'Splain this Far Side cartoon to me.

[Sunshine and Smiles]

What an odd flame war going on! Lemme add to the fire by asking if anyone remembers, I believe it was from A Prehistory of the Far Side (aka the book where he explained the whole 'cow tools' thing) the whole gallery of shittily drawn panels? In one courtroom scene, there was a rug made up of concentric circles that he only drew half of. The defendant, a man with a genuine Smiley Face as his face, didn't even have legs. There was a caption, playing off of the obvious smiley face joke.

But were we supposed to infer that Larson was making a subtle comment, by not drawing legs for this man, about a lack of mobility for people with strange faces? Was he making the hilarious visual suggestion vis-a-vis a lack of carpet that this poor smiling face had no ground to stand on?

No, probably not. Larson was not a good artist (drawing artist - simply not where his talents were but a necessary medium to convey them) and it's therefore wild to think that something like a missing or not missing head of a bird subtly placed in the corner of a busy panel, when the action of the scene is so vividly between the two ladies, one of whom (the owner of the room) has a speaking role. We can probably all agree that whatever he was going for regarding pet seances, or pet owners, or psychics, didn't work and is simply not funny. But enough about the goddamn bird.

[PlainJain]

Originally Posted by Lamia

Or maybe he just wasn't very careful with the bird and birdcage because it was a small and unimportant part of the background and had nothing to do with the joke at all. Larsen presumably had deadlines to meet and may not always have had time to make everything perfect.

As an artist I have to agree with this. The missing bars just help it read better. Parakeets don't really have necks or beaks like mockingbirds, for example. It's a small, unimportant background detail - as is drawn without much care. IMO, if it really was headless there wouldn't be a bulge. The bulge is the head.

[Kenm]

Originally Posted by Biffy the Elephant Shrew

Cats don't bite off birds' heads and leave the rest.

And elephants don't wear trench coats.

[Crazyhorse]

To me it looks like a dead chicken with no head and a parakeet's tail.

How do we even know that Bootsy is supposed to be a cat?

Regardless, the answer is obvious: it's a comment on contemporary mores.

[cmyk]

Originally Posted by PlainJain

As an artist I have to agree with this. The missing bars just help it read better. Parakeets don't really have necks or beaks like mockingbirds, for example. It's a small, unimportant background detail - as is drawn without much care. IMO, if it really was headless there wouldn't be a bulge. The bulge is the head.

Sorry, the gag is: Bootsy the ghost cat bit off the bird's head, because the medium summoned it. Perhaps she saw the beheading and is sheepishly trying to maintain her composure. Also, the additional humor of the way she's calling Bootsy like you would a cat, is to make it that much clearer she's summoning a cat (on top of the name)

What you're interpreting as a very tiny head (with no eyes or a beak), is really an oval of foreshortened, circular crossection of the bird's decapitated neck.

Typical Larson birds:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

Shoot, just google Gary Larson birds.

[cmyk]

Shoot, it's not even his only joke along the same lines.

And speaking of Far Side birds, this is one of his best.

[NoClueBoy]

some pictureless descriptions


Last time this topic came, I had the same trouble: finding "Boid watching" cartoon.

[cmyk]

Two of my all time favs...

Front yard?

Handshake.

ETA: I think Larson's being too modest. Perhaps his skill in illustration lacks some technical skills, but his style is very original, perfect for his sense of humor, and IMHO, my favorite comic strip (pane?) artist.

[cmyk]

Also, another bird classic.

[PlainJain]

Originally Posted by cmyk

Sorry, the gag is: Bootsy the ghost cat bit off the bird's head, because the medium summoned it. Perhaps she saw the beheading and is sheepishly trying to maintain her composure. Also, the additional humor of the way she's calling Bootsy like you would a cat, is to make it that much clearer she's summoning a cat (on top of the name)

What you're interpreting as a very tiny head (with no eyes or a beak), is really an oval of foreshortened, circular crossection of the bird's decapitated neck.

Typical Larson birds:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

Shoot, just google Gary Larson birds.

Sorry, that's just your opinion. The joke is she's calling a cat. Cats are generally unresponsive to being called so she starts coaxing. It makes no sense at all for the cat to be at the fortune tellers office.

Also her expression is wrong if the client's cat bit the mediums birds head off. She would be horrified not roll-eyed.

[cmyk]

Originally Posted by PlainJain

Sorry, that's just your opinion. The joke is she's calling a cat. Cats are generally unresponsive to being called so she starts coaxing. It makes no sense at all for the cat to be at the fortune tellers office.

Also her expression is wrong if the client's cat bit the mediums birds head off. She would be horrified not roll-eyed.

It's a dead cat. Its incorporeal body summoned by the medium bit off the bird's head. Its a joke on many levels, including the way she's calling for the cat, but the core gag is the "sign" was not what was expected.

Granted it is my (and others) opinion, but c'mon, the bird doesn't have a head!

[Irishman]

Originally Posted by Munch

With no headphones or bird of prey beak, these are pretty similar.

I contest that. Those birds clearly have a beak and eyes (under sunglasses), and the top of the head is rounded. The one in the "Bootsy" picture is a flat circle, no indications of a head at all.

This guy just has a neck for a head, very similar to the bird in question.

I disagree. That one has a large round bump above the shoulders - exactly what a head is. The one in the Bootsy image does not have a round bump, it has a flat circle where the neck ends.

Not a bird, but Benny here has the same no-head head.

Benny has an obvious head - not only the round bump above the shoulders, but the chin and ears and nose and eyes.

And if Larson had put a beak on it, that bird would look like any one of these penguins.

Disagree. Those penguin heads are much longer and rounded, not flat circle right above the shoulders. And I find it telling that Larson did not put a beak on it.

A. Larson forgot to put a beak on a background bird in a cage, and the joke is "make fun of how we call our pets".

I would take the joke more about doing a seance for a dead cat, but that's me.

B. The bird is headless, and the joke is...?

That the medium is doing a seance for a dead cat, and the cat has given a sign that she hasn't noticed yet. Or the customer brought her dead bird to the seance. Or something. Just because it's not a great joke doesn't mean it isn't what Larson intended. He's had more than one that just didn't turn out very funny. But there are several options for a headless bird.

To me, it is obvious that the bird is headless, and that headless bird does not look like any other Larson birds that are drawn to have heads.

[NoClueBoy]

I called him and asked him. He said that he forgot, it was just a comic, and I should get a life.