Gary Larson Launches a Brand New Website for His Iconic Comic ‘The Far Side’ 25 Years After Retirement

The Farside Website Launch

The iconic Gary Larson comic The Far Side is being brought back to life nearly 25 years after Larson retired, with a newly designed website. The previous website hadn’t been touched in 19 years. The updated site promises new cartoon content as well as historic collections that ran between the years of 1980 and 1995.

If social sharing had been measured during the fifteen-year run of The Far Side, Gary Larson’s creation would rank as the “most shared” of all time. From science labs to dorm rooms, mail rooms to executive suites, The Far Side worked its way into our lives and invited us into a whole new world: brilliant, bold, and bizarre. The iconic comic panel has never been authorized to be available online. Until now.

In an open letter Larson explained why he’s he’s held off on doing this for so long and voices his trepidations for moving forward in this venture.

Truthfully, I still have some ambivalence about officially entering the online world — I previously equated it to a rabbit hole, although “black hole” sometimes seems more apropos — but my change of heart on this has been due not only to some evolution in my own thinking but also in two areas I’ve always cared about when it comes to this computer/Internet “stuff”: security and graphics. …Okay, so better security is, of course, just better security. But it helps. If they wanted to, I’m sure the Russians could get inside this thing and start messing with my captions. (I know they’re thinking about it!) But the other one — the advancements in graphics — has been a big incentive for me. Man, did those old computer screens suck when it came to visual nuances.

While we’ve missed it all these years, many of us are glad The Far Side is back.

And as it appears, so is Larson.

I hope you enjoy TheFarSide.com. I’m very grateful to the digital team at AMU, my longtime publisher, for all their input and hard work on this project. And for those of you who are familiar with The Far Side, and perhaps wishing it had been online before now (as opposed to those who are familiar with my work and have an opposing view), thank you for your patience. I hope all the reasons I’ve given here help explain why I’m so late to this party. But I’m finally here. And I could use a drink.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

Recent Posts