- The “New Stuff” that you’ll see here is the result of my journey into the world of digital art. Believe me, this has been a bit of a learning curve for me. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. (True, I don’t get out much.) But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something familiar there—a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with “Cow tools.” (Let’s not get into that.) But as a jazz teacher once said to me about improvisation, “You want to try and take people somewhere where they might not have been before.” I think that my approach to cartooning was similar—I’m just not sure if even I knew where I was going. But I was having fun.
(SPOILER ALERT): Each one is better than the last. The first one is a classic absurdist Larson punchline, but you can tell he's still getting used to his digital tools. Feels like it would have looked better as one of his classic ink drawings. The second one is really funny, and the picture itself is beautiful. I feel like you could frame it as art, -it feels very atmospheric, alive, and "now". Actually like it better than a lot of his ink drawings. The third one initially hit me as the least funny because instead of a caption beneath the frame, there is a title, which kills the joke. If you just look at the scene ignoring the words beneath and it hits you what they're doing, that is downright hilarious, but it's supposed to dawn on you as you view it, -you shouldn't read it in the title. Ended up being funniest by far.
Interesting that all three are reflections on killing animals. Is that just a coincidence, because he was in some sort of mood, or is it a point of view? Never read Larson as making very political cartoons, but then I haven't really seen The Far Side since I was a teenager, so it's possible I just missed the point.
Hunting animals and animals hunting people have always been staples of his. If these are reflective of anything, I think it’s incidental. He’s always been turning those tables, but the only emergent theme for me has been absurdist rather than political. If he was Trying to be political I think I’d notice because it would stop being as funny. Third option: Maybe your observation says more about the world he deposited these latest comics into...