- Nature's Way (comic strip)
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Nature's Way Author(s) Gary Larson Current status / schedule Ended Launch date 1976 End date 1980 Syndicate(s) Pacific Search (1976–1976)
Sumner News Review (1976–1979)
Seattle Times (1979-1980)Genre(s) Humor, Satire Nature's Way is a newspaper cartoon series by Gary Larson published in the late 1970s. It launched his career in cartooning and eventually led to his popular The Far Side series in 1980.
Contents
History
Nature's Way began as six comic strips submitted in 1976 to the Pacific Search, a local magazine in Seattle. This was Larson's effort to get away from retail music store job. He was paid $90 for the lot, which encouraged him to produce more cartoons. He soon began submitting weekly cartoons to a newspaper, The Sumner News-Review, which paid him $3 a cartoon. With such earnings, his enthusiasm began to wane, and he began to revert to his previous situation as a non-cartoonist.
In 1979, a reporter he had shown his work to got him published in The Seattle Times. It was published on a weekly basis with a payment of $15 per cartoon. Because they chose to position it right next to a children's crossword puzzle, it began to draw complaints. These were enough to get the strip canceled in 1980, just a few days after Larson got a contract with the San Francisco Chronicle, which jump-started his career.
Eventually, the name was changed to The Far Side. In The Prehistory of the Far Side, Larson commented, "They could have called it Revenge of the Zucchini People for all I cared" as he was so happy to be eagerly accepted into the San Francisco Chronicle.
Cartoon style
Artistic
The artistic style of this strip had some similarities to The Far Side. For instance, the people in the strips were often overweight. The facial structures in Nature's Way also tended to resemble those found in Far Side cartoons, as well as having the same one-panel structure as the The Far Side.
Humor
The humor in Nature's Way was often based on ironic settings, bizarre mistakes, plays on common phrases, anthropomorphic situations and general oddities of nature.
The Far Side by Gary Larson Collections The Far Side • Beyond The Far Side • In Search of The Far Side • Bride of The Far Side • Valley of The Far Side • It Came from The Far Side • Hound of The Far Side • The Far Side Observer • Night of the Crash Test Dummies • Wildlife Preserves • Wiener Dog Art • Unnatural Selections • Cows of Our Planet • The Chickens are Restless • The Curse of Madame "C" • Last Chapter and WorseGalleries Other books There's A Hair In My Dirt!: A Worm's Story • The Complete Far Side: 1980–1994 • The Prehistory of The Far SideSee also Categories:- Comic strips started in the 1970s
- The Far Side
- Comic strip stubs
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