Garfield Minus Garfield is just what it says it is: the Garfield comics with just Jon, no annoying pudgy cat, no brainless dog. I’d like to give Davis credit for drawing a darkly humorous comic and disguising it with slapstick and sarcasm from the animal companions. Perhaps he meant from the beginning for Jon’s outbursts and reactions to be self-generated. After all, normal people can’t communicate directly with their pets.
But, nah, Davis has never demonstrated any great capacity for either depth or wit that I know of.
I outgrew Garfield when I was about 13 and haven’t looked back, until today, when I ran across a link to this re-imagining of the strip on a blog I often visit. These are, as the site creator says at the top of the page, “even better comic[s] about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life,” when Garfield is removed from the panels.
My co-worker told me about this site yesterday. It’s one of the first comics I’ve seen in a long time that has literally made me laugh out loud in the middle of the office.
As entertaining as this premise is, I cannot help but notice that, in the final panel of the Sunday strip posted on Feb. 17, the image of Jon appears to have been crudely modified for a more obvious punchline.
I’d suggest that the concept is sounder when self-limited to pure subtraction; there’s no need to dilute the effect by adding details to the original art.
ETA: I should also acknowledge that this is the first time I can ever recall laughing at a Garfield strip. Well done!
The only thing more lacking in his strip than depth or wit is any understanding of the nature of cats. One wonders if this man has ever had a pet cat. Garfield doesn’t behave like a cat. Mondays? A cat could give a damn about Mondays. Lasagna? Garfield is an office drone in a cat suit.
B. Kliban understood cats, as does underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton with his excellent “Fat Freddie’s Cat” comics.
I’ve always believed that Jim Davis’ inspiration for Garfield was a meta-comic strip in the National Lampoon called “Famous Comic Artists School”. Each four panel strip was about important comic drawing issues, like how to draw a snake fart. One early panel was about characters. “Characters are important. Here are three that you can have for free”. They were Dipshit Dog, Badass Bunny and Cocksucker Cat. And the dog and cat were fairly obviously Odie and Garfield. Davis was free to do so, as the original cartoonist gave explicit permission.
I like good old repetitive Garfield, though it doesn’t make me laugh out loud or faithfully reflect the life of a real cat, and I’m not impressed by the assertion that only babies can enjoy it. That said, I thought this was hilarious, and thanks for alerting me to it. I love the one where there’s something wrong with his pants (2/23? I forget).
I also thought the ones you posted were pretty funny, mr_jp. especially the second one.
