While on my comic bender:
My other favorite syndicated comic of all time is The Far Side. Gary Larson's creation spawned the world of absurdist comic humor. His comics are all at once ridiculous, intelligent, hilarious and weird. They take a scientific stance in a bizarro world if they makes any sense.
His characters? Anyone and anything! They appear similar, but they are never consistent. They come in and leave. They are Billy far from a toy store. They are cows driving. They are deer talking ironically about "bummer" birthmarks.
The Far Side was the first and is still the only comic I can read alone and laugh audibly out loud. It is just original and funny. That's all.
The Far Side ran from 1980 until 1995.
The Far Side also produced two animated TV shows in 1994 and 1997, Tales from the Far Side and Tales from the Far Side II, that provide a perfect abstract take to the comics, moving without rhyme or reason through various Far Side comic panels in a fluid picture show that is at times both hilarious and disturbing. They really are unsettling cartoons that really fit the persona of The Far Side.
The Far Side is a comic that makes us think and not think all at once. It makes us stop and wonder, but at the same time makes us take the comic as nothing deeper than it is, a talking shoe or a bug's nightmare.
It is wonderful and perfect. Larson had a good run with the comic and like Watterson, walked out before it became irrelevant.
