The Far Side ® Scared Silly

14 August 1950

Gary Larson grew up in a blue collar household in a blue-collar city, Tacoma, Washington. He played jazz guitar and worked in a music store, and in 1976 he sent six cartoons to Pacific Search, a regional science and nature magazine. They sent him $90, and that struck Larson as a lot more enjoyable work than the music store. His first steady work as a cartoonist was for The Sumner News-Review, a weekly paper in a Tacoma suburb. The job paid $3 a week. In 1979, The Seattle Times started carrying Larson's once-a-week work, titled Nature's Way, for $15 a strip. The panel drew some complaints of being sick and offensive, and a few complains were enough to get it canceled. Just as The Times pul…