Gary Larson was born on August 14, 1950 in Tacoma, Washington. Larson is the genius behind The Far Side, the popular cartoon panel that has been named the Best Syndicated Panel in both 1985 and 1987 and was awarded the Max & Moritz Prize for Best International Comic Strip Panel by the International Comic Salon. He is has also received the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonist Society in both 1991 and 1994. Larson has published 20 other Far Side books as well as There's a Hair in My Dirt: A Worm's Story, a non-Far Side related story.