How Gary Larson (the Far Side) Influnces Me

I can drone on and one regarding Gary Larson's Far Side. Just a few humorists who had a great impact on my life before I launched Londons Times Cartoons. Most were movie and television actors, and only two have been cartoonists. Larson was the major influence and continues to be. The others were comedians and actors such as Steve Martin, Mike Myers, Steven Wright, Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Billy Crystal, Dana Carvey, Peter Sellers, and and others of whom I cannot think of at the moment. One other cartoonist was the late great Charles Schulz, and they all influenced me in a different way.

I believe Larson's work had such an impact on me because, like so many in my generation, I was trying to do the transformation from outgrown hippie to yuppie and not much made sense anymore. He found a way to make sense of it all, and did it with "extreme editing skills" sometimes no words, but only an illustration. He was a step above so many other cartoonists in that he most often "drew what he knew" . Larson was a biology major in college, and aside from the frequent use of cows and insects, science and biology themes were a normal theme for him. Before Larson launched The Far Side, he was working on a cartoon called "Nature's Way". The Seattle Times was the first paper to publish it in 1979. A year later, Chronicle Features picked The Far Side up for syndication and it ran fifteen years. Larson put down his pin on New Years Day, 1995. For awhile we heard nothing. Then he wrote a very biologically-accurate children's story about worms titled "There's A Hair In My Dirt" which quickly became a New York Times Best Seller. When asked why he was retiring, he said, he simply didn't want to become mediocre. He stopped while he was ahead. He could be labeled more than a cartoonist, perhaps a "cartoon surrealist" of sorts. A lot of his cartoons featured bovine behavior and conversations that cows had when no people were around. The behavior was often smart and arrogant so that the reader felt he or she perhaps might not be so much smarter than these cows (and other animals, from squid to deer to bears. Some were smart enough to be in Mensa, had they allowed animals. Cats and dogs were regularaly featured in the cartoon usually pit against one another. One of the most memorable panels shows a big dog who has led a trail with chalk that said "Cat Fud" that led to an open dryer in a laundry mat and the dog thinking while holding the door open ready to close it, "Oh Pleeeeeze" as the cat innocently walks around.

One of his most famous panels shows a chimpanzee couple grooming each other. One discovers a blonde human hair on the other and queries "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" Jane Goodall's institute board immediately took action as they thought it was in awful taste, Their attorneys shot out a letter to Larson and his Chronicle Syndicate, in which they described the cartoon as an "atrocity". They were stopped, ironically by Goodall herself, who enjoyed the cartoon. Since then, all of the profits from the sale of a Far Side shirt featuring this cartoon benefit the Goodall Institute. Most recently, Larson has published a 2007 calendar and 100% of the royalties benefit Conservation International. So Gary Larson not only turned out to be a very talented man, but a man who cares about the world in which he lives, and does something about it in a very unique way. Gary Larson is not just the greatest cartoon who ever graced the planet (and I don't gush often), he's obviously a very kind soul as well.

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Cartoonist Rick London, founder of Londons Times Cartoons says many humorists have influenced him but none had an impact like The Far Side's Gary Larson on his now offbeat popular cartoon, Londons Times The Gary Larson Far Side Influence Continues

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