Gary Larson may be bringing back 'The Far Side' and Twitter is thrilled: 'Oh please, oh please'

Ethan Alter
·Senior Writer, Yahoo Entertainment

Your move, Bill Watterson. A quarter century after publishing his last comic strip, Gary Larson may be heading back to The Far Side. At least, that seems to be the message of a semi-cryptic note and accompanying cartoon posted at the beloved comic’s official website. Underneath the image of a cow — one of Larson’s favorite subjects — being unfrozen from an ice block reads the following announcement: “Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!”

While it’s possible that Larson is merely planning to re-release previously published material online, we’re not alone in hoping that this is a declaration of un-retirement. Along with Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County, The Far Side is one of the all-time great newspaper comic strips and came to define an entire era of cartooning during its 1980 to 1995 run. Just as Bloom County’s Berkeley Breathed revived his long-defunct strip on Facebook several years ago, Larson appears to be bypassing physical media for a digital re-launch. That’s a pronounced change from the cartoonist’s past attitudes about comics in the computer age: as The New York Times noted, Larson once sent a cease-and-desist to a website that ran one of his classic single-panel strips without his approval.

Now that Larson appears all-in on digital comics, Twitter is awash in classic Far Side strips as social media celebrates his hoped-for return.

Of course, there’s always a little bit of concern whenever a franchise returns from a long break. In the case of The Far Side, fans are specifically worried how Larson’s social and political views may have evolved — or, depending on your point of view, devolved — over the past 25 years.

We’re just hoping that the return of The Far Side comic means that the 1994 TV special gets the Blu-ray release it deserves.

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