''Nature's Way'' is an American newspaper

cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently Animation, animated, in an realism (arts), unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or s ...

series by

Gary Larson Gary Larson (born August 14, 1950) is an American cartoonist who created ''The Far Side'', a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to more than 1,900 newspapers for fifteen years. The series ended on January 1, 1995, ...

published in 1976. It launched his career in cartooning and eventually led to his popular ''

The Far Side ''The Far Side'' is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrea ...

'' series in 1980.

History

''Nature's Way'' began as six

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s submitted in 1976 to the ''Pacific Search'', a local magazine in Seattle. This was Larson's effort to get away from a retail music store job. He was paid $90 for the strips, 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 and worked for the Humane Society. In 1979, a reporter to whom he had shown his work got him published in ''

The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is an American daily newspaper based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891, ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region. The Seattle Time ...

''. 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 Zucchini (; : ''zucchini'' or ''zucchinis''), courgette () or ''Cucurbita pepo'' is a summer squash, a Vine, vining herbaceous plant whose fruit are harvested when their immature seeds and Fruit anatomy#Epicarp, epicarp (rind) are still soft a ...

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 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.

References

Gag cartoon comics 1976 comics debuts The Far Side 1980 comics endings Comics about anthropomorphic animals Satirical comics {{comic-strip-stub