Gary Larson

Gary Larson grew up in a blue collar household in a blue-collar city, Tacoma, Washington. He played jazz guitar and worked in a music store, and in 1976 he sent six cartoons to Pacific Search, a regional science and nature magazine. They sent him $90, and that struck Larson as a lot more enjoyable work than the music store. His first steady work as a cartoonist was for The Sumner News-Review, a weekly paper in a Tacoma suburb. The job paid $3 a week. In 1979, The Seattle Times started carrying Larson's once-a-week work, titled Nature's Way, for $15 a strip. The panel drew some complaints of being sick and offensive, and a few complains were enough to get it canceled. Just as The Times pulled the plug, though, Larson took a trip to California to interest The San Francisco Chronicle in his work. The Chronicle offered Larson a daily panel, re-named it The Far Side, and began syndicating it to other newspapers. The Far Side eventually appeared in almost 2,000 newspapers, and every "best of" collection has been a best-seller. Distasteful, disgusting, and delightful, The Far Side often offended those with delicate minds. Nature's bloody nature was a recurring theme, and Larson gained an enthusiastic following among scientists. A species of chewing lice that infests owls was named in Larson's honor, Strigiphilus garylarsoni. Larson took a sabbatical from The Far Side in 1988, travel…