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Garfield is worth reading again

Posted by ChrisApplewhite on August 9th, 2007 under Uncategorized

If you’re like me, you grew up reading the funny pages and haven’t weaned yourself of that habit, even though 90% of the mainstream comics these days are garbage. How many times can Dagwood run into the mailman anyway? How many already terrible premises can the ham-fisted author of the Born Loser mangle? Is the Wizard of Id guy even trying anymore? And so on.

That’s where the internet comes in. Not only can you find thousands of webcomics, but you can find mainstream stuff that has been photoshopped into something that won’t melt your eyes out of your head.

For instance, what if Garfield’s thought bubbles were removed? What’s left is an intimate and sad portrait of a lonely loser named Jon.

Your only friend is a cat that hates you.

Because your only friend is a cat that hates you, Jon.

Like any manic depressive, Jon goes through ups and downs. Mostly downs. But he has his silly moments:

Disco Jon
TMI

Sometimes you get a man playing with his cat:

Ha
I do this to my dog
Stupid cat
Cruel

But dig deeper, you find the madman who has suffered from 50 years of having nobody to talk to other than his cat:


Filbert?
Nice socks
They call them fingers, but they don't fing.
Crazy.
Cheese!

Living that way will not only make you stone cold insane, but you’ll probably be pretty bored along the way:

Bored
Killing yourself is fun.

Is Garfield just a mirror for Jon and his psychosis? Is Jon bouncing his thoughts off of his cat to sort through them?

Touching.
Feeling fat, Jon?
Nowhere, chump.
Yes.
Pathetic

The realization must hit him after his “internal” dialogue makes him aware of how pathetic he is. Naturally, he takes it out on his cat.

Jerk
No.

Poor guy.

The best ones though are the surreal, random creations. Say what you want about them, they aren’t boring:

Oh my!
Ouch.
Loser.
Wham!
I'd hit him too

Garfield + dark humor is a winner in my book. Poor Jon.

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6 Responses

  1. Scipio Tex said:

    August 9th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    You’re a lunatic, Applewhite. Keep it up.

  2. HenryJames said:

    August 9th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    I pretty much stopped reading comics with the demise of the Far Side. I used to like Garfield as a child, going so far as to buy the books when they came out. However, I always liked Heathcliff more. He was everything Garfield was not. Garfield seemed to be the metrosexual version of a cat. Neurotic, sexually ambiguous, never leaving his apartment. Heathcliff was the take charge kind of cat, the cat with a girlfriend who liked to fight dogs. Not sure Garfield even liked chicks. He frequently had that little kitten around, Nermal, who I’m pretty sure he molested.

    Yeah, I have no idea what the hell I just wrote either.

  3. ChrisApplewhite said:

    August 9th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    There is good stuff out there. A lot of it is on the internet now. But Get Fuzzy, Pearls to Swine, and a few others are worth reading still.

    Of course, when you have stuff like this, there is no reason to open a newspaper.

  4. Minnesotahorn said:

    August 15th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    My amusement over Nermal’s lost innocense is probably a sign of a deep emotional issues.

    Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side were favorites. The Escondido paper use to run Dick Tracy and I’d cut them out and put them in a scrapbook. Fuck you.

    Is Ziggy queer?

  5. CrazyJoeDavola said:

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    I prefer the black and white compositions. Jim Davis’ use of German expressionistic lighting techniques were much more effective at highlighting the societal shadows facing pets at the time: both explicit and coded antisemitism, racism, and homophobia; rampant corporatism and the rise of the military-industrial complex; and of course the creeping fascism of American political life.

    I know in his other work, Davis was attempting to use garish color schemes to emphasize how The Other (women, minorities, ferrets) was denied opportunities to reach impossible Hollywood-mandated ideals of the perfect bourgeoisie lifestyle, and it’s admirable that he attempted to create a space for ironic and transgressive material.

    But lets face it, Jim Davis is no Douglas Sirk.

  6. Ray Smuckles said:

    December 23rd, 2007 at 11:06 am

    Garfield sucks balls.

    http://achewood.com/index.php?date=05222003

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