Was Gary Larson the best cartoonist there ever was?
[QUOTE=lissener]
I hate having my net off at home, and coming into the end of these three-page threads on my first day back at work.
Larson was pretty dang funny, but I bristle a bit at seeing him described as the “best there ever was,” considering that he pretty much started where B. Kliban left off. For years I was unable to look at a Larson cartoon without getting pissed off that he was so thoroughly ripping off Kliban.
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[QUOTE=lissener]
I’m boggled that you think such a quote is necessary. It was pretty much a given, when Larson first appeared on the scene, that he was a Kliban follower; it’s there in every panel. When Larson’s work first started appearing, Kliban was at that time pretty well known. There was even something of a subgenre of books parodying his hugely successful *Cat *book. *Cat *was a publishing phenomenon. His followup books became progressively weirder, and then he died. And then The Far Side came along, and it was simply a given where the drawing style and the askew humor sprang from.
Not that Kliban didn’t do lots of drawings that weren’t like the ones that most inspired Larson, and not that Larson didn’t eventually evolve his own distintinctive style. And not that the random grab of Klibans I linked to above are utterly indistinguishable from Larsons. But in a culture saturated with Kliban imagery, as it was at the time, there was simply no question as to the giant on whose shoulders Larson stood.
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[QUOTE=lissener]
K thanks.
There’s ample “cite” in the examples linked to. If you choose to claim not to see the parallels, I’m personally not all that interested in trying to convince you. Your opinion doesn’t change the shape of my universe in the least, especially when it’s apparent you’re not really willing to come into the discussion–such as it is–in good faith.
Further, if you want to dismiss my experience as a sentient consumer of culture in the years that spanned Kliban’s meteoric popularity and Larson’s initial forays–basically call me a liar when I tell you that the similarity was a given at the time–then, again, not interested, don’t care. I’m thrilled you’ve found an issue important enough to you to defend to the death, but you’ll be doing it into the wind from here.
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You know what? I think you’re just trying your damndest to be a thread shitter.
I think you’re just trying to impress everyone with your (imagined) savoir faire in order to mask deep seated feelings of inadequacy.
Like, if everyone says, “That was a great movie,” you’re that one asshole who has to call it “populist tripe,” write a dissertation explaining why, along with a massive dose of barely concealed supercilousness for all the “saps” who thought the movie was good.
We get it. Anyone who’s been in the CS for more than 24 hours has gotten it: art is subjective, and your cup of tea may not be my brand of coffee. But you don’t have to jump into the middle of a thread, in an attempt to piss all over folks who are doing nothing more egregious than sharing a few laughs and fond memories over the works of one of the more popular contemporary cartoonists, to ram the point home.
I’m willing to bet you’re the kind of shitstain who got his ass kicked every day at school, just because of this kind of behavior.
And if you didn’t, you damned well should have, for one of two very good reasons:
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You would’ve corrected this behavior, and began acting like a human being with some degree of social graces;
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You would’ve ate a bullet by now out of despair of being the Worlds Lonliest Motherfucker.
