SEATTLE — A particular look appears on the face of Gary Larson as he takes another bite of his steak in an intimate Seattle restaurant.

The expression, something akin to that of a baby catching sight of its first soap bubble, materializes as the creator of "The Far Side" begins a tale about a type of catfish found in the Amazon, one of the spots he and his wife visited during his recent sabbatical.

The 39-year-old cartoonist explains that this spiny-finned specimen swims into the privates of animals to plant its eggs. "Humans, too," he adds with delight. Once inside, the creature cannot be extracted without an excruciatingly painful operation. Here he stops transfixed, looking like his own drawing of Einstein before a blackboard filled with formulas proving that time actually is money.

Ah, yes. Nature.

"Ha," he says with a satisfied smile. "And they say there's no God."

Of course, there's a God. It is the same omnipotent being who pulls a simmering Earth out of a cosmic oven in a Larson drawing while musing, "Something tells me this thing's only half-baked." And it is the same one who will return to his heaven today, with the appearance of the first new Larson cartoon after a 14-month hiatus.

Refrigerator doors will be populated by fresh absurdities--cows that stand on hind legs, lions that attack tourists' car doors with coat hangers and dinosaur seminars ("The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen. . . . The world's climates are changing, the mammals are taking over and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut.").

Once again, morning silence in offices across the nation will be disrupted with bursts of laughter and the refrain, "Have you seen 'The Far Side' today?"

Larson's life style only hints at the bizarre brilliance that has led to his cartoon's syndication in more than 900 newspapers. His modest, Tudor-style home, in a neighborhood ringing Lake Washington, has a Persian rug, a fireplace, a comfortable couch; all in all, a habitat more cozy than ostentatious.

Gone are the 20 pet king snakes and the 150-pound python he used to have around the house. But evidence of his creature fixation is still present. In one corner is a brass lamp in the shape of a giant cobra. On the wall is a petrified crocodile, a gift from Smithsonian friends trying out a new preservation process. Upstairs in his study are charts of spiders, a stuffed hammerhead shark. Placed affectionately on his drawing board is a chillingly lifelike cast of a coiled rattlesnake.