Day 265

Day 265 of the #365drawingchallenge is one of the comics that first inspired me, and just announced a return, The Far Side. I’m very excited to hear about the comeback, though I’m still not 100% clear if that means the comic strip is coming back full time. This was one of my favorite comic strips as a kid, right up there with Calvin and Hobbes. I drew this last night but didn’t feel like scanning it and writing it up, so I just shared a pic of it that I took with my phone. I decided to do a collage showing a lot of memorable moments from the comic that emphasized the sheer variety of all the characters. It’s a pretty fascinating thing to have a comic strip that doesn’t really have any recurring characters but has such a distinct style that you immediately know it’s all the same world. I’m also very impressed with how much Gary Larson was able to do with just a single panel gag type comic strip. As much as I love The Far Side I don’t think I’ve ever tried to draw the style before, and it was really fun. You recognize it right away, but until I drew it I’m not sure I could have told you some of the key features that make it distinctly Larson.

I used to read the comics with my grandpa, he was a big fan and would buy all the book collections. I have a lot of fond memories of that. We once went to a museum/aquarium that was full of original drawn Far Side comics in the lobby, and my family finished looking at everything only to realize my grandpa was still in the lobby reading every single one of those comics. It was the funniest thing. I once wrote about The Far Side and what it meant to me on this blog and showed several examples of my favorite ones only to be contacted by Gary Larson’s lawyer asking me to take them down because Gary is very protective about his art being shared online and where it is shown. It was annoying, but kind of entertaining to think that he was so old fashioned that he thought he could control people sharing his mega popular comics online and that me sharing a couple dozen images on my blog would have any affect on anything. Honestly I thought it was a bit cool that someone representing him even contacted me asking me very politely if I would remove them, so I did.