Comic Strip History - Gary Larson and the Thagomizer

2025-03-08

As with most things I do research on, this one turned out to be more complicated than I thought it would.

Gary Larson is the cartoonist behind the very successful single panel comic The Far Side. The panel was syndicated in newspapers from 1980 to 1995, and some newer material appeared on the official website between 2020 and 2023. The humor is often described as "off the wall" and "surreal," though many times it can be incredibly relatable. Many of the jokes involve animals, and Larson was especially fond of using insects and prehistoric animals to tell his jokes. He also often used cavemen along with the prehistoric animals, which is of course historically inaccurate, but when the joke is funny enough it can be forgiven. That said, despite the historical inaccuracy, Larson has been praised by biologists for his attention to detail when it came to drawing the animals, especially the insects, and has gained a following among paleontologists from his many depictions of dinosaurs. In fact, he has amassed quite a following over the years in the scientific community at large, despite never being a part of it himself.

However, this is not to say that he was recognized by scientists immediately, or is enjoyed by all scientists equally, as will be shown.

On May 27, 1982, Larson published a comic depicting a group of cavemen attentively watching a presentation given by another caveman on the anatomy of the Stegosaurus. The caveman in the front points to an image of the Stegosaurus and says, "Now, this end is called the thagomizer... after the late Thag Simmons," indicating the spikes on the end of the tail. This also implies that said Thag had an unfortunate encounter with the tail spikes of the Stegosaurus, and the cavemen had named them in his honor. For many years this was just a joke, probably enjoyed by a majority of readers, and a contingent of paleontologists, but still simply a joke and nothing more. It would remain so for a little over 10 years, until a certain paleontologist decided to take the joke a bit further.

In September of 1993, at the Fifty-Third annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Kenneth Carpenter gave a presentation on a stegosaurus skeleton that had, at that time, been recently discovered. Up to that point, there were theories about what the tail spikes would have been used for, among them the idea that they were used for defense against predators, but there was no fossil evidence to back any of them up. At this meeting, however, Carpenter suggested that the particular stegosaurus skeleton on display showed evidence that the tail spikes had been used as a defensive weapon against a predator, as one of the spikes had been broken off. Carpenter also remembered the Far Side cartoon, which suggested a stegosaurus had used its tail spikes as a weapon against Thag, so he dubbed them "thagomizer" in honor of Larson. While this was not conclusive evidence of the nature of the usage of the thagomizer, later discoveries, including that of an allosaurus skeleton with a thagomizer spike embedded in it, led much more credence to this idea.

Following Carpenter's lead, other paleontologists began using the term in professional settings, and over the years it has been used in more and more places. Though it never became an official term for the Stegosaurus tail spikes, it is currently in use by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, and even in the exhaustive dinosaur reference book "The Complete Dinosaur."

That said, not everyone in the paleontology community embraced this term quite as readily. In fact, there are some who are actively against it.

A perusal of the Internet will reveal that many people mistakenly believe that "thagomizer" is the official term for the stegosaurus tail spikes, which it unfortunately is not. There are those, mostly stegosaurus researchers, who take great pleasure in pointing out that not only is this not true, but that such an "official term" doesn't exist. Dr. David Hone said as much in a reply to a Reddit post about the origin of the word, and went on to say that "most paleontologists don't use it," though when presented with contrary evidence he did go on to admit that many do. Dr. Susannah Maidment, in a profile of her on the website for Utah's Natural History Museum, says that she doesn't use the term because "paleontology already has more than enough jargon," and that simply using the phrase "tail spikes" will do. In fact, in a reply to a Twitter thread about the origin of the word, Dr. Maidment stated that not only is it not a word used by paleontologists, but "No self-respecting palaeontologist has ever used the word." Later tweets in the thread suggest that Dr. Maidment may also have asked those who publish papers on stegosaurs to remove the word from them before publishing. It seems she had also stated that there were no peer-reviewed published papers that had used the word, but it's unclear whether no one had, or that no one had been allowed to.

Whatever the case, it's clearly a very popular word among non-professional dinosaur enthusiasts, as well as those of a more professional persuasion. So, while Larson can't be credited with coining an official term, coining a popular colloquialism is still notable. Personally, I'm a fan, and I think fun words like thagomizer should be more common in science. If someone has an issue with "thagomizer," I would suggest looking up the origin of the word "quark."

That's not the only way that the scientific community has shown their appreciation for Gary Larson, either. Biologist Dale Clayton, when he discovered a new species of owl louse, named it Strigiphilus garylarsoni, "in appreciation of the unique light [Larson] has shed on the workings of nature." Also, in 1991, Kurt Johnson named a species of butterfly after Larson, Serratoterga larsoni, though the species was later merged with another one and the genus name was changed. This does mean that the louse is the only one that stuck, but of having a louse named after him, Larson has said, "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."

For more information:

Watch Out For That Thagomizer! at Smithsonian Magazine

Gary Larson profile at Salon.com

Thagomizer in The Complete Dinosaur at Google Books

David Hone refuting the official-ness of the word on Reddit

Dr. Susannah Maidment profile at Natural History Museum of Utah

Susannah Maidment replies to a tweet about the Thagomizer on Twitter

...and a further Maidment reply

Unexpected Comic Strip Creators - Matt Groening

2025-01-07

I've been hesitant to write about this, because I'm not entirely sure how unexpected it is. I prefer to write about creators whose comic strip careers have been completely and entirely shrouded by whatever else they've done. I've always felt like Matt Groening's career prior to The Simpsons was well known, at least among fans of his, so I never felt a need to touch on it. That said, as the years go on, I have seen The Simpsons and Futurama continue to be remembered and referenced while Life In Hell, Groening's newspaper comic, has slightly faded into obscurity. So, I thought I ought to shed a bit more light on it.

Life In Hell was a comic strip that ran from 1980 to 2012, primarily in alternative weekly newspapers. It began life in 1977, as a comic book that Groening photocopied and sent to his friends, with various gags about how horrible it is to live in Los Angeles. He attempted to get some of his comics published in the LA Weekly without success. In 1978, he successfully had it published in the magazine Wet, but it didn't last long there. After working at the LA Reader for a while doing various jobs, he showed some of his comics to the editor, James Vowell. Vowell liked his work, and began publishing the strip in the back of the paper in 1980. After some initial success in the Reader, Groening was able to convince several other newspapers to run the strip as well. While working at the Reader he met Deborah Caplan, who later became his first wife. By his own admission Groening was not very good at self-syndicating, and asked Caplan to assist. Eventually the two of them would start the Acme Syndicate, which initially syndicated not only Life In Hell, but also Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek and cartoons drawn by John Callahan. Barry would later decide to syndicate herself, and Callahan would later be syndicated by a former Groening employee, leaving Life In Hell as the only strip at the Acme Syndicate. Larger, more mainstream syndicates expressed interest in the strip as well, though they would generally ask for some of the material to be changed, which Groening refused to do. This did nothing to halt its success, however. Even though at that time you couldn't see it in any mainstream publications, it was in nearly every alternative newspaper you could find.

This popularity within the alternative press is precisely what led to Groening's animation career. Groening was initially approached to do an animated adaptation of Life In Hell, but was apprehensive due to having to give away licensing rights to the strip. Rather than jeopardize any future opportunities to license Life In Hell, he created The Simpsons, which first ran as short animations on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 and later became a standalone animated series beginning in 1989.

The Simpsons became very popular fairly quickly, and would of course become one of the most successful animated shows in history. Despite this, Groening continued to produce weekly Life In Hell strips and at that time promised to never give it up, as it was "his foundation." In fact, the success of The Simpsons led to more success for Life In Hell. While major syndicates had previously hesitated to print the strip in its original form, now that his work had been generally accepted among mainstream audiences they were willing to run it without alteration. Groening did make one concession, which was to not use profanity, but the content was otherwise the same, and several mainstream newspapers began running the strip in the mid- to late 90s.

His work on Life In Hell also crossed over with his work on The Simpsons in some ways. Several episodes of the show include references to the strip. In 1993, when Groening started a comic book company to publish comic books based on The Simpsons, among other properties, he named it Bongo Comics after the main character of Life in Hell, Bongo. The strip was clearly very important to him, even as it took a backseat to The Simpsons in most people's minds. When you read Life In Hell, however, you can understand why.

Life In Hell is clearly a very personal strip. While the characters in the strip are fictional, the situations are pulled from Groening's own life. As previously stated, the initial gags were all about his experiences living in LA, but later he would do gags relating to his childhood, being married, and having a child of his own, as well as some of his struggles working in television and in Hollywood. The humor is dark and sometimes depressing, and I personally find it difficult to read. That said, I can imagine that many people can relate to it and that it was therapeutic for him to draw and write. His childhood clearly was very rough, with abusive parents and siblings, and his adult life in many cases seemed very difficult for various reasons. One can understand, then, why he would want to continue doing it despite his success with other media and the dwindling newspaper market. It was a thing that he did for him, that he could control completely, and he wanted to create something of that sort.

Despite this, the strip ultimately came to an end in 2012. At least as early as 2009, Groening had stated that he didn't think the strip would last much longer, due to changes in the alternative press market as well as his ever increasing television and movie workload. Groening had apparently made attempts to publish his strips on the Internet as far back as 1998, but none of those attempts ever bore any fruit. There are fan-made archives of his work on the Internet, however.

For more information:

Life In Hell at Don Markstein's Toonopedia

Matt Groening at Lambiek Comiclopedia

Rob Rodi on Life In Hell from The Comics Journal #114

Matt Groening article in TV Host, from 1989

Excerpts from a Matt Groening interview with Gary Groth, from The Comics Journal #141

Matt Groening interview in Flux Magazine, from September 1995

Matt Groening interview in Mother Jones, from March/April 1999

Matt Groening interview with CNN, from February 2009

USA Today article on the strip ending

Life In Hell references in The Simpsons, up to 2014

McFadden's Row of Flats, December 27, 1896

2024-12-31