Cartoonist Gary Larson appears to be bringing his legendary comic strip "The Far Side" out of retirement, with fans noticing that its official website was updated over the weekend with a new cartoon and a message announcing the news.
“Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen," the message reads, along with a Larson-drawn cartoon of a man using a blowtorch to thaw out a cow, a dog, a caveman, a child, and a woman, which fans would recognize as their favorite Far Side characters, reports The New York Times. "A new online era of The Far Side is coming!”
The strip was at one time a multi-million dollar empire. It ran from Jan. 1, 1980 through Jan. 1, 1995, and resulted in cartoons that ended up being used in calendars and on coffee mugs, greeting cards, t-shirts and more. Overall, when Larson announced he was retiring in October 1994, the cartoon's merchandise resulted in bringing in an estimated $500 million.
Larson, though, fiercely protected his comic strips, sending out a cease-and-desist letter to the website Comic Mix in 2008 warning about using one of the cartoons in a column about the comic strip's end.
He said it was "flattering" that fans have created websites, but he found it emotionally difficult to have his work used without his consent.
“These cartoons are my “children,” of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me," he wrote.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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