Throughout the 1980s, The Far Side became famous for its twisted takes on popular culture, as creator Gary Larson often flexed his knowledge of film, television, literature and more, creating jokes that encompassed both the obscure and the iconic. In the process, Larson’s comics earned their indelible place in the popular consciousness. Fans of The Far Side We know that Gary Larson was a movie buff and a passionate music fan – and also a musician, which provides context for The Far Side frequent hilarious portraits of musicians – as well as being a writer and literate individual. When most…
Author: Ambrose Tardive
The Far Side featured a number of hilarious jokes about doctors during its publication period, while Gary Larson skillfully undermined the seriousness typically associated with the medical profession. In your fictional world upside down, The doctors were among the most outrageous characters and appeared in some of Larson’s most notable panels. Not just doctors, but also dentists, optometrists and, of course, surgeons, were all at the center of several wickedly funny encounters. Far Side cartoons over the years that have used the public’s mixed feelings about the medical field as a springboard for some striking jokes. Coupled with the frequent…
Gary Larson, creator of The Far Sidehad a self-proclaimed and self-imposed rule not to explain even his strangest drawings – a rule to which he rarely made exceptions, as when he felt the need, years after retiring from the cartoon, to offer a correction on a panel he described as “almost universally misunderstood.” In The Complete Far Side, Volume TwoLarson attached a brief explanation to his cartoon “Dangling Cat”, which suffered as much as any other Far Side cartoon of its creator’s penchant for obtuse, hard-to-decipher comedies. In other words, the panel’s joke was more than unclear – it was…
Abrams ComicArts launched the third volume of the publisher’s series bringing together The Simpsons classic comics “Treehouse of Horror” – completing an omibus trilogy, which brings together every issue of the iconic comic book iteration of the Halloween-themed anthologyreleased over more than twenty years, in three must-have hardcover editions. Screen Rant is pleased to share an exclusive look at “Margemary’s Baby” – written by acclaimed comic book author Gerry Duggan, with art by esteemed illustrator Philo Noto – a story of Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Ominous Omnibus Volume 3: Diabolical fables of diabolical delicacies. Originally published in 2012, the story…
In 1992, author and artist Gary Larson produced some of the strangest panels in the history of The Far Side – including one of his darkest jokes, at least by today’s standards. In the early 1990s, Larson’s reputation for absurd and “campy” humor was deserved, and its ability to leave readers wondering”What?”reached new levels of specialization. According to Larson, The Far Side was designed to “test the reader’s reflexes” – and by that he meant that his goal was to provoke a reaction, be it giddy laughter, or utter confusion, or utter consternation. While he didn’t always get the response…
Peanut had its share of unusual characters, but Perhaps the strangest in the strip’s history was a boy known only as “Shut Up and Leave Me Alone”, whom Charlie Brown tried to befriend – unsuccessfully, of course. – in a sequence of panels set at the 1971 summer camp. “Shut Up and Leave Me Alone” is an example of the path Peanut creator Charles Schulz often repeated a joke in successive strips, before deciding that it had run its course. Part of what kept Peanut lasting fifty years in a row ultimately was Schulz’s talent for knowing how long a…
Oni PressOne of the comic book industry’s most exciting indie publishers continues to expand its nascent “Nacellverse” with the release of Make masters #1. Over forty years after the debut of the original toy line, these memorable figures will now be part of the action in the shared continuity of Oni, which also includes Baker mice from Mars, RoboforceAnd more. Screen Rant is thrilled to Share an exclusive look at Make masters #1, by writers Dennis Culver, Matt Hotson, and artist V. Ken Marion. The series is the long-awaited relaunch of the franchise, which remains a fond memory of ’80s…
DC Comics has announced its latest mobile content initiative, DC GO!, which will launch next month with a slate of original ongoing titles, in addition to making a number of iconic stories and editions accessible on mobile platforms For the first time. Published on DC Universe Infinite Go! And its new exclusive titles are heralded as “A new frontier of webcomics.” DC GO! Launching November 20, 2024, it will debut with a trio of original titles: Harley Quinn in Paradise, Nothing but NightwingAnd Renaissance of Raven. The publisher also touted the iconic Batman: Shut up storyline as the first classic…
In the 1960s, baby Peanut the character Linus was faced with an unexpected antagonist: his grandmother who “hates blankets”. Committed to making him give up his addiction, the Van Pelt children’s grandmother showed that she was willing to go to extreme lengths to get her grandson to give up his security blanket, in a series of memorable drawings from the strip’s second decade. Linus is a fan favorite Peanut A mainstay of the gang, and much of his enduring popularity is the mix of his deadpan intelligence, which often made him seem one of the more mature ones. Peanut characters…
In one of the first and most memorable Peanut In the storyline, Charlie Brown renamed himself “Mr. Spaceman”, a visitor from Mars – and in the process, he developed a surprisingly different dynamic with his usual counterpart Lucy van Pelt. This hilarious recurring arc took up much of March 1955, which means these Peanut cartoons are approaching their 70th anniversary. Charlie Brown’s transformation into a Martian was precipitated by Peanut strip on February 28, 1955, in which Patty – not Peppermint, but rather, Peanut Original Patty – stated that “You’ve never been anything but good old Charlie Brown… and that’s…