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m_‮f

@ m_f @discuss.online

Posts
1888
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340
Joined
12 mo. ago

  • 2025-10-22

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  • Some background on this comic:

    Transcript (sketch):

    It's Professor Gilbert- He's come back from the grave to destroy us all!

    Actually, it was only prof. Simmons, the lab practical joker who had discovered a technique of rejuvenating dead tissue

    Transcript (commentary):

    I have absolutely no idea what the little doodle above means or where it came from, but it led to this Far Side. (And now I know where the latter came from, but I still don't know what it means.)

  • 2025-10-16

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  • Probably riffing on the movie Free Willy instead of SeaWorld directly

  • 2025-10-16

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  • It's from the site. My guess is that they do it in the cheapest way possible because there's often mistakes like that

  • 2025-10-16

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  • Some background on this comic:

    Transcript:

    A few days after this cartoon was published, my syndicate received a very indignant letter from someone representing the Jane Goodall Institute. Not only did my syndicate and I both get read the Riot Act, there was a vague implication that litigation over this cartoon might be around the corner.

    I was horrified. Not so much from a fear of being sued (I just couldn't see how this cartoon could be construed as anything but silly), but because of my deep respect for Jane Goodall and her well-known contributions to primatology. The last thing in the world I would have intentionally done was offend Dr. Goodall in any way.

    Before I had a chance to write my apology, another complication arose. The National Geographic Society contacted my syndicate and expressed a desire to reprint the cartoon in a special centennial issue of their magazine. My editor, aware of what had just occurred, declined, explaining why.

    Apparently, whoever it was that sent the inquiry from National Geographic, was shocked. They told my editor that "that doesn't sound like the Jane Goodall we know." They did some checking themselves, and an interesting fact was eventually discovered: Jane Goodall loved the cartoon. Furthermore, she was totally unaware that any of this "stuff" was going on. Some phone calls were made, and the cartoon was reprinted in the centennial issue of National Geographic magazine.

    I've since had an opportunity to visit Dr. Goodall at her research facility in Gombe.

    Everything's cool.

    "To refer to Dr. Goodall as a tramp is inexcusable—even by a self-described 'loony' as Larson. The cartoon was incredibly offensive and in such poor taste that readers might well question the editorial judgement of running such an atrocity in a newspaper that reputes to be supplying news to persons with a better than average intelligence. The cartoon and its message were absolutely stupid."

    —Excerpt from the above-mentioned letter that started the ruckus

  • Fascists really getting sloppy

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  • It could be a mix. It's hard to tell for sure, but the text on the sign really looks like other AI-generated text I've seen. It's really easy to take an existing photo, select an area and type in a prompt that will only affect that area, so the door being real or whatever doesn't mean much

  • Monads

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  • 2025-10-09

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  • I think it's a joke about government workers not wanting to put in extra effort. This employee cares about his job unlike every other one. Kind of a weird joke for The Far Side, though

  • Mormon Church Shooter’s MAGA Mom Shared Chilling Message Before Massacre

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  • That definitely reads as AI generated. I don't really get the point of making posts like that if you're not even going to write them yourself.

  • Just Let Me Select Text

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  • Disable user-select: none; (and variants) on body to be able to select text again. I like the idea of a blog post that calls out something annoying and demonstrates the annoyance inline, though

  • 2025-09-24

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  • Some background on this comic:

    Transcript:

    The most loving, gregarious dogs seem to get down to their basic instincts pretty fast when you reach for their food bowl midmeal. (For a real thrill, try reaching for it in slow motion. Dogs love the sensation that their food is being stalked.)

    I started playing with this tendency in dogs, and it just sort of evolved into the grizzly bear cartoon seen at left.

  • 2025-09-22

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  • This is an earlier comic of his, 1980 (copyright date on top right) is shortly after The Far Side was started and the art still kind of resembles his earlier strip Nature's Way. Here's another Nature's Way strip to compare:

  • 2025-09-20

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  • How are you viewing them? With an app or with a web browser? I haven't changed the way I've been posting them recently. Someone else messaged me recently about an error, but it turned out to be an issue with their client parsing the post wrong.

  • 2025-09-20

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  • An early version of this comic:

  • 2025-09-19

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  • For accessibility, and to make it easy to find later. The original page has the caption as regular text and I add it to the image, so it's easy to include it

  • 2025-09-18

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  • Neat, that page references this comic:

    He was featured in the syndicated comic strip The Far Side, which showed him as a clumsy person who spilled things in various stages of his life; as a baby (his cup), teenager (pen ink in his shirt pocket), and ultimately as an adult, driving into a water tower.

  • 2025-09-16

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  • An early version of this comic, from Gary Larson's pre-The Far Side strip called Nature's Way:

  • 2025-09-15

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  • I think the dog bowl is actually an oilpan, for changing oil. The hose is probably for washing cars getting said oil change.

  • 2025-09-15

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  • John Brown was a famous abolitionist. He was executed, and there was a question of what do with with his remains. "John Brown's body" then became kind of a meme and was turned into a song:

    As an aside, interesting note in the Wikipedia article about him:

    Brown was the leading exponent of violence in the American abolitionist movement, believing it was necessary to end slavery after decades of peaceful efforts had failed.

  • 2025-09-14

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  • Some background on this comic:

    Transcript:

    Because The Far Side is a vertical, single-panel cartoon, I've rarely had the luxury of being able to draw long things (like whales, snakes, ships, etc.) in an accommodating shape. In general, the perspective has to be from front to rear, as opposed to side to side. (Sunday cartoons, which I started not long ago, and modified dailies are the only exceptions.)

    In cartoon strips, you frequently see the latter approach—because the strip lends itself well to horizontal images. In The Far Side, as the examples on this page indicate, ships come at you head on, classrooms are view from either the front of the back, and riding in the car is often seen from the perspective of the backseat looking forward or from the windshield looking inward. I just can't draw a '59 Cadillac in profile.

    I'm saying this because I drew The Far Side for years without truly being cognizant of why I approached it this way. I was just trying to figure out ways to cram things into a little rectangle. It was a friend of mine (also a cartoonist) who pointed out that I had inadvertently developed one or two drawing skills in the process.

    The limitation of space I fought in the beginning ended up being the best drawing instructor I ever had.