10 ms·

New Stuff

564 points by Shared404 6y ago

Shared404 6y ago
Thanks for the title edit. I wasn't sure whether or not to include the subtitle here.
binarymax 6y ago
Wonderful news! Gary Larson has always been my favorite cartoonist. Hilarious visual puns that teeter between dark and light humor so eloquently in a single pane. Really looking forward to more, thanks for coming back Gary! (...now I’m off to slip Bill Watterson a tablet and stylus and see if we can get some new C&H :)
- magicnubs 6y ago
  > (...now I’m off to slip Bill Watterson a tablet and stylus and see if we can get some new C&H :) Now I'm imagining Bill Watterson's take on Cyanide and Happiness
  - mercer 6y ago
    How do I delete your comment!
  - Shared404 6y ago
    I started making an edit of that, then I died inside and decided not to.
- mercer 6y ago
  For me Gary Larson is a close second to Watterson. That said, this is probably one of my favorite Far Side comics and there's a ton more that are just as great: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fthegoodgreatsby.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fschool-for-gifted-gary-larson-far-side.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... Third in line would be either the Gaston universe (Franquin) or Goscinny's oeuvre (Lucky Luke, Asterix)
  - newsbinator 6y ago
    I had a friend in high school who was in love with Far Side comics, although personally I never understood the passion for them. The same sort of joke would be a throwaway or interstitial gag in an animated show like Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, etc. It's a funny quip, play on words, or ironic situation and it earns a smile or an exhale, but it's hard for me to see what makes it so special.
    - mthoms 6y ago
      It probably has to do with the era. With the obvious exception of The Simpsons, this kind of humour was quite rare for its time. With the explosion of the internet (especially memes) and various animated shows it's now pretty ordinary. I'd be surprised if most of the modern famous animators (Trey and Matt, Seth MacFarlane, etc) weren't fans of The Far Side.
    - mercer 6y ago
      That's an interesting observation. I do agree that the shows you mention might have multiple Far Side-level gags in just a single episode. But as the other commenter argues, at the time it stood out. I'm perhaps a bit too young to have experienced The Far Side in its heyday, but I vividly remember the truly awful cartoons I'd read in the various newspapers I'd find in my day to day. Garfield was probably one of the better ones, and IMO Garfield is pretty shit, at least in hindsight. And yet I remember having Garfield collection books.
hirundo 6y ago
Thank Zeus he's back. But "Bears Eating Cub Scouts"? Is there a joke in there that I'm missing?
- conk45 6y ago
  I've always been a big fan of Gary Larson's. While I didn't always "get" his humour, which was often about as warped as mine and sometimes beyond my ken, I almost always enjoyed it and never found it blatantly offensive. And NEVER, EVER did I find anything he did cross a line into poor taste bordering on obscenity. I found the "Bears Eating Cub Scouts" cartoon violates every rule of decency I can think of. It's so out of character from anything else he's ever done (that I'm aware of, anyway) that I have to believe there must be some sort of misprint or other clerical error involved. Please tell me that's the case, and clue me in on what I'm missing. Bill Conkey Durham, NC
- binarymax 6y ago
  I suspect, now that Gary is self publishing and doesn’t need to cater to syndication and mass media, he can explore some edgy stuff. Age makes people salty as well. I liked the comic - the normality of the family eating a typical meal and using their condiments of choice, while manifesting our fears and expectations of savage nature - dark for sure, but “funny”.
  - throwaway20148 6y ago
    Also worth noting that male bears will eat cubs which is how I interpreted it.
    - senectus1 6y ago
      oh? didnt know that... now it makes more sense.
    - mercer 6y ago
      They do? I didn't know that! I've learned that cats will do this (childhood almost-trauma) but it's interesting that bears would do this too.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
I think I actually enjoyed the prose before the comics more than the comics themselves (although the first one got a good laugh out of me). Definitely glad he's back and I'm looking forward to more. It's interesting to see the new art style. It's neat how much more detailed the comics are. The coloring is a bit more smudgy looking, if that makes sense? IIRC he didn't color his own comics before so I suppose it's not a surprise that they're different.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  It's clearly a very different process, the old comics were colored in the largely pre-digital world so it would have been a matter of him handing a B&W image to the syndicate, who then colored it by laying down a very limited set of flat tones. Probably by cutting out bits of zipatone and manually making the cyan/magenta/yellow plates after a quick watercolor sketch of what colors they wanted. The strip ended in 1995, when Photoshop was version 3. Not CS3, that's actually v10. Version 3. Distributed on floppies. The new ones are very much My First Digital Painting; you can see him experimenting with leaving the ink lines behind in the taxi and cub scout pieces, but keeping them in the alien piece. He's got a lot of tools to get the hang of before he settles down into a regular style, if he ever does - dude's seventy years old and retired, he ain't gotta treat this as more than a hobby if he doesn't want to IMHO.
  - bootcampwhere 6y ago
    Are you a child?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dmerrick 6y ago
What excellent news!
alexmingoia 6y ago
I’m glad he’s producing new comics. I’ll admit I prefer his pre-digital style, but I’m happy to see how his comics change without deadlines or being beholden to editors.
anyfoo 6y ago
That very first taxi joke (I won't spoil it for you) made me happy. I had to dwell on the comic, make up a small world in my mind where that situation could possibly make sense, and just generally revel in the absurdity of it. Glad he's back!
- grecy 6y ago
  ... I.... I don't get it.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    It took me on a scale of hours.
  - dbmikus 6y ago
    Taxidermy is when you stuff dead animals. The man is hailing a taxi. Play on words.
01100011 6y ago
Somehow this feels like the glimmer of hope I needed in these dark times.
- Shared404 6y ago
  That feeling is a non-negligible part of why I posted this. I'm glad to know it's not just me.
ceocoder 6y ago
Now if Bill Watterson comes out of retirement and starts drawing Calvin and Hobbes again that’d make everyday just a little bit better. A fan made Hobbes and Bacon https://imgur.com/gallery/tUzAL https://imgur.com/gallery/tUzAL usually fan art never measures up to the original but this is that exception to the rule. It choked me up a bit to see Hobbes play with Bacon - Calvin’s little daughter.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Indeed. Honestly, I'd be happy with him giving official sanction to Hobbes and Bacon and that getting continued.
  - ceocoder 6y ago
    It is highly unlikely though, This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of ten years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say. It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, ten, or twenty years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them. I think some of the reason Calvin and Hobbes still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it. I've never regretted stopping when I did. That’s from his last interview here https://www.cleveland.com/living/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html https://www.cleveland.com/living/2010/02/bill_watterson_crea... Edit: not sure if you saw this https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/530095596279848960?s=21 https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/530095596279848960... He made this recently
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Bloom County, Dilbert (shudder), Doonesbury (though the characters at least aged and moved through life)... All pretty much wore out whatever made them special in their prime.
      - 6y ago
DoctorOW 6y ago
I dunno how interested we as a community are in art styles but I have to say that it's clear much more time went into drawing these. They are much more detailed visually.
impalallama 6y ago
Printing these out to hang in the cubicle as I type
blunte 6y ago
The Far Side was an exceptional "comic". It wonderfully illustrated how much could be conveyed with so little visual representation (and nothing else). I truly enjoyed all of it over the years... I actually owned half a dozen or more physical books! I greatly enjoy reading Gary Larson's explanation of his mentality that led him to where he is now... and I find it particularly amusing that he used so many words to express his thoughts! His cartoons were bereft of words, but they still conveyed so much meaning :)
AlanSE 6y ago
Does anyone have an idea of what the canonical tools for drawing are, which he mentions in the link?
- alphakappa 6y ago
  It's likely to be an iPad + Procreate.
vz8 6y ago
I rarely look into my side mirror without thinking "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR." Thanks, Mr. Larson.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
This being hacker news I was hoping he'd talk about his gear a bit. Maybe we could even help him out a bit since he wrote that he's still figuring it out. :-D
- Shared404 6y ago
  Indeed. I would have been very interested to know more.
- gregorymichael 6y ago
  Agreed. But, I'd give 10:1 that he's using an iPad Pro + Pencil. Got one a few months ago, have never drawn anything meaningful in my life, but the tools are so good that I wanted to start.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
I've always liked Far Side and I think he has his hand-drawn style pat, but the new tablet-drawn ones look... distractingly amateurish, for lack of a better word. Exhibit A: the faces of the drivers in the "taxidermist" gag, which are all soggy blurs. I'm sure this is to some extent intentional to avoid drawing too much attention to these peripheral features, but still: https://imgur.com/a/k9ZLv5s https://imgur.com/a/k9ZLv5s That said, it's obviously a new medium for him, so I hope he keeps at it and works out what his new digital style can be.
- acqq 6y ago
  > I'm sure this is to some extent intentional to avoid drawing too much attention to these peripheral features Yes. The goal is the opposite of not having that blurred. If you expected something else... it's not him, it's you, expecting the hard lines over which the watercolor is applied. This is simply not that.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    In the same image, the pedestrians up top do have crisply drawn features, which (IMHO) look much better. Maybe it's my fault for having grown up with Tintin-style ligne claire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire
    - acqq 6y ago
      > In the same image, the pedestrians up top do have crisply drawn features The are supposed to have them, in order to match the figure where the joke is. Larson jokes are in big part visual jokes: he draws intentionally so that a reader has to "look around" in the picture until he "gets it." And that is what makes the "click" and that deep "ooooh" effect. For that to function the "level of attention" has to be "manipulated". The cars in the front are allowed to be "out of focus" but the part of the picture "in focus" should not "give out" too soon the gag. So the cartoon functions correctly, the "direction" inside of the cartoon is brilliant. The cartoon is however, I admit, more "raw" than what would be expected from some kinds of products (e.g. it's not something that would end up being in an ad, for example, exactly because some people have some specific expectations). But it's the real Larson and everything is where is should be. And he also wrote that he's "just exploring, experimenting, and trying stuff."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nickthegreek 6y ago
Was anyone able to locate an RSS feed for the new stuff?
teh_klev 6y ago
"Cow Tools" had me in uncontrolled tears of laughter in a bookshop back in the 80's. I thought I was going to have to be carried out of the shop as did everyone else. Larson always perfectly hit the funny spot in my brain, even now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools
sitkack 6y ago
This makes me so happy! And at the same time, I started getting flashbacks of Dr Fun, a science themed web comic that was always visible on some screen in our lab. https://web.archive.org/web/20170905104949/http://ibiblio.org/Dave/ar00197.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20170905104949/http://ibiblio.or...
andness 6y ago
This is amazing. I loved The Far Side as a kid, and for the last year or so my son and I have switched from me reading books to him, to him reading Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side to me. The Far Side is by far is favourite, I can't wait to tell him this!

564 points by Shared404 6y ago

Thanks for the title edit. I wasn't sure whether or not to include the subtitle here.

Wonderful news! Gary Larson has always been my favorite cartoonist. Hilarious visual puns that teeter between dark and light humor so eloquently in a single pane. Really looking forward to more, thanks for coming back Gary! (...now I’m off to slip Bill Watterson a tablet and stylus and see if we can get some new C&H :)

magicnubs 6y ago
> (...now I’m off to slip Bill Watterson a tablet and stylus and see if we can get some new C&H :) Now I'm imagining Bill Watterson's take on Cyanide and Happiness
- mercer 6y ago
  How do I delete your comment!
- Shared404 6y ago
  I started making an edit of that, then I died inside and decided not to.
mercer 6y ago
For me Gary Larson is a close second to Watterson. That said, this is probably one of my favorite Far Side comics and there's a ton more that are just as great: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fthegoodgreatsby.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fschool-for-gifted-gary-larson-far-side.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... Third in line would be either the Gaston universe (Franquin) or Goscinny's oeuvre (Lucky Luke, Asterix)
- newsbinator 6y ago
  I had a friend in high school who was in love with Far Side comics, although personally I never understood the passion for them. The same sort of joke would be a throwaway or interstitial gag in an animated show like Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, etc. It's a funny quip, play on words, or ironic situation and it earns a smile or an exhale, but it's hard for me to see what makes it so special.
  - mthoms 6y ago
    It probably has to do with the era. With the obvious exception of The Simpsons, this kind of humour was quite rare for its time. With the explosion of the internet (especially memes) and various animated shows it's now pretty ordinary. I'd be surprised if most of the modern famous animators (Trey and Matt, Seth MacFarlane, etc) weren't fans of The Far Side.
  - mercer 6y ago
    That's an interesting observation. I do agree that the shows you mention might have multiple Far Side-level gags in just a single episode. But as the other commenter argues, at the time it stood out. I'm perhaps a bit too young to have experienced The Far Side in its heyday, but I vividly remember the truly awful cartoons I'd read in the various newspapers I'd find in my day to day. Garfield was probably one of the better ones, and IMO Garfield is pretty shit, at least in hindsight. And yet I remember having Garfield collection books.

hirundo 6y ago

Thank Zeus he's back. But "Bears Eating Cub Scouts"? Is there a joke in there that I'm missing?

conk45 6y ago
I've always been a big fan of Gary Larson's. While I didn't always "get" his humour, which was often about as warped as mine and sometimes beyond my ken, I almost always enjoyed it and never found it blatantly offensive. And NEVER, EVER did I find anything he did cross a line into poor taste bordering on obscenity. I found the "Bears Eating Cub Scouts" cartoon violates every rule of decency I can think of. It's so out of character from anything else he's ever done (that I'm aware of, anyway) that I have to believe there must be some sort of misprint or other clerical error involved. Please tell me that's the case, and clue me in on what I'm missing. Bill Conkey Durham, NC
binarymax 6y ago
I suspect, now that Gary is self publishing and doesn’t need to cater to syndication and mass media, he can explore some edgy stuff. Age makes people salty as well. I liked the comic - the normality of the family eating a typical meal and using their condiments of choice, while manifesting our fears and expectations of savage nature - dark for sure, but “funny”.
- throwaway20148 6y ago
  Also worth noting that male bears will eat cubs which is how I interpreted it.
  - senectus1 6y ago
    oh? didnt know that... now it makes more sense.
  - mercer 6y ago
    They do? I didn't know that! I've learned that cats will do this (childhood almost-trauma) but it's interesting that bears would do this too.

Rebelgecko 6y ago

I think I actually enjoyed the prose before the comics more than the comics themselves (although the first one got a good laugh out of me). Definitely glad he's back and I'm looking forward to more. It's interesting to see the new art style. It's neat how much more detailed the comics are. The coloring is a bit more smudgy looking, if that makes sense? IIRC he didn't color his own comics before so I suppose it's not a surprise that they're different.

egypturnash 6y ago
It's clearly a very different process, the old comics were colored in the largely pre-digital world so it would have been a matter of him handing a B&W image to the syndicate, who then colored it by laying down a very limited set of flat tones. Probably by cutting out bits of zipatone and manually making the cyan/magenta/yellow plates after a quick watercolor sketch of what colors they wanted. The strip ended in 1995, when Photoshop was version 3. Not CS3, that's actually v10. Version 3. Distributed on floppies. The new ones are very much My First Digital Painting; you can see him experimenting with leaving the ink lines behind in the taxi and cub scout pieces, but keeping them in the alien piece. He's got a lot of tools to get the hang of before he settles down into a regular style, if he ever does - dude's seventy years old and retired, he ain't gotta treat this as more than a hobby if he doesn't want to IMHO.
- bootcampwhere 6y ago
  Are you a child?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dmerrick 6y ago

What excellent news!

alexmingoia 6y ago

I’m glad he’s producing new comics. I’ll admit I prefer his pre-digital style, but I’m happy to see how his comics change without deadlines or being beholden to editors.

anyfoo 6y ago

That very first taxi joke (I won't spoil it for you) made me happy. I had to dwell on the comic, make up a small world in my mind where that situation could possibly make sense, and just generally revel in the absurdity of it. Glad he's back!

grecy 6y ago
... I.... I don't get it.
- Shared404 6y ago
  It took me on a scale of hours.
- dbmikus 6y ago
  Taxidermy is when you stuff dead animals. The man is hailing a taxi. Play on words.

01100011 6y ago

Somehow this feels like the glimmer of hope I needed in these dark times.

Shared404 6y ago
That feeling is a non-negligible part of why I posted this. I'm glad to know it's not just me.

ceocoder 6y ago

Now if Bill Watterson comes out of retirement and starts drawing Calvin and Hobbes again that’d make everyday just a little bit better. A fan made Hobbes and Bacon https://imgur.com/gallery/tUzAL https://imgur.com/gallery/tUzAL usually fan art never measures up to the original but this is that exception to the rule. It choked me up a bit to see Hobbes play with Bacon - Calvin’s little daughter.

Shared404 6y ago
Indeed. Honestly, I'd be happy with him giving official sanction to Hobbes and Bacon and that getting continued.
- ceocoder 6y ago
  It is highly unlikely though, This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of ten years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say. It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, ten, or twenty years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them. I think some of the reason Calvin and Hobbes still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it. I've never regretted stopping when I did. That’s from his last interview here https://www.cleveland.com/living/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html https://www.cleveland.com/living/2010/02/bill_watterson_crea... Edit: not sure if you saw this https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/530095596279848960?s=21 https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/530095596279848960... He made this recently
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Bloom County, Dilbert (shudder), Doonesbury (though the characters at least aged and moved through life)... All pretty much wore out whatever made them special in their prime.
    - 6y ago

DoctorOW 6y ago

I dunno how interested we as a community are in art styles but I have to say that it's clear much more time went into drawing these. They are much more detailed visually.

impalallama 6y ago

Printing these out to hang in the cubicle as I type

blunte 6y ago

The Far Side was an exceptional "comic". It wonderfully illustrated how much could be conveyed with so little visual representation (and nothing else). I truly enjoyed all of it over the years... I actually owned half a dozen or more physical books! I greatly enjoy reading Gary Larson's explanation of his mentality that led him to where he is now... and I find it particularly amusing that he used so many words to express his thoughts! His cartoons were bereft of words, but they still conveyed so much meaning :)

AlanSE 6y ago

Does anyone have an idea of what the canonical tools for drawing are, which he mentions in the link?

alphakappa 6y ago
It's likely to be an iPad + Procreate.

vz8 6y ago

I rarely look into my side mirror without thinking "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR." Thanks, Mr. Larson.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

This being hacker news I was hoping he'd talk about his gear a bit. Maybe we could even help him out a bit since he wrote that he's still figuring it out. :-D

Shared404 6y ago
Indeed. I would have been very interested to know more.
gregorymichael 6y ago
Agreed. But, I'd give 10:1 that he's using an iPad Pro + Pencil. Got one a few months ago, have never drawn anything meaningful in my life, but the tools are so good that I wanted to start.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago

I've always liked Far Side and I think he has his hand-drawn style pat, but the new tablet-drawn ones look... distractingly amateurish, for lack of a better word. Exhibit A: the faces of the drivers in the "taxidermist" gag, which are all soggy blurs. I'm sure this is to some extent intentional to avoid drawing too much attention to these peripheral features, but still: https://imgur.com/a/k9ZLv5s https://imgur.com/a/k9ZLv5s That said, it's obviously a new medium for him, so I hope he keeps at it and works out what his new digital style can be.

acqq 6y ago
> I'm sure this is to some extent intentional to avoid drawing too much attention to these peripheral features Yes. The goal is the opposite of not having that blurred. If you expected something else... it's not him, it's you, expecting the hard lines over which the watercolor is applied. This is simply not that.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  In the same image, the pedestrians up top do have crisply drawn features, which (IMHO) look much better. Maybe it's my fault for having grown up with Tintin-style ligne claire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire
  - acqq 6y ago
    > In the same image, the pedestrians up top do have crisply drawn features The are supposed to have them, in order to match the figure where the joke is. Larson jokes are in big part visual jokes: he draws intentionally so that a reader has to "look around" in the picture until he "gets it." And that is what makes the "click" and that deep "ooooh" effect. For that to function the "level of attention" has to be "manipulated". The cars in the front are allowed to be "out of focus" but the part of the picture "in focus" should not "give out" too soon the gag. So the cartoon functions correctly, the "direction" inside of the cartoon is brilliant. The cartoon is however, I admit, more "raw" than what would be expected from some kinds of products (e.g. it's not something that would end up being in an ad, for example, exactly because some people have some specific expectations). But it's the real Larson and everything is where is should be. And he also wrote that he's "just exploring, experimenting, and trying stuff."

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nickthegreek 6y ago

Was anyone able to locate an RSS feed for the new stuff?

teh_klev 6y ago

"Cow Tools" had me in uncontrolled tears of laughter in a bookshop back in the 80's. I thought I was going to have to be carried out of the shop as did everyone else. Larson always perfectly hit the funny spot in my brain, even now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Tools

sitkack 6y ago

This makes me so happy! And at the same time, I started getting flashbacks of Dr Fun, a science themed web comic that was always visible on some screen in our lab. https://web.archive.org/web/20170905104949/http://ibiblio.org/Dave/ar00197.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20170905104949/http://ibiblio.or...

andness 6y ago

This is amazing. I loved The Far Side as a kid, and for the last year or so my son and I have switched from me reading books to him, to him reading Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side to me. The Far Side is by far is favourite, I can't wait to tell him this!