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But the real trick to going out on top, the way no one is able to--not Michael Jordan, not Willie Mays, not Elvis, not Woody Allen--is Larson's yin-yang combination of a slight ego and a massive self-awareness. He doesn't need to be idolized, but he doesn't want to be thought of as lame. After 2002, Larson stopped making his No. 1-selling boxed calendar, which was, essentially, a legal way to print money. "I couldn't understand why it was still doing well. I think it's one of those things that would dissolve into a joke itself: it's back!"
Larson's biggest fear was jumping the shark--in his case, literally. The thing that horrified him most when putting the collection together wasn't the amateurishness of the early panels or the subpar eyeballs, but the slew of shark-frenzy jokes, which were a little too close to one another. That fear of becoming a hack, in the end, is what made him determined never to draw again. The one exception might be a possible cover for the upcoming New Yorker cartoon issue, which his publisher has bullied him into. It's a better fit for him than family newspapers, which sometimes wouldn't run his gallows humor, although he recently let his New Yorker subscription lapse. "I'm not into cartoons," he says. "That's the irony of it."