Legendary newspaper comic The Far Side is a remarkable artistic achievement – but according to creator Gary Larson, drawing the strip was never his dream career; instead, he had always envisioned himself as a jazz guitarist. Larson’s dedication to playing guitar offers a unique insight into his fabled work in The Far Side, as like jazz the comic’s best installments often resulted from improvisation and creative chance-taking.

In a 2019 article celebrating the artist’s return to cartooning after a decades-long hiatus, The San Francisco Chronicle republished the very first Far Side panel; along with it, the paper shared an accompanying quote from Gary Larson, in which he mused on the life he envisioned for himself after his career was over.

Admirably, the vision of himself as a jazz guitarist that Larson gave to the newspaper in the 1980s was not entirely far off from how he ultimately spent his retirement, after the strip ceased publication in the mid-1990s.

Far Side’s Creator Wanted To Be A Musician, Not An Illustrator

Gary Larson Is An Avid Guitarist

The history of art is full of countless stories featuring creators who achieved success in one medium, yet at the same time yearned to express themselves in another. Many writers dream of being musicians – with The Far Side’s creator Gary Larson being one notable example. In multiple interviews over the years, Larson expressed his affinity for jazz guitar, which he played daily; accounts of his post-Far Side withdrawal from public life suggest that he has at least occasionally gigged with bands at local events.

As the San Francisco Chronicle – the first paper to publish The Far Side, precipitating its eventual national acclaim – noted, the strip’s creator was already vocal in the early years of its run that he didn’t expect it to continue indefinitely. Indeed, a full decade before Larson discontinued The Far Side in 1995, the Chronicle quoted him envisioning a very different creative outlet for himself:

I don’t necessarily see myself drawing cartoons for the next 25 years. I’m interested in jazz and I play the guitar, so here’s my fantasy: I’m on the bandstand of a smoke-filled club in New York. Joe Pass is on one side of me and Django Reinhardt’s on the other. I have on dark shades; a cigarette is hanging from my mouth; I have 100 times the ability I have today. I finish my solo and Joe Pass starts his. I lean over and say, ‘Come on Joe, get it together.’

Here, The Far Side artist envisioned himself more than holding his own with several jazz greats, in a “dream gig” scenario that has a great deal of insight into Larson as a creator to offer.

According To Larson, Writing The Far Side Was Like Playing Jazz

Improvisation & Experimentation Were Key

Gary Larson’s accounts of the creative process behind The Far Side from throughout his career make it evident that his passion for jazz had a direct impact on his work. Larson prioritized creative experimentation, as he sought to arrive at the best version of any given idea for a joke. His approach to the page was analagous to a band jamming, or an individual artist riffing; when he sat down to work at night, he would let the ideas flesh themselves out on the page, rather than starting with a specific composition in mind.

Larson’s work was rooted in a deep reservoir of creative intuition, and his artistic success came in large part as a result of a willingness to improvise, to take risks, and to play with both form and style. In a sense, this idea of “play” – of creating for its own sake, rather than toward some desired end – is crucial to all art forms, but it is particularly apparent in jazz, and though the end result may feel very different, in The Far Side as well.

Though his work as a writer and an illustrator put him in the rarefied air of successful and influential artists, Larson’s dreams of being a jazz guitarist were always at the core of his creative endeavors. A careful study of his work suggests that The Far Side’s creator thought like a musician, rather than a cartoonist – and the result was the idiosyncratic piece of popular art that he produced over fifteen years, which remains among the most memorable syndicated newspaper comics of the medium’s ascendant era.

The Far Side’s “Riffs” Are What Make It Truly Great

Gary Larson’s Talent Was Irrepressible

Just like a musician, Gary Larson became preoccupied with particular “riffs”, which he played at different tunes and tempos in order to achieve different responses from his audience. The truly memorable thing about The Far Side is its riffs: the recurring elements it used in a wide variety of hilarious ways, time and again. From pre-historic humans, to the silly adventures of scientists, to the destruction of the world, the obsessions and opinions of the creator behind the cartoons were always evident in The Far Side. In other words, they were the chords Larson was most comfortable playing.

The influence of jazz on The Far Side, from how it arrived at its jokes, to how it delivered them, may be subtle, but it is worth examining, especially for the insight it provides into the strip’s more inscrutable installments. While it may not be evident in every panel, the knowledge that Gary Larson wanted to be a jazz guitarist, rather than a cartoonist, changes readers’ understanding of his work. It also informs his legacy as a creator for future generations, while even back in 1985, it made clear why the strip would not be published in perpetuity.

The dream of being on stage with some of jazz’s greatest musicians – and even showing them a thing or two – makes it obvious that Gary Larson’s incredible creative talent had to find an outlet one way or another. Despite the fact that his success didn’t come in the way he might have wanted, it came in a way that let him leave an indelible impact on American popular culture, surpassing even his own ambitions and desires. The Far Side remains a monumental creative work, worth analyzing in every possible detail, in order to fully appreciate it.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle