Happy 41st anniversary of the day Gary Larson issued the Cow Tools Apology — or at least it’s 41 years since The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, printed this:
The full story explains — in glorious straight-face-o-speak — what the cartoon involved and what happened next:
‘Far Side’ sparks cow controversy
“The Far Side” went a little too far for many of its fans Thursday — and the comic strip’s creator admitted that his “exercise in silliness” was an experiment that failed. The cartoon which depicted a cow standing over a collection of barely recognizable “cow tools” provoked a deluge of calls to newspaper editors across the country, said Stuart Dodds, general manager of Chronicle Features in San Francisco. “I think the joke simply didn’t work,” Dodds said. “A lot of people didn’t get it, and in not getting it they were casting around for really farfetched explanations.” So many people didn’t get it that “Far Side” creator Gary Larson drafted a statement Thursday afternoon, explaining the cartoon’s meaning:
“Occasionally, between the time I first conceive a certain idea and the final product, something goes awry — judging by the number of calls from puzzled readers (including my own mother), this happened with my recent cow cartoon. The cartoon was intended to be an exercise in silliness. While I have never met a cow who could make tools, I felt sure that if I did, they (the tools) would lack something in sophistication and resemble the sorry specimens shown in this cartoon. I regret that my fondness for cows, combined with an overactive imagination, may have carried me beyond what is comprehensible to the average ‘Far Side’ reader.” Larson’s unconventional cartoons often depict cows, snakes and creatures from outer space in bizarre settings. For example, one recent panel showed barnyard animals discussing scientific theories, then re verting to “moos” and “quacks” once the farmer walked in the door.
Dodds, along with another editor, reviews Larson’s cartoons before they are distributed by Chronicle Features. “We do look at them (the cartoons) critically, but I think this one we should have looked at more closely,” he said. “The Far Side,” which appears in about 70 newspapers in the United States and Canada (including The Spokesman-Review), brings “a steady trickle of mail” from people who have questions about certain cartoons, Dodds said. “But this is the first time that a cartoon has perplexed so many readers.”
It seems inexplicable now that something so perfect and unhinged could have caused problems, but — sorry, let’s just remind ourselves again, because I think the combination of cartoon and headline is very, very funny.
Perhaps the best bit, though, is that, if you look at the whole page of the paper…
…there’s another Far Side cartoon further down, which is — if anything — arguably even weirder than Cow Tools:
Larson later wrote about the incident in the tenth anniversary book The Prehistory of The Far Side, explaining that the furore was temporarily painful, but ultimately made The Far Side far bigger than it had been before:
The “Cow tools” episode is one that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. A week after it was published back in 1982, I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die.
Cows, as some Far Side readers know, are a favorite subject of mine. I’ve always found them to be the quintessentially absurd animal for situations even more absurd. Even the name “cow,” to me, is intrinsically funny.
And so one day I started thinking back on an anthropology course I had in college and how we learned that man used to be defined as “the only animal that made and shaped tools.” Unfortunately, researchers discovered that certain primates and even some bird species did the same thing — so the definition had to be extended somewhat to avoid awkward situations such as someone hiring a crew of chimpanzees to remodel their kitchen.
Inevitably, I began thinking about cows, and what if they, too, were … toolmakers. … Primitive tools are always, well, primitive-looking …
I … drew, a cow standing next to her workbench, proudly displaying her handiwork (hoofiwork?). The cow tools were supposed to be just meaningless artifacts-only the cow … is supposed to know what they’re used for.
The first mistake I made was in thinking this was funny. The second was making one of the tools resemble a crude handsaw — which made already confused people decide that their only hope in understanding the cartoon meant deciphering what the others were. Of course, they didn’t have a chance.
But, for the first time, Cow tools awakened me to the fact that my profession was not just an isolated exercise … The day after its release, my phone began to ring … Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know what in the world this cartoon meant! My syndicate was equally bombarded, and I was ultimately asked to write a press release explaining “Cow tools.” Someone sent me the front page of one newspaper which, down in one corner, ran the tease, “Cow Tools: What does it mean? (See pg. B14.)” I was mortified.
In the first year or two of drawing The Far Side, I always believed my career perpetually hung by a thread. And this time I was convinced it had been finally severed. Ironically, when the dust had finally settled and as a result of all the “noise” it made, “Cow tools” became more of a boost to The Far Side than anything else.
So, in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood and wasn’t funny and therefore I went on to even greater success and recognition. Yeah I like this country.
Because he might have given up years earlier. He’d been doing a weekly cartoon for the Seattle Times, and got home one day in 1979 — stunned after a meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle at which they’d told him they wanted to syndicate the cartoon — to find a letter from the Seattle Times telling them they were going to drop it. If the timing had been different…
Now, of course, the reputation of Cow Tools is such that people write articles about that one cartoon:
…and get it immortalised on themselves in ink
…but my favourite of his will always be this:
(As it happens, yes, I did enjoy writing the alt text for that image.)
