Gary Larson

The first thing I do whenever I write is reach for the volume on my speakers. I can’t write with music playing.

The first thing I do whenever I’m drawing is reach for the volume on my speakers. I love to sing along whilst scribbling.

Lately, I’ve been unable to write. I find the silence too upsetting, my mind easily distracted and led to sad thoughts. I don’t know how these things affect people so I don’t know if it’s normal to still feel the way I do. To say it’s two months since it happened is to make it sound like I should be over it. I think it’s the months before that which are still getting to me.

Anyway, I’ve posted a few more pictures over on my new closed blog (the invitation is still open to anybody who cares to go look). I’m out today, making the most of my ‘holiday’ to go into Manchester to buy myself some quality inkjet paper. I’m not at all sure what constitutes a portfolio but I intend to print a selection of my better cartoons in as high a quality as my HP can output. As yet, I’ve avoided looking at which magazines might accept cartoons. I’m also losing a bit of faith that my scribbles are funny enough to earn me money.

I think I’m probably suffering for a mild form of cartoon envy. I’ve been reading ‘The Far Side’, which does a good job of making the business of writing single panel gags look far too easy. I sense that Larson’s success has made him something of an easy target among aficionados of cartoons. I just think that his humour sits well within the mainstream but there are always enough with an offbeat slant to maintain my interest. For everyone that seems too obvious (a guy opens a fridge to find his potato salad holding a gun to the rest of the groceries – the tag: ‘When potato salad goes bad’), there’s one that’s more offbeat. A couple lie on the floor, acting dead, as another couple leave the room. The tag: ‘The Arnolds feign death until the Wagners, sensing awkwardness, are compelled to leave’. Larson’s genius, I think, is in the writing of his lines.

After reading a couple of volumes of ‘The Far Side’, gag writing begins to look effortless until I go back to trying it myself. I bought myself a second-hand copy of ‘The Pre-History of the Far Side’ (69p + p&P), in which he talks about the processes that go into creating a cartoon. It did nothing to alleviate my suspicion that he’s just copiously gifted. I can sit here hours trying to think of gags. It never works. It’s like trying to think of narratives. It’s better when I just switch off my brain and wait for something strange to cross my mind.

Which, oddly enough, has just made me think of a cartoon and a tag. I should go to bed before I spend a couple of hours cross-hatching a suit. I’ve come to the conclusion that an addiction to cross hatching is a form of madness.