When I was young, Sunday morning had some time devoted to reading the comics in the newspaper. In fact, there may have been a time when I turned on the TV and someone read the comics to me. I heard that a New York mayor or some other official did that for a time, but since I was never anywhere near New York City as a boy, I am sure that I never saw that broadcast. Blondie, Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Nancy, Popeye, and Beetle Bailey all were a part of the paper as I remember. I suppose that the newspaper comics played a great part, though I am sure not the only part, in the development of my sense of humor. I really looked forward to the Sunday paper. Today I hardly ever purchase one.
But I digress from my topic here. I want to discuss how my enjoyment of comics has progressed. From January of 1980 to January of 1995 my favorite comic was penned by a man named Gary Larson. The Far Side was a single paneled comic that focused on cows, snakes, humans and a variety of other topics all from a slightly slanted viewpoint of life. For a time, I cut the panels from the daily newspaper and saved them in scrapbooks. I would pick them up and read them pages at a time. Even though I had seen them before I still appreciated the humor. One evening I was fortunate enough to see Mr. Larson speak to an auditorium full of people. His speech centered around various panels projected on a screen to which he explained what caused him to draw it, or maybe even it explain it in case we had missed the humor in it. All in all, he seemed very humble and surprised that he was popular enough to fill an auditorium with fans. He didn’t seem to understand what his humor meant to us. Perhaps that is why he quit after 15 years. Whatever he is up to now, I wish him well at it. I include a representative sample of his fifteen years of daily work:
In all of its years of development, I have found a new creator that catches my sense of humor. Granted, not everything he does affects me the same way, but I usually enjoy his humor. The main difference is that I find him on the internet instead of in the daily newspaper. He writes a blog where he usually posts interesting gems such as this:
His blog posts usually explain why he came up with the idea, and believe me, some of the humor will be too sick for some. But I would like to recommend that you check Mr. Dan Piraro out at bizarro.com
I wonder if Gary Larson reads Dan’s work?
