. That's the magic of the far side. Agreed, man. I'm glad you're interpreting these for us because you're doing a fantastic job.

21:42Oh, great. uh there's another one that was pretty famous too but not necessarily everyone's seen but you might have heard of the one called cow tools that came out in 1982 yeah and apparently this is the the panel that taught gary larson that there's a lot of people out there reading the far side because cow tools came out and it just baffled people to the point where they were starting to get agitated because they didn't understand the cartoon. It was a pop culture phenomenon, people trying to figure out what this cartoon meant. And the problem was everybody was looking way too deeply into it and you had to take it at face value.

22:24And it got so, I don't want to say out of hand, but just such a, just so widespread that the syndicate asked him to write a letter explaining it that got published in the papers that also published The Far Side. Yeah, it's definitely the most divisive panel he did. And I don't think I've ever seen that he regrets it or anything. I think what he what he didn't like was that people I don't know if he didn't like it, but people just didn't get it. And it's even one that I looked at for the first time when I was a kid and I didn't fully get. But I don't think there was a lot of subtext. He came out and he said, I've never met a cow who could make tools.

23:02So I felt sure that if I did, that the tools would lack something in sophistication and resemble the sorry specimens that I showed in the cartoon. And I think people thought it was something more than that. Right. And to him, it was it was just that as these dumb rudimentary tools that a cow would make. Yeah, that's all it showed. It was a cow standing maybe a little proudly behind a table with their tools spread out. There's a barn in the background. He's on a farm. And one of the tools you can identify as a saw, but the other like three, you're like, I have no idea what that does. And that's it.

23:37That's all it is. It's like the cow made terrible tools, but he's still proud that he made some tools. And these are cow tools. That's it. That's all there is to it. And if you take it on its face, it's hilarious. But if you start trying to figure out what this rule means or what he's saying with this, it just completely loses it. Yeah, I mean, there were definitely cartoons I didn't get when I was a kid. I remember looking at some of them, not fully getting it and thinking like, oh, this must be like something you might get as an adult. But, you know, maybe not because in The Simpsons and Cheers, there were definitely pop culture references where people like Woody and Cheers wouldn't get a far side or Homer wouldn't get a far side.

24:15So it became a thing to not understand the panels. Right. I want to talk about one more. There's that Cary Soper author was asked, what panel would you pick out as the quintessential far side? Wow. And he said the one lupus slipophobia, which is. I think I remember it. Like the caption says, lupus lipophobia, fear of being chased in your kitchen by timber wolves while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor. And that's exactly what's going on. There's this kid who's being chased around a table by two timber wolves and he's wearing socks and his floor is nice and shiny. And he's kind of hanging on to the table like he's about to fall over.

25:02So like his the other funny thing about it, too, is like this person's really arcane phobia is coming true. Like their worst nightmare is happening. Yeah. And that's what it is. That's a great one. That's so good. I also love Dog Threat Letter. That's one he has a regret about. He was a perfectionist and would sometimes agonize over like, oh, I should have done this or that. Which is just, I don't know. It's hard if you're wired that way. But as any kind of creator, my advice is to just go with it and don't look back on your work and regret something that you didn't draw perfectly. but in dog threat letter it's a panel of these cats one cat sitting down in a fat chair and another one standing there and there's a broken window there's a letter that the cat is reading there's glass on the floor there's a dog bone on the floor which is so perfect to me because clearly this dog threat letter was wrapped in this bone and thrown through the window and it's the little cut out letters like a kidnapper's letter would be cut and pasted.

26:09And it just says, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf. And the cats aren't reacting. In fact, it's the backs of their heads. There's a portrait of a framed cat on the wall, which is a nice touch. And he regrets showing the dog running away through the hole in the window as if he had just thrown it. He wishes he had just not had the dog. But I think it's great as is. Yeah, I don't think it detracted from it at all. Yeah, but I'm not Gary Larson. No, it's true. Yeah. He also he got even more obsessive than that with regret, which was Harry Houdini's final undoing, which was that Houdini died because his fingers got caught in Chinese finger traps and that that was the thing that he couldn't get out of.

26:51So now his dead body is just on the ground, leaning up against the wall. And he's a skeleton. And it's hilarious. But the thing that Gary Larson was upset about was that the tilt of Harry Houdini's skull should have been looking downward a little more. It's like, dude, it's fine. Yeah. It's great. Like, no one else except you thought that what you just said. Yeah. Totally agree. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right, we'll be back and we're going to finish up the Midvale School for the Gifted right after this.