Well it is true.
I feel like this is way more momentous than a ārandom, silly grinā, but then again, maybe not. 
In any case, after much scrolling, I didnāt find a more suitable thread (āolds go nostalgicā was close, but this isnāt about tech) and didnāt really want to create a new one, so I hope this is a good fit here.
Ladies and Germs, without further ado, may I present:
[ā¦] let this website become your place to stop by for a smile, a laugh, or a good olā fashioned recoiling. And I wonāt have to release the Krakencow.
Ok Boomer. 
???
(I donāt get it.)
Like, 25 years after the Internet comes around he figures heāll try it out because it was so scary that people could scan his stuff in without his permission and share it anyway. It just seems like such an old man approach to the medium to try to control it the way you do print, and not see the possibilities in the ability to share so widely.
Also see the Ok Boomer trend circling the Interwebs (millennials putting the hate on the olds).
Not to mention that most of his cartoons have black and white versions, and photocopiers had already been ubiquitous for a long time 25 years ago.
Didnāt he know anyone who works at an office and can explain to him how people decorate their cubicles?
Iām familiar with the āOK Boomerā thing, I just couldnāt imagine why anyone would want to be so mean to Gary Larson, of all people.
Are you saying he should just be happy for the exposure?
I donāt believe for an instant that heās ever objected to people hanging copies of his cartoons in their cubicles, or on their office doors, etc. The issue is people using his work without his consent for their own personal profit.
I get that heās probably tilting at windmills with the whole āsecure imagesā bit, and I understand that, at the end of the day, the purpose of the website is to sell more books. I just donāt see whatās so worthy of mockery in his introductory letter.
Maybe I just have a soft spot for other weirdos.
In any case, thank you @ChickieD for the clarification.
itās the same issue Berke Breathed had/has with all the unlicensed uses of Calvin and Hobbes for every damn thing. every car sticker, every etsy/ebay usage, on and on. itās a literal tidal wave [edit: ok, itās not a literal tidal wave, itās a figurative one, but still]. no wonder they just gave up trying.
Berke Breathed is Bloom County.
Thatās not what he said though. He said he objected to the uploaders, full stop.
He didnāt seem aware people are scanning and uploading because it was difficult to find individual cartoons otherwise.
yes. i know.
Then what does it matter what he says about Calvin and Hobbes?
OK, I will concede that the āfor personal profitā bit is me bringing my own biases to the table and possibly reading too much into what he wrote in the letter. Clearly heās concerned about more than just the money.
FTA:
But itās always been inherently awkward to chase down a Far Sideāfestooned website when the person behind it is often simply a fan. (Although not everyone is quite so uncomplicated in their motives; my cartoons have been taken and used to help sell everything from doughnuts to rodent control. At least I offer range.) So Iām hopeful this official website will help temper the impulses of the infringement-inclined.
And he does seem to understand that people have different motives for uploading his stuff, and that some of them are simply fans of his work. The context of the letter seems to be pretty clearly digital, though, which is why I thought the photocopier/cubicle point was kind of a non-sequitur.
Anyway, Iāll happily amend my previous statement to something a bit more narrowly scoped, and hopefully more accurate:
Either way, Iāve got no beef with you, and I suspect that we are probably more-or-less on the same page when it comes to copyright and the like.
Bill Watterson is kind of interesting in that he was opposed to merchandising of any kind, not just the unlicensed stuff. If I recall correctly, you could read his strips in the paper or buy the anthology books, but that was about it. No mugs, no t-shirts, no Hobbes plushies, no nothing. The Far Side, on the other hand, wasnāt too shy about merch. I mean, they were no Garfield or Ziggy, but I used to get one of those daily desk calendars for xmas every year for years.
I do remember when those Evil-Calvin-pees-on-thing-you-like stickers were all over the place, though, and I never did really like them. The rivalries depicted were almost always things I didnāt care about (e.g. Ford vs. Chevy, Greek houses, college mascots, Christianity, etc.), but mostly they just felt like cheap knockoffs that missed the point of what made the original so good.
Youāre right. The way I reacted was not thoughtful or kind. Sometimes Iām too caught up in being clever. Itās exciting he has found a way to make this work for him. My thoughts on copyright need to be discussed elsewhere.
Recommend Gary Lawsonās Sketchbooks. Shows what ideas didnāt quite make it to print.
One thing I thought was uniquely creative about Larsonās cartoons was the single ā used as the eyes for the cows and other animals. Iām not sure what itās meant to convey (inscrutability?) but it is genius in its simplicity.
argh, this is what i get for trying to post on my phone, when itās too bright out to properly see ā youāre right, i thought i had Watterson mentioned in there, but i must have accidentally deleted part of my post. sorry! i meant to say basically that Beathed, Watterson, and Larson all had to deal with rampant copyright theft, and ultimately it was so much that they just kind of had to throw up their hands at most of it.