Websnark

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at December 29, 2005 6:25 PM

You don't get why there's so few inspired by the Far Side? Oh, I can answer that one.

Back when Larson was at his prime, countless people I knew wondered how he could come up with those gags. I knew - there's a certain threshold you have to pass to be able to write humor like that at all consistently. It takes the ability to look at everything we take for granted in reality through a fractured lens.

Once you're able to gleefully stand all of reality on its head, then you can get started on imitating, or moving beyond the work of, Larson. Very few people are able to do that, so you'll have a hard time finding artists following the same trail Larson did.

For my money, the closest is Hilary Price's "Rhymes With Orange." Every so often, she produces a strip that just floors me with its bizarre insight. Though it is a syndie, so maybe that doesn't count for these discussions.

Comment from: Tyck posted at December 29, 2005 6:26 PM

Gout? How'd you manage that? Gout's the punishment of rich people who never partake in the simple joys of peasant fare or something. Can you manage to get it by losing weight as well as gaining? Is this another side effect of the surgery, like the low alcohol tolerance? Inquiring minds want to know! Inquiring Minds.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at December 29, 2005 6:38 PM

Can you manage to get it by losing weight as well as gaining?

Yes.

Further, it's helped along by degenerating joints, and my joints are pretty degenerate.

Comment from: Tyck posted at December 29, 2005 6:40 PM

Ooch. Yah, that makes sense. Good luck with that.

Comment from: Lyndon W posted at December 29, 2005 6:48 PM

Other "Farsidean" comics:
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal- http://www.smbc-comics.com/
A Gallery of Comics- http://agallery.keenspace.com/Comingsoon/Cartoon_Pagex.html
Cliptoons-http://www.partiallyclips.com/cliptoons/cliptoons_main.php
Inside the Box- http://www.boxcomics.com/
Voices in my Hand- http://www.voicesinmyhand.com/
Wulffmorgenthaler- http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/

And those are the ones I can think of.

Comment from: Lyndon W posted at December 29, 2005 7:15 PM

Still not a lot, I can't remember the others. None of them come very close to Far Side.

Comment from: Bo Lindbergh posted at December 29, 2005 7:34 PM

Also, NICHTLUSTIG. Sample panel from April 15, 2005:

• (blackboard text) Objects that are eminently suitable for juggling:
  • Hedgehogs
  • Glowing coals
  • Chainsaws
• (hedgehog says) Can I leave? I'm feeling dizzy.

Comment from: Lyndon W posted at December 29, 2005 7:45 PM

Ah, those crazy Germans.

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at December 29, 2005 7:53 PM

Hm. Well. I suppose it's my own fault for not writing that Examiner article earlier. :)

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at December 29, 2005 8:17 PM

Hmm...

http://catmydog.keenspace.com/d/20031204.html

Is it just me, or did this particular strip actually rip off a Far Side comic? I'm fairly certain I remember that exact same strip with a slightly different punchline done by Gary.

Comment from: Tyck posted at December 29, 2005 8:27 PM

I remember a Far Side with roughly the same visual setup- cows walking into the slaughter house- but I don't recall that punchline. My memory says it was one cow speaking to another standing in line..but it's been a good time since I read my collections.

Comment from: lucastds posted at December 29, 2005 9:22 PM

possibly one of the funnier barf jokes I've read

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at December 29, 2005 9:28 PM

I think part of it may be that Far Side ripoffs had their heyday in newspapers in the 90s, and were already cliche by the time people started doing webcomics in job lots. Most of the people who could pull one off for more than a month didn't want to catch that crashing wave. :)

Comment from: sqbr posted at December 29, 2005 9:50 PM

I kept thinking "I know I've seen that sort of humour around lots" and eventually realised where: first off, our local paper runs "Bizarro", but the main place is on birthday cards.

That german comic reminded me of the absurdly beautiful farside-esqe paintings of Marunde (I have this one on my wall, stolen from a magazine in German class :))

Also, any fluent german speakers able to explain what the hell the blue five-pouched thing is in this comic? (The joke is "I'm sorry, sir, we don't have any bags, would you like to use one of our pouched animals?")

Comment from: neongrey posted at December 29, 2005 9:59 PM

The 'free blow jobs' one is a variant on 'cat fud', too, if you know it. Which of course you do. It's still awesome, though. :P

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at December 29, 2005 10:25 PM

Far Side stopped doing it for me real fast. For every Cat Tools and full brain, there were weeks and weeks of ceaseless greeting-card tedium. I'd love to argue that I came in during the decline, but then I went back and read everything else I could get my hands on.

Besides, try being the designated Wacky Kid for your school district, growing up in the eighties. Guess what people bring you? Far Side comics. "You'll like this, Wednesday! It's surreal! You like weird things!" Yeah, how many years did I have to wait for my first exposure to Diamanda Galais and Nina Hagen while people brought me Far Side comics? YES. I KNOW. IT'S A COW. NOW POUR OUT THE BLOOD THERE, SMACK JACK.

I recall a vogue for single-panel Surreal Situation stuff in the late eighties and early nineties. Every small paper had something. This didn't ameliorate any archive trawls; I felt like I *should* like The Far Side, and I had a responsibility to point at the material and understand why that was effective and 80% of, like, Bizarro wasn't. That's when the apathy set in.

The crushing, crushing apathy.

Comment from: quentin mcalmott posted at December 29, 2005 10:42 PM

Brevity and F Minus are other far side-ian comics. Or, close.

Also, I really like Voices in my Hand, as Lyndon W. pointed out already.

Comment from: Alexis Christoforides posted at December 29, 2005 11:25 PM

You even see (as much as this scares me) strips that cite Garfield or Cathy.

So I'm the ONLY one here who thinks Garfield used to be funny?

Also, the olde schoole The Parking Lot is Full was Far-Sidean,">Far-Sidean,">http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc182.gif">Far-Sidean, but not all the time. This strip in particular reminds me of A Softer World, although it should be vice versa I guess.

Comment from: Doctor Setebos posted at December 29, 2005 11:25 PM

Bif Sniff is also really good for this kind of single-panel "Far Side-esque" gag comic format type thing.

But nothing beats Voices in my Hand. But I have to say that since I technically work for Bill Charbonneau.

Comment from: Alexis Christoforides posted at December 29, 2005 11:26 PM

D'oh! Decipher what you can.

Comment from: kirabug posted at December 30, 2005 12:41 AM

Eric - for the gout - black cherry juice. Some kind of gout-busting enzyme specific to black cherries. Guy my husband worked with swore by it.

As for Far Side, love it. Bought the full collection for my husband for Christmas and holy Hannah is it heavy.

Comment from: Natural Slave posted at December 30, 2005 12:55 AM

Alexis Christofordes, you are my hero for mentioning PLIF before me.
The Parking Lot is Full, as is apparent from any random comic from it's archives (like this one: http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc077.gif or this one: http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc084.gif ) was sort of what the Far Side would be like if Larson did a hellish cocktail of controlled substances and waited until he was strung out, delusional, in withdrawl and hating life to draw his comics. Old (pre-Jay) Flem give me that great 'Gary Larson on bad Acid' vibe some of the time, but not with the consistency or to the degree that Flem did. May it rest in peace (in hell).
-Wilhelm

Comment from: Alexis Christoforides posted at December 30, 2005 12:56 AM

Brevity and F Minus are other far side-ian comics.

Oh man, F-Minus! I was wondering what happened to it once it left ASU's school paper for the big leagues!

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at December 30, 2005 1:12 AM

I'd just like to point out that, when I wrote Cat, I saw Cow.

This explains tonight's dinner.

Comment from: Robert Hutchinson posted at December 30, 2005 1:34 AM

I will shamelessly agree with the co-proprietor. Far Side could be outstanding, but it went way too often for "animal + weird situation = automatic hilarity".

Comment from: Sven8705 posted at December 30, 2005 1:41 AM

Wow, I totally forgot about F-minus after it left the State Press.

Comment from: EsotericWombat posted at December 30, 2005 2:21 AM

Well, it's not Farsideyian per se, but the Chopping Block certainly delivers single panels of anarchic weirdness (though now that I look, it's launched into a bit of a temporary departure from that) Just all along the same general theme.

Comment from: Chaomancer Omega posted at December 30, 2005 2:28 AM

[boxquote]So I'm the ONLY one here who thinks Garfield used to be funny?[/quote]
No, Alexis, you're not. Garfield, in its prime, could be hysterical at times. Sometimes it was in its simple "shots of life" bits (I still think Lyman's arrival was one of the funniest character introductions ever), and sometimes the strip could just get darned surreal. I don't think it ever was consistently great, but in the early years there was a lot more good than bad.

As for Far Side clones... I don't know about how many Far Side webcomics are out there, but there are a surfeit of syndicated gag panels. My newspaper right now has Non-Sequitur, Pluggers, and Bizarro, and at one point had the Quigmans (until it was thrown out because nobody liked it); right now they've been giving trial runs of comics to add to the page, and of the six, half are gag panels (Rhymes With Orange, The Flying McCoys, Brevity). To be frank, none of the "trial" ones have impressed me (including the ones that aren't gag panels, incidentally). Bizarro is kind of hit-and-miss with me, Pluggers never makes me laugh, and Non-Sequitur is good up until Wiley goes on one of his extended political rants. (He may be right some of the time, but he isn't funny when he's doing it.)

So I'm not sure I'm really looking to find gag panel webcomics. Too many gag panel strips fail to be funny... usually because they don't have much of a joke to go on. A good gag panel needs a gag that'll make you laugh when you see it (or read the punchline), and then, if it's really good, you'll laugh more as you keep thinking about the ramifications. Most gag panels don't reach that second stage, and many have trouble with really achieving the first.

Comment from: Chaomancer Omega posted at December 30, 2005 2:28 AM

...And of course I go and screw up the boxquote because I wasn't paying attention to either the proper bracketing or the closing tag. This is why you don't multitask discussion forums.

Comment from: Maximillian posted at December 30, 2005 2:33 AM

Oh... Someone beat me to the punch on Parking Lot is Full. "You shot my dog... Why did you shoot my dog?" Jesus in heaven, I think I could've developed a six pack laughing at that in college.

Anyone else think that Gary Larson happened, and will never happen again, and it probably involved some kind of planetary alignment? And I don't necessarily mean that the guy was zapped with a "funny" laser, but that the entire planet seemed ready to receive ten years of messed up comics and elevate them to the level of pop culture importance for a while. Then it was over. No one even really asks what happened to him anymore.

Comment from: William_G posted at December 30, 2005 3:03 AM

There'll never be another Far Side the same way there'll never be another Calvin And Hobbes. Sometimes someone just nails an idea so dead-on that nothing can possible top it.

Comment from: Scarybug posted at December 30, 2005 11:55 AM

I can't beleive no one's mentioned Doctor Fun! "The first web comic" and all that.

The Far Side was brilliant and wonderful, but there were similar comics that came before. You can see the influence of B. Kliban and Chas Addams.

Comment from: Petie posted at December 30, 2005 1:22 PM

There's also the now-defunct, want-to-get-it-rolling-again Pork Wrench.

Comment from: Flogger posted at December 30, 2005 3:08 PM

Hey, Eric - there's always The PC Weenies. Single panel toons, not necessarily Far Side fare - but more for the techies and uber-geek variety.

Comment from: Brendan posted at December 30, 2005 3:24 PM

I don't know...I see plenty of Far Side ripoffs in the Globe and Herald. Not many on the net, but plenty in the papers.

Comment from: Howard Tayler posted at December 30, 2005 3:51 PM

I think the best single-panel webcomic out there is Doctor Fun. It's also one of the very first webcomics, hmaking its world wide web debut in September of 1993.

--Howard

Comment from: Tangent posted at December 30, 2005 4:27 PM

I have to agree with Kirabug here. My father suffers gout (he's a hunter, and worked at the GE for decades, constantly on his feet, so I suppose that caused the wear-and-tear to allow for gout) and when he's suffering it, my mom makes him a cherry pie... and it will go away.

The cherries are what do it, not the pie. ;) So the cherry juice is something you can have... and have enough of to help deal with the gout.

Good luck!

Rob H., who is wondering just how perverse Eric's joints are that he calls them degenerates... ;)

Comment from: gwalla posted at December 30, 2005 10:20 PM

Gout? Ouch. My dad gets that, and I know it's godawful because it makes him intolerable. Time to drop a whole lot of proteins from your diet.

Comment from: IntentionallyWrong posted at January 3, 2006 8:23 AM

I always thought the Perry Bible Fellowship retained the spirit of Far Side without relying on the format. "Ants Dance" is kind of an obvious example.

Comment from: flemco posted at January 3, 2006 7:08 PM

It should be noted that this guy is my uncle. Talk about nepotism in webcomics.

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