Summary

• Gary Larson's Far Side, notable for its always absurd, and often inscrutable humor, thrived because of its creator's unique creative process.
• In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Larson definitively clarified that he wasn't interested in digging into where his ideas came from, because he was always focused on capturing and developing them into satisfying cartoons through patient, careful work in revision.
• Larson emphasized the importance of creative intuition in his work, but that was only the first step in his process, which often took time to turn an idea into a finished cartoon, ready for publication.

The Far Side became successful because of how strange an inscrutable its humor could often be, rather than in spite of it. As its creator Gary Larson once explained, both the strip's approach to comedy, and its popularity with readers, were a result of his intuitive creative process, though this often left him as perplexed by his own work as audiences found themselves on a day-to-day basis.

In the book The Prehistory of The Far Side, the writer and artist gave a comprehensive overview of his creative process, in an effort to definitively answer his least favorite question: "Where do you get your ideas?" While most creators dislike this question, it was truly unpleasant for Larson – largely because he professed not to know.

Gary Larson clarified that there was no straightforward source of his inspiration, but rather that his cartoons were a result of an uninhibited flow of his ideas onto the page, which Larson called his "greatest strength" as an artist.

The Prehistory of The Far Side was released in 1990, in celebration of the cartoon's tenth year in publication – and just five years before Gary Larson would retire, ending the strip at the height of its popularity. The Prehistory is an invaluable insight into one of the most idiosyncratic creative minds of the 20th century, making it a must-read for any Far Side fan.

Gary Larson Confronts Every Writer's Least Favorite Question

On The Origins Of Far Side Jokes

The important thing to Gary Larson was not identifying the origins of his ideas, but rather what he did with those ideas once he had them.

Gary Larson never hesitated to it his distaste for the question, "where do your ideas come from?" During interviews throughout his career, he rebuffed this question, or at least, didn't answer it in the simple, quantifiable way some might have hoped for. In The Prehistory of The Far Side, the artist gave a more honest of why the question troubles him. Applying the familiar skewed perspective of his strip, Larson revealed that he "always found this question interesting," given that it "seems to embody some belief that there exists some secret, tangible place of origin for cartoon ideas."

Accordingly, this query conjured an amusing image in Larson's mind, reminiscent of a Far Side :

I see myself rummaging around my grandparents' attic and coming across some old, musty trunk. Inside, I find this equally old and elegant-looking book. I take it in my hands, blow away the dust, and embossed on the cover in large, gold script is the title, Five Thousand and One Weird Cartoon Ideas.

Of course, no creative endeavor is this simple. Ideas and inspiration can never be traced back to a single source, or a lone method of generation. Instead, as Gary Larson's creative process exhibits, successful art is produced through the mixture of seizing ideas when they come, and working on them until they are just right. This is why answering "where do you get your ideas" is no easy task for creators in general, and for The Far Side's creator in particular.

As Larson put it: "I'm afraid the real answer is much more mundane. I don't know where my ideas come from." What this emphasizes is that the important thing to Gary Larson was not identifying the origins of his ideas, but rather what he did with those ideas once he had them. This also makes it clear that he didn't deliberately make his work confusing or inscrutable, but rather that the weirdness of his jokes was often as esoteric to him as it was to the reader.

Larson itted "One Key Ingredient" To The Far Side's Creation

Good Old Caffeine

Gary Larson's creativity was centered on the effort to understand his own ideas –though the final product was not always a result of successfully doing so.

"I will it, however," Larson wrote, explaining the reading The Far Side was for audiences. His work was rooted in getting ideas out onto the page with as little hesitation – largely, for fear they would lose their potency in time – and then playing around with them until achieving a satisfying result.

In a sense, Gary Larson's creativity was centered on the effort to understand his own ideas –though the final product was not always a result of successfully doing so. Larson itted as much in The Prehistory of The Far Side:

Some of my cartoons (some would argue most), I realize, are not always understandable. I mean, I know what I was going for – I just have to face the fact that I don't always quite get there. "Off-days" are a part of life, I guess, whether you're a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air traffic controller.

As amusingly as Larson frames this idea of his "off-days," it is also a fascinating insight for anyone who has spent too long trying to understand a particularly strange Far Side strip. Were its creator to revisit the same cartoon, he might very well have the same perplexed response.

The Far Side's Art Was Intuitive, But Not Instant

Gary Larson's Jokes Took Finesse

[Gary] Larson was a creature of inspiration – but that was only the underlying current that motivated hard, disciplined work.

In The Prehistory of The Far Side, Gary Larson enlightens readers to the importance of his sketchbook to the creation of his cartoons. While his creative process centered on getting ideas down on the page as soon as they came to him, these ideas didn't always immediately become Far Side comics. Instead, there tended to be a period of gestation for Larson's jokes; working on them took care, and patience, and didn't always necessarily result in a viable final product that was fit for publication.

Larson further articulated this in The Prehistory:

The idea for any cartoon (my experience, anyway) is rarely spontaneous. Good ideas usually evolve out of pretty lame ones, and vica versa. (I've destroyed a few good cartoons by working them to death.)

That is to say, Gary Larson was no one-and-done, first-draft creator. Once an idea found its way to the page, it went through successive revision, and was deeply scrutinized, until its creator felt a sense of satisfaction with it. However, like any artist, Larson itted that he could lose sight of what was best for his own work – making the creation of any Far Side cartoon akin to a tight-rope act, where one wrong step leads to a fall.

In all, what is most exciting about Gary Larson's explanation of how Far Side comics were composed is how organic the process was. Like some of his greatest contemporaries, such as Garfield's Jim Davis, Larson was a creature of inspiration – but that was only the underlying current that motivated hard, disciplined work, which led him to the voluminous daily Far Side strips he produced over fifteen years, works of art that still have an enduring appeal to readers nearly thirty years after the strip ceased publication.

Source: The Prehistory Of The Far Side