‘The Far Side’ Is Back, Sort Of | Hacker News Reader

‘The Far Side’ Is Back, Sort Of

nytimes.com

130 pointscstuder70 comments

It is impossible to overstate how much laughter and joy 'The Far Side' brought me growing up. Between 'The Far Side' and 'Calvin and Hobbes' I was set.

"Blah blah blah Ginger blah blah"

"Oh wait! wait! Looks like we're coming into some more Turbulence!"

"Everything's squared away, yessir, squaaaaaaared away."

“The dam bursts”

OK, for even more awesome, check out the site's console output when you try to right click an image (better with fixed-width of course):

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o\-`o`: .xxxxxxxxx:` ` xxxxxxxxxx`

Mainly to prevent opening the context menu - probably to make copying images harder...

> Mainly to prevent opening the context menu - probably to make copying images harder...

I feel like Gary Larson is still new to the Internet. I mean, the prevalence of Twitter screenshots alone should demonstrate the futility of such efforts. Though it may be that he just doesn't want to tell with supporting the image link traffic.

However, given that uMatrix reports blocking >5K, my suspicion is that he or whoever he has doing his site may not be all that clever. (I haven't any plans to dig into why uMatrix is reporting so much.)

The idea that Gary Larson made any decision about context menus or tracking on this site is hilarious. He was definitely not involved in that way.

Of course, it's just genius that they would go to this level of detail for something almost nobody will ever see.

On Safari, just use StopTheMadness. It will prevent these types of hijacks.

A Far Side comic led to the naming of a part of the Stegosaurus' tail.

"Now this end is called the thagomizer... after the late Thag Simmons"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

Yeah I think that's somehow cooler than the species. There are a lot of obscure species that get named for someone, but being the guy who named something that every kid is familiar with... that's pretty cool! (And I came here to post about that too).

This one is a goodie https://shoeuntied.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/fs16.jpg

There is at least one species named as an homage to Gary Larson, too.

Never enough :) My favorite:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d7/75/31/d77531ddeaf83c8375c2...

My favorite is 'old dog new trick.' I won't post a link myself because I once spent a long email thread with Larson's secretary trying, and failing, to get permission to use the cartoon in a slide deck. He has described that he thinks of the cartoons as his children and that, like children, he wants to know where they are. I respect that, though I wish he felt differently.

If used for educational purposes, it would probably fall under fair use.

Being legally okay isn't the same thing as being right.

For a similar reason, Weird Al Yankovic always gets permission before publishing his parodies even though he doesn't have to.

But "doing whatever the creator wants" also isn't the same thing as being right.

It is in this case.

For what it is worth, Yankovick has done the opposite of your comment at least once.

Yankovic specifically got legal permission for his song Amish Paradise but not what was arguably "right" meaning permission from the artist Coolio who said no. Yankovic did it anyway.

Years later, they are reportedly "cool" now according to Yankovic: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1h7afc/i_am_weird_al_...

That's pretty misrepresentative of the events.

Yankovic _thought_ he had gotten permission and when he later found out Coolio hadn't been consulted he was mortified.

Not only that, but this episode also only serves to prove Yankovic's point, that it's best to get permission even if you don't legally have to.

That's fair. I'll concede on that. You're right.

From what I've read he knew he had permission from the record label, and knew he didn't have Coolio's blessing. I wasn't there, but it seems unlikely that if he immediately had turned around like "wow I didn't know" the so-called beef wouldn't have lasted years until they made nice.

From: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bp/coolio-did-not-want-w...

>Coolio said when Weird Al initially requested to remake the song, he said, "No," but later realized that, due to the fair use copyright laws, he could not stop the production.

>Coolio later reconsidered Weird Al's proposal. "I sat down, and I really thought it out," he told the students at IPR. "I was like, 'Wait a minute.' I was like, 'Coolio, who the f—k do you think you are? He did Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson didn't get mad.'"

You're citing an interview with Coolio, which doesn't reflect Weird Al's experience. I don't have a citation on hand, but the story I've always read is Weird Al asked Coolio's label, got a "yes" back, and believed that the label had asked Coolio. Ever since then he made sure to get the answer directly from the artist in question.

Regardless, he got the owner's permission. (Not the artist's though)

Pretty rich of him to be upset over a parody version of his rap version of a Stevie Wonder song.

Perhaps. It's about six years too late for that particular presentation, but there will always be more presentations.

Mine is "Midvale School for the Gifted"

Only every single time I try to push a door I should be pulling open.

"Cat Fud"

----->

"Kids! Kids! ... The slugs are back!"

How is this not called "The Far Site"?

Not everyone can be as clever as your Mr. cwb

You mean qmo, xiwp.

http://archive.md/1l8Ww

When my dad passed away, I inherited all his old The Far Side books. Seeing this article made me pull them out, and they've aged surprisingly well.

That said, comics have changed a lot since those books were published, and part of me wonders if The Far Side would've succeeded today.

Considering most active internet-dwellers these days have no memory of The Far Side, I guess we'll find out.

I remember the first one I ever saw. It was a bunch of porcupines standing around looking at a mattress with a porcupine lying on it. I didn't see another for months. I am embarrassed at how long it took me to get it, but it stuck with me until I did. I haven't seen it in any of the books.

The article should have mentioned the Thagomizer ("after the late Thag Simmons"). Hmm, another obscure mattress reference I never noticed before this moment, 35 years later...

I'm not sure if this is the "open letter" referred to, but it's what Larson sent to at least a couple of people with cease & desist orders. https://www.comicmix.com/2008/03/07/gary-larson-and-our-far-...

https://www.thefarside.com/

You know how people always say "back in my day, things were better!" (in between saying "you kids don't know how easy you have it")? For me, while there are plenty of differences between now and when I grew up, and these differences are sometimes good and sometimes bad, there are only two things I've been solid on.

The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes.

The bad part is that we aren't getting more. The good part is that we still have access to them.

I have all my old copies of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes in my library waiting for my daughter. Some of my most fond early memories are of Calvin and Hobbes specifically and it resonates with me in a completely different way now than it did then, obviously. I have to imagine there are other great works being made now that I might be missing out on because of my age?

One person that I think fits the bill, but isn't currently making comics is Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half is on the level.

Anyone have something new you recommend I check out?

It's not new but you could check out Pearls Before Swine. A few of the strips were drawn by Bill Watterson.

I think they swapped for a week and Stephan Pastis drew some Calvin and Hobbes

The time I'm thinking of was well after Calvin and Hobbes ended. I'm pretty sure that the two comics have little or no time when they both coexisted.

Right, this is hard to explain, but it happened. (Well, it was Watterson drawing PBS.) https://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever-wished-t... Links to the strips are at the bottom.

I think you missed some of the context earlier in this thread. There is no disagreement that Watterson drew a few strips of PBS. The post you replied to asserted that this wasn't a swap between Watterson and Pastis. If you can explain how Watterson doing guest content creation constitutes a swap please go ahead.

I was mistaken. I misremembered Pastis' joke as an actual occurrence.

I'd add Bloom County in there too. The '80s had great syndicated comics.

A couple years ago, Berkeley Breathed also decided that making comics was pretty enjoyable if he didn't have to meet deadlines. He's been posting new strips intermittently on Facebook. https://facebook.com/berkeleybreathed/

When I saw him talk at the National Book Fair in DC in 2016 shortly after he resumed, he explicitly blamed Harvey and Bob Weinstein for the lack of a movie.

"The Banana Jr 6000 Self-Portable Personal Computer System with Bananawrite, Bananadraw, Bananafile and Bananamanager"

I would be hard pressed to argue that smartphones made life better, as handy and inevitable as they were.

Dumb phones + pagers + hardlines + internet on desktops, was a pretty great time to be alive.

I second that brother!

I believe I read there will in fact be new Far Side comics going up

Are the first two panels new or the last ones he previously ever did? Certainly self referential.

Gooder news, he said he will on occasion, make some more.

Music was better. For example, Led Zeppelin.

Why was this link changed? Most of the time that the moderators switch in a link, they are functionally the same, but this is an interview rather than a direct link to the content of the email that was sent out, hosted on the site discussed in the email. Also, the New York Times is paywalled, which is fine by HN policy, but its one thing when the only source of a particular article is paywalled. Its another thing to change the link to the paywalled version...

For reference, this used to point to:

https://www.thefarside.com/about/48/a-letter-from-gary-larso...

It currently points to:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/arts/far-side-gary-larson...

EDIT: Looking through what happened, I think the two were merged together as a dupe, but the interview was chosen over the letter itself.

Also the official site appears to be struggling with all the interest, so perhaps the mods decided to go with the working NYT.

I hope he makes a twitter account that tweets one comic a day.

anyone find a rss/atom feed on thefarside.com?

I love Larsen.

Similar but darker and weirder was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Kliban

Nice essay - http://www.thepaincomics.com/Kliban.pdf

Just as funny to me.

Do a web search for Kliban without "cat" for a taste.

Some of these are right up my alley. This one is a favourite so far

https://i.imgur.com/xTrQtPo.png

> I’ll forever be grateful to fans, who in those early days often rescued “The Far Side” from cancellation

I'd like to read more about the "controversies" and the complaints against his cartoons then. It's probably instructive to see how easy people can be offended and an author becoming a target of forces that he couldn't perceive.

Rotring pens were the best. I used a mechanical drawing 0.2 for a while as an every-day. At high school the 'devo' hat end-clip hid my tiny stash..

My all time favorite: "How nature says: 'Do not touch!'"

Though, there are so many favorites, it's difficult not to come up with a long list.

https://www.thefarside.com/about/48/a-letter-from-gary-larso...

Good to see he still doesn't get it. The Far Side really is about nostalgia now so I kinda like that too.

Very interested to see if he will adapt to the new evolved playing field of humour or will stick with nostalgia. Both have value. From the letter it seems like the later.

Got to tip your cap to him for selecting "Cow Tools" for the first day's front page.

Spamelopes

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