The Curse of Madame C

Reading through my old Far Side collections like this one leaves me with two thoughts. The first is how funny The Far Side is. The other is how much I miss it. Until Gary Larson comes to his hilariously heightened senses and decides his long break is over and actually begins drawing his legendary series again, trips down memory lane will have to do, and do nicely. As for The Curse of Madame "C" it's among Larson's funniest and best anthologies, and one of the greatest parts is its prologue wherein we learn with a wink and a nudge exactly why The Far Side is so populated with bovines. Just a great little book to own and keep for a rainy day.

The cartoons in this collection are hysterical, my favorite by far is on page 56. The setting is bathroom stalls from the front and we can see two pairs of feet under two adjacent doors. One pair is wrapped in bandages which are coming off. The caption reads: "It was an innocent mistake, but nevertheless, a moment later Maurice found himself receiving the full brunt of the mummy's wrath." I roared at this one, it is one of the funniest cartoons I have ever seen. Larson is one of the best cartoonists ever, his diagrams are never cluttered and they generally are a combination of visual and verbal puns. I can read and reread his cartoons several times and never fail to get a chuckle. Which is what I did with this collection.

This story tells the tale of Gary Larson's journey into madness, when he confronts an evil gypsy cow that curses him to forever entertain people with riotous cartoons. The start of the book relates his adventures against "Madame "C"", a molevelent cow. It is a wonderful, (and thankfully short), tale concerning his frightful encounter in a smooth color cartoon over several pages.The rest of the book details, in b & w cartoon format, the humorous trials and tevails of various critters such as worms, pigeons, and cowhands. If you haven't read a "Far Side", you won't know what I'm talking about and you've had your head in the sand for the past 20 years or so. Buy the book, for the love of Mike!

Yet another from the pen of Gary Larson. This is an incredibly funny book, but if you are a Far Side fan you probably do not need to be told this fact. They are all incredibly funny. The Curse of Madame "C" begins with the story of how the Far Side began. The story is a humorous take on An American Werewolf in London. It shows how a young Larson met all of the characters he would later write about and how he would be cursed with a need to write cartoons. After the story ends the zany cartoons begin. From longcows to cow field trips. Mummies, aliens, neanderthals, and much, much more. This book will make you laugh from start to finish. You'll want to read it again and again. You'll want to loan it to all of your friends. You will love it.