Long burned-out on Garfield©?
The “Random Garfield©” generators losing their charm?
Here’s the latest thing to do to make “Garfield©” more interesting, if not almost amusing: Remove all of Garfield’s dialogue. Some surprising results in there. Jon becomes the protagonist, and it’s a strip about his kind of pathetic life.
Give it a look before the syndicate blows it away…
That is brilliant! First time in my life that I ever laughed at a Garfield strip.
Holy crap. Just holy crap. You know, I used to adore Garfield. And to people who told me the strip had peaked and run out of steam, I said, heresy! Blasphemy! But gradually I began to realize that strips like Dilbert and Foxtrot had far outpaced Garfield. The Far Side and C&H had both become what Garfield never would, never could …
Until now. This, this is just astounding. I was skeptical at first, but damn. It really works. Jim Davis needs to take a hint.
That was excellence.
He’s right. It does improve Garfield 
Good, and at times quite creepy. Certainly better.
I saw the randomiser link a while back at memepool, along with a link to this piece.
Smart. Maybe this is a part of the plan.
Miffy on the other hand, is real modernist art, painted by hand and inspired by Matisse. Making Miffy sad can take days.
It’s even better if they remove the art, too. And then replace everything with porn.
When asked about Garfield Bill Waterson once said that “Jim Davis is … consistent.”
I was highly entertained.
I remember reading a interview with Jim Davis in he commented that he originally wanted to make Jon the focus of the strip, but Garfeld kept getting all the good lines, so he decided to make Garfield the focus instead. Interestingly, for the first ten years or so of Peanuts, Snoopy didn’t think- would the strip had been as popular if we could never read Snoopy’s thoughts, presumably getting rid of his alter egos as well?
I’m surprised how well this works. It is funny. (Although it must be said that the Garfield TV shows and specials, which were well-written for the most part, would not have been the same without the late Lorenzo Music’s laid-back, sarcastic voice for the cat.)
Heck, I’m trying it out, and it works. Even yesterday’s strip becomes funnier if you take out Garfield’s comment and leave his grin.
Although this doesn’t really count, I thought this one with the now-defunct Randomizer was funny: The Death of Garfield
Whoda’ thunk it!
I was suppressing laughter by the half-way point. It is indeed brilliant!
I love the line in the thread: “Sadly, this experiment does not make The Family Circus any funnier.”
LOL
I liked the “Cathy” experiment in that thread quite a lot, too.
I had two experiments I liked- removing Fred Bassett’s thoughts, and replacing Jon with Conan the Barbarian.
I just spilled tears over those.