Gary Larson

The Far Side Gallery 3 is, as one might expect, the third omnibus collection of Gary Larson's very funny but always off-kilter comic strip The Far Side featuring the usual cast of cows, cavemen, nerds, insects and other strange denizens of Larson's twisted imagination. The single panel comics that make up the bulk of the book are the usual collection of weird but funny windows into a strange alternate reality where lions open car doors with coat-hangers to get at tourists and praying show more mantises argue over who ate whose husband. As usual for his collections, Larson recruited someone interesting to write the introduction to the book, in this case the noted scientist (and co creator of the theory of punctuated equilibrium) Stephen Jay Gould who merely introduces himself as a paleontologist and taxonomist who studies snails.

Though depreciating his own talents at humorous writing, Gould dissects why Larson is so popular among scientists, noting that by Gould's estimation 80% of the doors of his colleagues are decorated with a Far Side strip or two. Gould's introduction examines why this is the case, as he says, it isn't just the chuckles. And the fact that, as Gould notes, Larson has such a keep eye for reality and the weirdness that is just a hair away from reality that makes his strips so enduring. The idea of a cow in a hamster ball rolling about the house is funny because it is silly, but so is the idea of putting a hamster in a ball and setting him loose about the house. we just don't think about the silliness of the hamster in a ball until Larson makes us. Over and over again, Larson takes the mundane, rotates it slightly and gives us flies examining their garbage filled baby nursery or birds getting excited over cocktails served with skewered bugs or cavemen playing rock paper scissors before paper and scissors were invented. Almost every strip is funny, some will make you laugh out loud.

(As an aside, I only found one comic in this book to be not very funny. It is on page 181, and involves a brother playing a prank on his sister. There's nothing offensive about the strip, in fact it is just so boringly mundane that it seems like it should be filler in Family Circus rather than something in The Far Side).

The comics in this collection are from Larson's prime as a cartoonist, and it shows. The comics are almost all at least funny, and over and over again a strip will hit just the right comic note to make it hilarious. If you like The Far Side and its strange humor as I do, then this book is a must read.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

Save this for the older kiddos who can read this on their own and not be put off by a couple of curses in the side cartoons. You definitely need a Larson-esque sense of humor to enjoy this oddball story-within-a-story that a father worm tells his son worm to make him appreciate his place in nature--and the hair in his dirt.

A maiden named Harriet enjoys her walk through the woods, appreciating nature but not understanding it. Here's a taste of the humor:

"To be sure, these furry creatures had show more the 'cute' thing down real good--regrettably. You see, Harriet was feeding Gray Squirrels, a large, aggressive species that had been introduced to this forest and were taking it over from the native Red Squirrels, a smaller, more timid species. All squirrels are rodents, but in the wrong place and time, some are rats."

Cue picture of tough-guy gray squirrels sticking up a red squirrel for its acorn.

Harriet goes on her way, causing harm with better intentions than intelligence...but the lack of the latter has, well, consequences.

Amusing for adults, but don't mistake it for a kids story! show less

The Far Side, with its single panel format strips about cows, chickens, dorky people, and random oddity, set the standard for quirky, weird humor. This collection serves as a sort of "behind the scenes" look at the development and history of the strip, as well as including some of the funniest panels produced by Larson.

The book is divided into broad sections. The first "The Fossil Record" is, in my opinion, probably the least interesting. Larson purports to include a collection of drawings show more he made as a child, but they seem to me to be fairly obviously a made up collection he penned specifically for the book, which makes them funny, but not particularly so.

The book picks up speed from that point - in the next chapter Larson discusses his odd path to becoming a cartoonist, shows pages from his sketchbook and compares them with the final product that arose from the initial sketchbook idea (or which he believes arose from a particular sketchbook idea, his memory seems fuzzy on some points), and shows unused ideas his sketch book (including the infamous "Jesus risen from the dead" sketch). Finally, Larson spices up a handful of strips with some background storylines.

Larson then goes on in the next chapter to show some bizarre mistakes that cropped up in the process from artist table to editor to newsprint. He also shows some subtle elements of some strips featuring some of the drawing tricks the single panel format require him to use. He then shows a series of cartoons accompanied by the various angry letters he has received from outraged readers (usually because they were misinterpreting a strip) and a gallery of cartoons rejected by one editor or another (often accompanied by a subsequent modified version that was accepted).

The book finishes off with a large collection of Larson's favorite panels from the run of the strip. As he explains, a collection of the most popular strips would be boring, but a collection of the strips he liked best can serve to give insight into the mind of the cartoonist. And this book does that very well, from start to finish. For any fan of The Far Side reading this book is a necessity. It may not be as interesting to someone who is not a fan of the strip (I guess someone out there might fit that description, even if I haven't met them), but even for those not enamored of talking cows and evil chickens it remains a fascinating glimpse into the creative mind at work. show less

When I sat down and cracked open Gary Larson's The PreHistory of the Far Side it'd been a long time since I'd read the strip. It's as hilarious as ever. This treasury is particularly wonderful because it contains the origins of the strip, how Larson got his start, and Larson's commentary on some of the cartoons. I found particularly intriguing a chapter containing rejected cartoons, and the reasons for their rejections, and readers' letters of complaint. The book ends with a selection of the show more cartoonist's own favorite panels. In PreHistory, Larson shows us the bones in the Far Side soup, and its a lot of fun. show less