Larson-esque

THE LAST of the accepted satirical cartoons I sold to a U.S. magazine---for the meantime, apparently more are due to be published----------this one is an 'update' of a very old gag I came up with in the first years of this Century.

Like many other fledgling cartoonists finding their 'identity', I went through a phase of doing FAR SIDE- like material------ I spent as much as a year trying to ape the approach of Gary Larson, surely one of the most influential cartoonists the Planet ever bore.

Unlike many cartoonists---even some  very good ones------Larson refused to clone or capitalize upon the work of those who eked out a trail before him------tearing up the rulebook altogether and minting his own personal, skewed vision from scratch: he was so unique and ahead of the game that it took a while before the masses caught on to his [initially] very strange material: the long-term result being, of course, that his cartoon foundations eventually became the 'norm' and the mainstream, and even today, a fair few cartoonists deliberately approximate his method of working.

I myself quickly tired of trying to put out Larson-like stuff, believing that such an approach can only result in watered-down, or compromised material on my part: nobody is going to beat Larson at his own game, but try telling that to his small army of cartoon-clonists, who continue to ape his work many years after he retired [presumably he lives well on reprint fees from his books and merchandising of his back-catalogue].

Anyway I will dig out some of the Larson-like stuff I done at some point and add 'em on here, I still do a Larson-esque cartoon on occasion, but I have no intentions of slavishly copying the style of any cartoonist anywhere, no matter how good they are.

RABBO