The big joke

With all the surreal stuff happening for the anniversary issue and over the past year, I knew I had to showcase a supreme book. It had to be a classic must-read-now book that was huge and reflected life at Supreme. However, I never knew that I would be pulling out an 18-pound baby hardcover from the womb of National Book Store Rockwell for this issue. The baby’s name is The Complete Far Side: 1980-1994 by Gary Larson, featuring over 4,000 of his quirky comic strips interspersed with commentary over a whopping 1,272 pages. If you are already a disciple of Larson, I know that you are geekily drooling over the exclusive interior pages beside the article. It is one of those untouched treasures in the bookstore that no one picks up in fear of either being caught blowing a lot of cash on something so inane or causing a major hole in one’s wallet. However, if you do pick it up, you can defend it by telling your significant other who doesn’t get the joke that it’s an “investment.” You can explain that it acts as a great alternative coffee table book to entertain guests. The catch is that your guests might not leave your house after flipping through a few pages of the Far Side collection.

For those uneducated in the art of laughter, The Far Side is the one-panel Da Vinci of the funnies section. Each day features Larson’s often bizarre, punny and sometimes violent sense of humor that ruminates on anything under the sun with its Far Side spin. You will love this comic series if the mere sight of talking cows, bugs or cave men make you chuckle. Otherwise, you might not get it like the millions of people who e-mail Larson’s editor for explanations about cow tools, archers with red targets on their shirts, teether-cats, talking lice, hell with accordions, and why Larson loves to pick on nerdy kids.

I hate to blab some more because The Far Side is one of those books that are celebrated and not reviewed. Second, The Far Side is one big laugh trip from start to end. It would be cheap to explain a joke, right? Lastly, it has been an exhausting year in Supreme so I just want to laugh it off.

The one thing I do have to say before “Read Now 1.0” ends is that I chose The Far Side as today’s topic because if Supreme were a comic book, it would be this one-panel wonder. Like twins, they are both entrenched in culture from pop to the past and letting people know about it. Also, both of them are funny, thought-provoking, controversially alluring, and a bit irreverent all the same time in one limited print space. Both these icons are also all about possibilities and being one step above the statusphere. This is why we get a lot of heads scratching. Yet don’t worry, because our main thrust is, whether you get the joke or not, that you come out of our section smiling in the end just like the funnies. I hope you get used to it because that is who we are. That’s our punchline. Get it?

See you next week for Read Now 2.0.

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Find The Far Side in the comics section today or online at http://www.thefarside.com/.

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Pictures shot by the author at the Philippine Center for Creative Imaging. Visit their website at http://www.pcci.com.ph/.

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Laugh with me at readnow@supreme.ph and http://readnow.tumblr.com.