![<I>The Complete Far Side</I>](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/51619e7/2147483647/strip/true/crop/140x144+0+0/resize/880x905!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fprograms%2Fmorning%2Ffeatures%2F2003%2Foct%2Flarson%2Fbookcov-14dbc8f8d0a64e98457b9100095d0f35a4356a3c.jpg)
During a 14-year span before he quit in 1994, Gary Larson created over 4,000 The Far Side cartoons, all of which have just made their way into a hefty two-volume anthology, The Complete Far Side. More than 40 million Far Side books and 60 million calendars have been sold. Yet Larson remains hard-pressed to explain what these strange creations are about.
"Oh, God.... Jeez... It's just a cartoon," Larson tells NPR's Bob Edwards on Morning Edition. "I guess, I could say, a cartoon about nothing.... It's just a sense of humor in single-panel form... They're just cartoons."
But to anyone who's ever seen these little worlds-of-their-own populated by cows, beehive-hairdo ladies, space aliens and prehistoric creatures, The Far Side is... something else.
"Yeah," Larson says. "Everything was open season to me, I guess. If it crossed my mind, it was fair game."
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