A Stripped-Down Life Without Larson's `Far Side' Around

We must try to do something about post-Gary Larson cartoon life. Here's your chance.

The biggest news this past week - at least news that people talked about around the office water cooler - wasn't about our Haitian policy, or Clinton or Yeltsin.

No, the most remembered headline last Monday was the announcement that as of Jan. 1, 1995, Gary Larson was calling it quits. Now, that's news that affects millions of us.

Where will be that "Far Side" cartoon you can post by your desk?

Where will be that "Far Side" cartoon that, no matter how crummy your day went, gave you a smile?

Oh, those cows!

And, most important, what will happen to the "Far Side" cows, the ones that could stand up on their hind legs, that would tell each other such philosophical gems as, "And, as you travel life's highway, don't forget to stop and eat the roses"?

One can understand why Larson wants to retire at the top. He's been at it for 15 years, except for a 14-month sabbatical that began in 1988. There is no assistant to help him come up with ideas as he sits before a drawing board in his Seattle home. Sometimes a cartoon deadline isn't met until 3 a.m. He was fatigued, Larson said, and he didn't want his works easing "into the Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons."

That still leaves all his fans stranded.

So here's the deal. Got a "Far Side" cartoon in you? Draw it, send it into this column. It'll be one way to say goodbye to Gary

Larson.

We'll print as many as we can, and don't be embarrassed by your efforts. I mean, alongside today's column is my idea. Fred Birchman, a former Seattle Times artist now teaching at Seattle Central Community College, was nice enough to do the drawing for me.

Larson's gift

It's an interesting exercise, trying to mimic a "Far Side" cartoon. You realize the special gift that is Larson's, even though he's always been self-effacing about it.

Larson once said, " `Where do you get your ideas?' has always been the question I'm most often confronted with . . . I'm afraid the real answer is much more mundane: I don't know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine."

Send your single-panel cartoons (none can be returned) to:

Erik Lacitis, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111.

The deadline is Oct. 21.

You might also remember that Gary Larson, whose cartoons now run in more than 1,900 newspapers, first began appearing in a daily newspaper in The Seattle Times. That was in 1979, when the cartoon was called "Nature's Way." (Of course, this paper also canceled the cartoon because it was generating too many complaints, but by then Larson had attracted the interest of Chronicle Features, his first syndicate.)

Go to it. Think of all those bare, cartoonless refrigerator doors that'll thank you.