Word: larson
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Though the young Larson liked to draw dinosaurs and gorillas, he did not dream of becoming a cartoonist. Instead, as a communications major at Washington State University in Pullman, he hoped someday to save the world from mundane advertising. As it turned out, the world was not ready for salvation when he graduated, so he played the banjo in a duo and worked at a music store. The latter job so depressed Larson that in 1976 he temporarily quit to try his hand at drawing. In two days he sketched a few cartoons and sold them...
Parents, be wise and heed this advice: watch how your children spend their free time, because playful pursuits have a way of shaping adult occupations. Take Gary Larson. As a youngster growing up in Tacoma, Larson collected lizards, snakes, frogs, salamanders and one monkey. Aided by his older brother, he regularly flooded the backyard to create swamps. Once, for a change of pace, the Larson boys hauled sand into the basement and built a miniature Mojave complete with horned toads. Throughout it all, Larson's parents remained remarkably serene, even that day when Dad, a car salesman, came home...
...Today Larson is 36, but he still pursues an antic fascination with nature in his daily cartoon The Far Side, which appears in 550 newspapers. Larson's work has been collected in eight books (total copies: 5 million); his latest, The Far Side Gallery 2 (Andrews, McMeel & Parker; $9.95), is the nation's top- selling trade paperback, according to Publishers Weekly. His sketches adorn T shirts, mugs, calendars and greeting cards. His creatures may not be as ubiquitous as Garfield or Snoopy, but then, Larson began selling his work only ten years ago. Says he of his rapid success...
...husband, sitting in his easy chair. "It's the call of the wild," she says. As a woman crouches to feed nuts to two squirrels, one of the furry creatures says to his companion, "I can't stand it . . . They're so cute when they sit like that." Larson's humans fare no better when . dealing with their own kind. As two scholarly explorers approach a tribal hut, the occupants race around hiding the TV set and telephone and yelling, "Anthropologists! Anthropologists!" The Far Side is not for those who think Dagwood and Blondie stretch the limits of wackiness...
...Larson lives and works in a spacious Tudor-style house in suburban Seattle. His artistic sensibility invades his home: a papier-mache python winds through the living room, and a bright green Paraguayan tree frog croaks in a terrarium. At Christmas a wreath festooned with a rubber chicken hangs on the front door. Larson, clad usually in T shirt, jeans and running shoes, carries sketchbooks wherever he goes, doodling and jotting down phrases. But the hard labor takes place at the drawing board overlooking Union Bay, where he sits and stares, and stares and sits, until the ideas flow...