At this point I have written extensively about The Far Sideand my understanding of Gary Larson’s work has continued to rapidly evolve as I spend more time analyzing his vast output throughout his career. Case in point: when I started studying The Far SideI approached it with the view that comics “don’t have recurring characters” – but now I see it differently.
That’s because Larson made me rethink things like character and continuity. I would like to delve a little deeper into why the “recurring characters” issue in The Far Side continues to emerge, especially as successive new generations of fans encounter comics.
To be completely honest, I’m not going to argue that The Far Side it does, in fact, have recurring characters in the conventional sense. Instead, I would like to propose that do exactly what Gary Larson did with each of his panels – let go of the conventional.
To begin with, why is there a debate about “recurring characters” and “the other side”?
Gary Larson complicates a simple question
At least when it comes to newspaper comics, the character is essentially a product of continuity. To take Peanut, for example: creator Charles Schulz often wrote story arcs that took place over days, and sometimes did callbacks to stories that took place days, months, or even years earlier. Another famous example is Doonesburywhich I described in a previous article as essentially the opposite of The Far Sidebecause of its continuous narrative that spans over fifty years.
Undoubtedly, The Far Side lacks continuity, at least in a direct narrative sense. This is the root of the idea that the strip does not have “recurring characters”. Even if the same “character” appears in multiple strips – and there are a few select cases where I would say this has happened – their appearances are not explicitly linked and can be separated by years. One appearance is not based on the other and as such the characters do not develop. However, incongruously, as fans of Larson’s work will know, The Far Side it was full of familiar faces.
We came to use the term “recurring elements” to describe the ubiquitous cows, chickens, detectives, Grim Reapers, sharks, street vendors, and more that populated The Far Side. Because Larson drew the same archetypes or “standard” characters repeatedly throughout the comic, the author cultivated a sense of continuity in his readers over time. This led to the uncertainty that prevails to this day about whether characters are repeated in The Far Side – but I think there is a simple solution to this “problem”.
The Other Side may not have a plot, but I’d say it had a cast
What is “recurrent”, anyway?
As my understanding The Far Side grew, I came to think of it as analogous, in some ways, to a sketch TV show, like Saturday night live. In other words, Larson may not have developed characters like a sitcom would, but he utilized a rotating cast of regulars in various settings. The cows, of course, were the stars of the show, while figures like Igor, the mad scientist’s assistant, and Tarzan, the jungle man, were bit players who made the most of their time in the spotlight.
SNL Of course, it has recurring characters – although they don’t develop in the traditional sense, they become increasingly familiar to viewers over time. I would say that The Far Side operates in a similar way; his anthropomorphized cows, or perhaps the closest thing to a true recurring character the strip had, Gary Larson’s detective, play the same role in repeated strips, intending to deliver jokes that become increasingly familiar to readers. In this way, it is less a question of character continuity, or continuous plots, and more of repeated situations and scenarios.
I think it’s time to put the “recurring character” issue aside and focus on everything else the other side has to offer.
Larson’s complex and endlessly entertaining opus
To be honest, I’m less concerned about coming up with a “definitive” answer about whether The Far Side has recurring characters or not; I’m more concerned that I feel like some fans, especially new fans, get stuck on this issue. Ultimately, the biggest thing worth considering is the fact that Gary Larson himself was completely unconcerned about continuitycharacter development or anything like that. To me, this is the biggest indication that it shouldn’t be a very significant factor in readers’ understanding of your cartoons.
In a way, fixating on the idea of “character” in a Far Side comics is a distraction from what Gary Larson is trying to do with any given panel.
I came to love The Far Side as a serialized work of art, and Gary Larson as an artist, for how endlessly fascinating they both are. Larson has become a creative inspiration to me personally, and I think his approach to humor and creativity has an almost endless wealth of things to teach other creators. The Far Side the jokes are mixed with social commentary, philosophical reflections, and Larson’s observations about life, both human and non-human. In my opinion, these are the things that fans of his work should focus on in charting the development throughout the artist’s career.
In a way, fixating on the idea of “character” in a Far Side comics is a distraction from what Gary Larson is trying to do with any given panel. There is a reason why the term “elements” has become popular among those of us who examine The Far Side; Every cartoon is made up of a set of elements, including characters, setting, setting, joke, image, caption, and so on, and it’s how all of these elements come together that determines whether a Far Side comic will get a reaction, and how what kind.
The work of an unconventional artist like Gary Larson deserves to be seen from a different perspective
Reorienting readers’ approach to The Far Side
Although The Far Side the characters may not have developed, almost everything else in the strip did. From Gary Larson’s artistic style, to his ability to create a caption, to the way he found humor in a recurring set of ideas, if you look closely enough, there’s a lot of growth that can be observed since the beginning of The Far Side to Gary Larson’s retirement from the cartoon. I would say these too provide a form of continuity for The Far Sideto accompany the artist’s use of repeated images.
Little about The Far Side was conventional or standard, so it makes sense to me that we shouldn’t apply conventional or standard logic about characters to Gary Larson’s work.
In other words, to recognize how everything from ideas to characters reappears in Larson’s work, the reader must adopt a somewhat unconventional perspective. This is perhaps what I have come to appreciate The Far Side most, at least lately – the way comics’ idiosyncratic worldview forces me, as a reader, to think outside the box. Little about The Far Side was conventional or standard, so it makes sense to me that we shouldn’t apply conventional or standard logic about characters to Gary Larson’s work.