There are taxidermists driving taxis, there are bears picnicking on cub scouts. It can mean only one thing: the return of Far Side creator Gary Larson, publishing his first new work in 25 years. Larson retired The Far Side, which was syndicated in almost 2,000 daily papers around the world for 15 years, in 1995, saying at the time that he feared that “if I continue for many more years my work will begin to suffer or at the very least ease into the Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons”. After promising a “new online era” last September with the launch of an online archive, on Wednesday he shared three new Far Side strips, alongside a personal essay explaining why he’d come out of retirement. Announcing his retirement in 1995 “felt good”, he said, as he had enjoyed not having to meet daily deadlines, and “after moving on to other interests, drawing just wasn’t on my to-do list”. But Larson said he still had “intermittent” connections to cartooning, including drawing a family Christmas card each year. A few years ago, he decided to try working on the project with a digital tablet rather than with a pen. “I got one, fired it up, and lo and behold, something totally unexpected happened: within moments, I was having fun drawing again. I was stunned at all the tools the thing offered, all the creative potential it contained. I simply had no idea how far these things had evolved,” he wrote. “Perhaps fittingly, the first thing I drew was a caveman.” Learning how to draw digitally had been “a bit of learning curve”. He wrote: “I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something familiar there – a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with ‘Cow tools’. (Let’s not get into that.)” Larson was referring to one of his most confusing strips, Cow tools, in which a cow stands in front of a bizarre (and somewhat disturbing) array of tools. It proved so puzzling to fans when it was published in 1982 that the cartoonist was forced to issue a statement explaining that “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.” For now, Larson said, he is having fun, “exploring, experimenting, and trying stuff” – although the new venture is not, he stressed, a resurrection of his daily deadlines. “So here goes. I’ve got my coffee, I’ve got this cool gizmo, and I’ve got no deadlines. And – to borrow from Sherlock Holmes – the game is afoot,” he wrote.