If you’re wondering why Gary Larson penned a special message to a Tampa resident in today’s Far Side cartoon (on the back page of this section), wonder no more.
Bill Sutton, who Larson sends a “thanx and tip o’ the hat to” is a fictional person made up to imitate a cartoon called They’ll Do It Every Time by James Hatlo. Hatlo’s readers often supplied him with material, and when he used an idea, he thanked the contributor in the corner of the drawing. “Thanx, and with a tip o’ the Hatlo hat to . . . ,” he would write.
“Gary wasn’t thanking anyone in particular, he was just making fun of those cartoons,” said Universal Press Syndicate editor Jake Morrissey. “It’s a takeoff on the old line. It was kind of a silly cartoon to begin with. That’s the whole point.”