Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The PreHistory of the Far Side

The PreHistory of the Far Side
reviewed on + 1775 more book reviews


Gary Larson popularized biology with his off the wall thinking. Nearly three hundred pages of Larson's cartoons, published and unpublished, with his thought processes explained. He begins with quite clever crayon drawings his mom saved, includes some early efforts published in Seattle local papers in the 1970s, and continues with his increasingly sophisticated syndicated work of the 1980s. For example, he was thinking of the migration of spiders by 'ballooning' but drew a picture of bison ballooning as 'More Facts of Nature' and with one balloon deflating. There are oddities such as captions mixed by the Dayton News when The Far Side was published next to Dennis the Menace. Strigiphilus garylarsoni is illustrated as well as innumerable cows. This is for aficionados of Larson's work; it does hold up well twenty-five years later.
PS 3 January 2014. I guess this book is no longer as enjoyable as I thought. After many weeks of being listed, I now delist it and tomorrow morning will put it on the shelf at the old soldier's home. There are few readers there but I think it might move quickly.