#gary larson

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that what's brilliant about The Far Side is how it can imply an entire narrative with only a single panel. It's sequential art without the sequence. Like this one

There's the obvious implication of what's going to happen in the future (there's going to be a hunt), but it also stretches into the past: what circumstances in the anthropology of this group of cavemen must have happened to establish a tradition of dancing with Woolly Mammoths? Why does it, in spite of it's obvious absurdity, feel kind of right that there should be a dance before the cavemen and the mammoths engage in mortal combat? The reluctant fearful expression on the caveman at the bottom; is this his first hunt? Are those his elders trying to reassure him? Does the one mammoth actually seem to fancy him? What about the one looking fearfully back at his friends? How does he feel that the others aren't there to reassure him? One of the mammoths in the upper right looks just as fearful as the cavemen; why? etc.

And all of this is purely evoked. There's only simple line-drawing and two sentences of text, but you see it and it reminds you of other sorts of narratives you've seen or experienced, and your brain constructs a whole temporal sequence; and any possible answer you could get to above the questions would never be as satisfying as what your brain fills in.

I could write an entire essay about this.

[everydaylouie]

Yeah, Sylvia...my set too...and in the middle of "Laverne and Shirley."

[ozymandiasfoxmercury]

[a-book-of-creatures]

This particular Far Side comic always cracks me up

[notahorseindisguise]

gary larson this is one BANGER of a comic, thank you.

[coleheinous]

post cow tools when they least expect it

[weirdlookindog]

The Far Side by Gary Larson

[prokopetz]

I think a lot of Tumblr's sense of humour basically boils down to what it might have looked like if Gary Larson was allowed to say "fuck".

[ungoliantschilde]

“Trouble Brewing”, by Gary Larson

[knightofleo]

Gary Larson, “The Far Side” in Hell

[beardedmrbean]

[quasi-normalcy]

The other thing about The Far Side is that it's a "boomer cartoon," but I'm not actually using the term pejoratively. What I mean is that the world that it creates is very much rooted in 1950s and 60s North American suburban life; you've got your white picket fences, your housewives in floral-print gowns and cat's eye glasses, your chubby little nerd boys with buzz cuts and glasses and striped t-shirts. The wider world is pretty much in line with how it would be understood by a suburban kid in the 60s; outside of the cities you have your barns and your farmers and your many, many cows; further afield, you have jungles full of anthropologists in khaki outfits and natives and crocodiles and apes and Tarzan; somewhere off in a lab you have scientists with white coats and beards doing some arcane research that they probably shouldn't. The past is full of squat cavemen in ragged loincloths with names like "Thak"; the future is full of domes and rocket ships. There's a fluffy-cloud Heaven above you and a fiery-cave Hell down below. A disproportionate of comics feature nuclear Armageddon as a setpiece.

The whole thing reads like a bizarre, dream-logic version of Post-War America and I kind of love it.

[thoughtportal]

The far side

[taxusbaccata6]

The Far Side

[a-book-of-creatures]

Speaking of the Far Side, this one was completely meaningless to me as a kid, but when I reread as an adult was like OH MY GOD

[sailor-arashi]

🎍 If you could grant any type of animal the ability to talk what would it be and why?!

I'm not gonna have a better answer for this than Gary Larson: