I don’t recognize it, either, though it does remind me a bit of this one.
There are other Far Side characters there as well, such as the older woman wearing glasses and a housedress, a dog and so forth. It seems clearly to be new art by Gary Larson specifically for this message.
I thought so. Very nice to see.
I remember the (possibly apocryphal) tale that Larson decided to discontinue The Far Side because he did not want his characters, ten years into the future, to be shilling for MetLife.
:dubious:
I do miss (besides the comic itself) all the Far Side merch like calendars, greeting cards, t-shirts, etc.
I had the one-a-day calendar for many years in a row. I still have them all in boxes downstairs(I kept them as I ripped them off).
But if he doesn’t want his characters shilling for MetLife (or whatever), they don’t. Presumably he controls the rights. Besides, his strip never really had regular characters, so I’m not sure how useful it would be for advertising purposes.
I always imagined GL drawing one new comic per month for his own pleasure, and that by now he’d have a nice amount (~300) of material to start slowly releasing. I hope I was right.
It may have been a “lead me not into temptation” quote. Sure, he’d have to sign on the dotted line, but he might not have had a high opinion of his own sales resistance. Knowing that Charles Schulz’ advert and merchandising revenue drew in more money than the GDP of some third-world countries might put a strain on anybody’s artistic integrity.
As for “useful for advertising purposes”… who knows. Madison Avenue, IMHO, lives on a different planet.
Sounds a lot more like Bill Watterson, who resisted merchandising his characters in any way, and fought hard to get total control over them from the syndicate so they couldn’t merchandise them without his approval. Larson pretty clearly never had a problem with merchandising the heck out of his comic.
Also, I always thought the Peanuts characters selling Dolly Madison and Met Life were quaint.
I recall when he announced his retirement, he said it was just too much pressure to produce a daily comic strip.
Of course, that would not preclude him from adding new ones to the website whenever he feels like it. Please feel like it, Gary! 
I guess we still haven’t recovered from glimpsing the dark side of Scott Addams.
The Far Side was a daily strip? It’s been so long, I don’t even remember. But I can see how it would be too much pressure. He had to convey the story or joke or whatever in only one panel and maybe a one-sentence caption. It’s not at all easy.
It was. I strongly suspect that it inspired a number of single-panel daily strips with offbeat humor, like Bizarro and The Argyle Sweater (the creator of which has apparently acknowledged the similarity to The Far Side).
Oh please, oh please.
Lol!
I once had a hardbound collection with contained a section of “Censored Cartoons.” One showed a surgical operation, with the surgeon dangling something between his fingers over a begging dog. To which was added the caption, “No, you didn’t see this one. Turn the page.”
There was also a hapless snake who was stuck and couldn’t slither out of a crib because of its bulging abdomen.
My all-time fave (actually appeared in the newspapers): We see a city street corner. Coming from one direction, a nerd rollerskating and grooving to a Walkman. From the other, Tarzan riding an elephant and leading a charging herd. Caption: “Brian has a rendezvous with destiny.”