Part 4: Stimulus–Response
Here Larson shows his cartoons that have provoked controversy, even outrage, and he reprints some of the indignant letters of protest. Some of his cartoons are thought to be in bad taste, as one featuring a couple of dogs playing "Tethercat." In such cases, he argues that readers either were oversensitive or misunderstood the cartoon. One time, a representative of the Jane Goodall Institute attacked a Far Side cartoon in which two chimpanzees are grooming when one finds a human hair and asks, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" Larson was ready to apologize to Goodall, until it came out that Goodall loved the cartoon and had no idea someone in her organization had complained.
A few of his cartoons were controversial simply because they were hard to understand. A particular example was "Cow Tools," which depicts a cow standing by a table on which rest four oddly shaped objects. Larson had found it funny that cows would be really bad at toolmaking. His mistake was making one of the tools resemble a saw, as it led people to believe they had to identify the other tools to understand some kind of deeper meaning. "'Off days' are a part of life," he writes, "whether you're a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller."
Larson also reprints a letter from an entomologist proposing to name a newly discovered species of chewing lice after Larson, Strigiphilus garylarsoni . The scientist explains that he did this "to honor the enormous contribution that my colleagues and I feel you have made to biology through your cartoons." The image of this insect also appears in the form of a geometric design on the inside front and back covers.
The next section shows a handful of cartoons that his editors rejected (or, in a few cases, that he never even bothered submitting), usually because they were considered in poor taste. Larson responds to everyone who's taken the trouble to complain, with a large print of a boy making a face.
A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960, where she witnessed human-like behaviours amongst chimpanzees.
Gary Larson is an American cartoonist, environmentalist, and former musician. He is the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to more than 1,900 newspapers for fifteen years. The series ended with Larson's retirement on January 1, 1995. In September 2019, his website alluded to a "new online era of The Far Side". On July 8, 2020, Larson released three new comics, his first in 25 years. His twenty-three books of collected cartoons have combined sales of more than forty-five million copies.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995. Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life. Larson's frequent use of animals and nature in the comic is popularly attributed to his background in biology. The Far Side was ultimately carried by more than 1,900 daily newspapers, translated into 17 languages, and collected into calendars, greeting cards, and 23 compilation books, and reruns are still carried in many newspapers. After a 25-year hiatus, in July 2020 Larson began drawing new Far Side strips offered through the comic's official website.
William Henry Mauldin was an American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was most famous for his World War II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters Willie and Joe, two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field. His cartoons were popular with soldiers throughout Europe, and with civilians in the United States as well. However, his second Pulitzer Prize was for a cartoon published in 1958, and possibly his best-known cartoon was after the Kennedy assassination.
The Family Circus is a syndicated comic strip created by cartoonist Bil Keane and, since Bil's death in 2011, is currently written, inked, and rendered (colored) by his son, Jeff Keane. The strip generally uses a single captioned panel with a round border, hence the original name of the series, which was changed following objections from the magazine Family Circle. The series debuted on February 29, 1960, and has been in continuous production ever since. According to publisher King Features Syndicate, it is the most widely syndicated cartoon panel in the world, appearing in 1,500 newspapers. Compilations of Family Circus comic strips have sold over 13 million copies worldwide.
Cool World is a 1992 American live-action animated black comedy fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi and written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor. Starring Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt, it tells the story of a cartoonist who finds himself in the animated world he thinks he created, but has existed long before. In this world, he is seduced by one of the characters, a femme fatale who wants to become human.
Strigiphilus garylarsoni is a species of chewing louse found only on owls. The species has no common name.
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman was an Indian cartoonist, illustrator, and humorist. He is best known for his creation The Common Man and for his daily cartoon strip, You Said It in The Times of India, which started in 1951.
Bernard "Hap" Kliban was an American cartoonist.
A gag cartoon is most often a single-panel cartoon, usually including a caption beneath the drawing. A pantomime cartoon carries no caption. In some cases, dialogue may appear in speech balloons, following the common convention of comic strips.
Jerry Van Amerongen is a cartoonist based in the United States. His work includes the comic panel Ballard Street, which has run since 1991. Before 1991 he drew a comic panel entitled The Neighborhood for ten years. He has been recognized with the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Award for 2004 and 2006 for his work on Ballard Street. Van Amerongen's work is currently distributed by Creators Syndicate.
Graeme MacKay is the Hamilton Spectator's resident editorial cartoonist. Born in 1968, grew up in Dundas, Ontario. A graduate from Parkside High School in Dundas, Graeme attended the University of Ottawa majoring in History and Political Science. There he submitted cartoons to the student newspaper, The Fulcrum, and was elected as graphics editor by newspaper staff. Between 1989 and 1991 he illustrated and, along with writer Paul Nichols, co-wrote a weekly comic strip, entitled "Alas & Alack", a satire of current day public figures framed in a medieval setting.
Brevity is a single-panel newspaper comic strip created by Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry, and currently drawn by Dan Thompson.
Nature's Way is an American newspaper cartoon series by Gary Larson published in 1976. It launched his career in cartooning and eventually led to his popular The Far Side series in 1980.
The Far Side Gallery 5 is the fifth and final anthology of Gary Larson's The Far Side comic strips. Cartoons from previous collections Cows of Our Planet, The Chickens are Restless, and The Curse of Madame "C" are featured, all of which were printed from 1992 to 1994. The foreword was written by Jane Goodall, who was commonly satirized in Larson's comics. The cover shows several flies in a movie theater watching a movie, in which a fly was calling for help because it was in a spoonful of tomato soup.
Leo Aloysius Cullum was an American cartoonist, one of the more frequent contributors to The New Yorker with more than 800 gag cartoons published. He started his drawing career after having served as a pilot in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and flying planes commercially for Trans World Airlines and American Airlines.
I Am Weasel is an American animated television series created by David Feiss for Cartoon Network and produced at Hanna-Barbera. It is the fourth of the network's Cartoon Cartoons. The series centers on I.M. Weasel, a smart, noble, and successful weasel, I.R. Baboon, an unintelligent and rude baboon who is envious of Weasel and acts as both his rival and friend, and the mischievous Red Guy, who often antagonizes the two.
"Stimpy's Invention" is the final episode from the first season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on February 23, 1992.
"Cow Tools" is a cartoon from The Far Side by American cartoonist Gary Larson, published in October 1982. It depicts a cow standing in front of a table of bizarre, misshapen implements with the caption "Cow tools". The cartoon confused many readers, who wrote or phoned in seeking an explanation of the joke. In response to the controversy, Larson issued a press release clarifying that the thrust of the cartoon was simply that, if a cow were to make tools, they would "lack something in sophistication". It has been described as "arguably the most loathed Far Side strip ever" while also becoming a popular internet meme.
