Gary Larson’s ‘The Far Side’ Returns! Kind Of…

Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, Boondocks, and Dilbert are all great, but there are very few comic strips that we’ve ever looked forward to in our life like we did Gary Larson’s The Far Side. It was funny and it was smart. Sometimes so smart that we had to look stuff up. When the comic strip came to an end on January 1st, 1995, it was a loss for anyone who likes to laugh.

In a surprise announcement on his site, it looks like Gary Larson is back, kind of. While the artist was happy to hang up his pen 25 years ago, it seems like a fortuitous incident with a clogged pen while trying to draw his family’s annual Christmas Card pushed him to try drawing on a digital tablet, igniting a whole new love and interest in the medium. Now, Gary is back, drawing again, and posting some of his new pics in the “New Stuff” section of Thefarside.com.

So a few years ago—finally fed up with my once-loyal but now reliably traitorous pen—I decided to try a digital tablet. I knew nothing about these devices but hoped it would just get me through my annual Christmas card ordeal. I got one, fired it up, and lo and behold, something totally unexpected happened: within moments, I was having fun drawing again. I was stunned at all the tools the thing offered, all the creative potential it contained. I simply had no idea how far these things had evolved. Perhaps fittingly, the first thing I drew was a caveman.

Gary Larson

As he explains in his statement on the new work, it’s not going to be as polished as his old, hand-drawn art, and he’s not going to be releasing on a set schedule, but he’s having fun, learning a new medium, and that is more than good enough for us. Check out the first new comic below and then head over to Thefarside.com for his releases as they happen!

Source: CNET