The Complete Far Side

Behold, it is here: the ultimate collection of cartoons by Gary Larson, whose “Far Side” revolutionized comics. “The Far Side” brought irony, non-traditional drawing styles and dry wit to the daily comics pages and inspired a generation of cartoonists, including yours truly, to try new approaches to the form. And now, for a mere hundred bucks, you can own an OED-thick collection of every single Far Side strip, a thousand of which you’ve never seen in another collection.

Many of the previously uncollected strips aren’t quite as funny as the ones you’ve seen in the calendars, T-shirts and older collections. But they’re still damned great, and they provide a better-rounded picture of the strip and its artist than the “greatest hits.” And there are a few gems you probably haven’t seen.

I would never go so far as to call a book that weighs 22 pounds “essential,” but this one is about as close as it gets.

Oh, the Irony

From today’s Associated Press:

On Wednesday, [North Korea] branded as “a laughing matter” Bush’s offer of a written pledge from five countries not to attack if the communist nation scraps its nuclear weapons program.

En route to Australia, Bush reacted to Pyongyang’s dismissal with a shrug. “This requires a degree of patience,” Bush said during a 35-minute session with reporters aboard Air Force One. “Kim Jong Il is used to being able to deal unilaterally with the United States. The change in policy is that he must deal now with a number of nations.”

“He has been saying he wants a security guarantee. We’re all willing to sign some sort of document — not a treaty — that says `we won’t attack you.’ But he needs to abandon his nuclear program and do so in a verifiable way.”

“A degree of patience”? For a country that has nukes and has threatened to turn the West Coast of the United States into a feiry, irradiated pit?

Iraq, of course, didn’t have nukes. Didn’t threaten the U.S. Wasn’t a danger to us…at all. Which is why we attacked. Because, in the end, Bush is every bit as much of a goddamned coward as he was when he ducked the draft back in 1972.

An aside: Some conservatives have written me to ask why lefties–the term should be retired in favor of “people who can both read AND think”–didn’t hold Clinton accountable for his draft-dodging the way we’re all over Bush for his. Here’s the answer:

Because, dumbasses, Clinton dodged the draft for a war he was against. Bush dodged a draft he was for. It’s called hypocrisy.

Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC Radio, New York

If you’re in New York City and near a radio, you may want to know that I’ll be talking about my book “To Afghanistan and Back” and the war in Iraq with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer tomorrow morning, Wednesday, October 22nd, from 10:05 am to 10:25 am.

Went Back to Ohio…

…and had a great time. Thanks to Sally Windle and the students at Lima Senior High School for a look at a vibrant school populated by an intelligent and diverse student body. For the rest of you, I was there yesterday talking about my cartoons, showing some slides and enjoying a great back-and-forth during the Q&A session.

The only sad moment for me was talking to an aspiring art student who came back from a visit to an art school in Pennsylvania dejected, not because he didn’t get in – he did – but because he couldn’t afford the tuition. Something’s very wrong with a country that allows its young people’s dreams to be shattered for lack of money…especially since we have no lack of money.

The Curious Tale of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

As the Administration’s tangled web of Iraq war lies unravels, today’s government-sourced report that Al Qaeda official/CIA prisoner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, doubtlessly hanging upside down in some stinking cell somewhere in South Asia minus a substantial amount of blood, murdered Wall Street Journal Danny Pearl surely rates a mention for the questions that it provokes.

Like:

Since when is the CIA authorized to hold prisoners? Why hasn’t Mohammad, if he was really involved in planning 9/11, been charged in a US court? Why not a military tribunal? What about the extreme likelihood that the US government is torturing the poor bastard? Or are we no longer a nation of laws?

And:

Could it be that the Bushies, unable to lay their greasy paws on Osama or Saddam, have decided to inflate the purported importance of the second-tier Al Qaeda prisoner they DID manage to snare?

For all we know, the very same guy who planned 9/11 for Osama is the same guy who slit Danny Pearl’s throat. Who knows? Anything’s possible. But that’s the point: we don’t know what’s going on because our government, paid by our taxes, refuses to tell us.

This ain’t America, folks. What it is, I’m not sure I wanna know.

Huzzah, President Bush!

We’ve waited a long time for this, but finally there’s reason to praise Bush: he’s sending 20,000 Marines to liberate the long-suffering Azeri people from the blight of totalitarian dictatorship exemplified by post-corrupt election rioting. “The fact that the US has long-term oil contracts with the current corrupt regime of Azerbaijan is no reason not to liberate the people of that oil-rich, yet impoverished nation,” Bush said. “What’s good for Iraq is good for Azerbaijan.”

Oh, wait. Bush didn’t say anything like that.

And he’s not President, either.

I’ll be away from the blog until early next week.

Saddle Up the Third Infantry Division

Oppressed Muslims in Azerbaijan have just suffered through a laughably corrupt election, wherein – for the first time since the independence of any post-Soviet state – power has been handed down from father to son. Now Azeris are rioting, but fortunately we know they can count on the U.S. to liberate them from this illegitimate ruler.

After all, we’d never let the fact that US companies have cozy sweetheart deals for Caspian Sea oil wells off the coast of Baku stop us from defending democracy.

Right?

Viva Las Vegas

Well, more accurately, Henderson. Along with fellow cartoonist-blogger Tom Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking and signing books at next week’s Vegas Valley Book Festival in Henderson, NV, a stone’s throw from Sin Strip, on Friday, Oct. 24 and Saturday, Oct. 25. I’ll be talking about my graphic travelogue “To Afghanistan and Back.”

More on the Comments Feature

Thanks for the e-mailed advice that I could add a comments feature while sorting out the asshole Bushites. But from what I hear, that would still require a lot more hourly monitoring than I’m prepared to devote to this blog. Maybe I could include a test to post that would filter them out, like quizzing them on why Bush lost the 2000 election!

The Horrible Truth About Art Comics and/or Postmodernism

Today’s New York Times puff piece on comix underachiever Art Spiegelman (Maus, bad New Yorker covers, nothing else worth mentioning) started me thinking about how artists work around their shortcomings. People like me, who have no shortage of ideas but aren’t the best draughtsmen around, end up doing smart, wordy cartoons for alternative newspapers using styles that allow us to avoid having to do a lot of detailed rendering. In other words, we work around our drawing handicaps.

Others have noticed that.

What people may not have noticed, or what I haven’t heard at any rate, is that a lot of trendy art comics types, like, say, Chris Ware and almost everyone working in contemporary fiction, work around their lack of ideas with a lot of dazzling artwork and typography.

Pick up a copy of Ware’s “Quimby Mouse” in a bookstore near you–don’t buy it, you’ll just want to bring it back–and you’ll see what I mean. The damned thingn is beautiful. Unbelievably pretty. And there isn’t a single idea in the whole goddamned book. But people buy it, and pretend that they “get it” when there’s nothing to get, because they feel stupid admitting that they don’t get it. And also because they can’t imagine that such an accomplished artist could be so bereft of original–hell, any–thought.

I’m thinking that postmodernism/deconstructionism is essentially a plot by folks without ideas to convince the world that an absence of ideas is itself an idea. The emperor, no clothes, you know.

So a world divided between idea people and art people has become a world divvied up between smart people who can’t draw and dumb people who can. Bee-yutiful.