Gary Larson

Larson’s work on The Far Side has earned him numerous awards, including the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society in 1990 and 1994. The National Cartoonists Society also named Larson Best Syndicated Panel Cartoonist in both 1985 and 1988. In 1993, The Far Side was awarded the Max and Moritz Award for Best International Comic Strip Panel by the International Comic Salon.

In 1994, Larson debuted a twenty-two-minute version of his first animated film, Gary Larson’s Tales From The Far Side, as a Halloween special on CBS television, and it quickly became a cult favorite. The film won the Grand Prix at the 1995 Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France. That film and its sequel, Gary Larson’s Tales From The Far Side II, were selected for numerous international film festivals, including Venice, Brussels, and Telluride, and were broadcast in various foreign countries. Both were produced with traditional cel animation, completely hand-inked and painted.

Music has also been an important part of Larson’s life. He started playing the guitar at an early age, moved to the banjo for a few years, and then ultimately returned to the guitar. Since retiring from daily newspaper syndication, Larson has focused his creative efforts on the guitar and his passion for jazz.

At the end of its run, The Far Side appeared in nearly two thousand newspapers. It in turn spawned twenty-three The Far Side books, including sixteen collections, five anthologies, and two retrospectives, twenty-two of which appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Over the years, more than forty million books and seventy-seven million calendars have been sold, and The Far Side has been translated into more than seventeen languages.

As for his inspiration, Larson often cites his family’s “morbid sense of humor” growing up and how his older brother loved to scare him whenever he got the chance. He was also once quoted as saying, “You know those little snow globes that you shake up? I always thought my brain was sort of like that. You know, where you just give it a shake and watch what comes out and shake it again.” He attributes much of his success to the caffeine in the coffee he drinks daily.

Larson currently lives in the coffee capital of the United States—Seattle, Washington—with his wife, Toni.