Comments on: Comics are funny when you change them (sometimes)

Comics are funny when you change them (sometimes)

SpacemanStix — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:36:36 -0800

Garfield minus Garfield: "Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?"

By: norabarnacl3

norabarnacl3 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:39:37 -0800

Well I lol'ed.

By: efalk

efalk — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:39:41 -0800

Hate to be the guy, but it's a double, here. Thought i thought it was good the first time around.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:40:07 -0800

Not the same as previously, by the way.

By: efalk

efalk — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:40:13 -0800

Though I ....

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:40:37 -0800

Sort of a double.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:41:39 -0800

Previously. Garfield without Garfield: "I hypothesize that if you remove all the text of Garfield's speech, or thoughts, or whatever that is, that it becomes an oddly surrealist comic."

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:41:46 -0800

Oh! It's not removing Garfield's thought bubbles, which has been done. It's removed Garfield entirely.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:41:47 -0800

Just missed your comment. It's a bit different, but it is similar. Probably inspired by the original.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:41:52 -0800

I am commenting in this thread.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:42:05 -0800

Shoulda previewed. Lots of good memories around here!

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:43:46 -0800

Not the same as previously, by the way. You could have headed off a lot of gotcha by putting that in the original post. But you've probably figured that out by now.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:44:17 -0800

I liked it. I hope this post stays, it's infinitely better than the crappy TortureTunes post.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:44:22 -0800

It's different. And this one is sadder.

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:44:28 -0800

How about a comics page without Garfield? That might be good.

By: googly

googly — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:45:13 -0800

Both are but a pale imitation of the Dysfunctional Family Circus.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:46:01 -0800

Oh, wait, so it's not a double? It is a lot better without Garfield than with, but still.

By: gerryblog

gerryblog — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:46:36 -0800

The only interesting Garfield storyline, ever.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:46:48 -0800

You could have headed off a lot of gotcha by putting that in the original post. But you've probably figured that out by now. Yes, lesson learned. Sorry for the confusion.

By: mhoye

mhoye — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:49:12 -0800

A little different. Just muting garfield isn't the same as shopping him out completely, the same way that someone who talks to cats isn't quite as crazy as somebody who talks to nothing. It would be pretty cool to combine these with the Garfield Randomizer and see what came out the other end.

By: owtytrof

owtytrof — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:49:16 -0800

These range from nearly laugh-out-loud funny to strangely poignant and sad. Mostly the former.

By: pedmands

pedmands — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:49:48 -0800

Completely without Garfield is much funnier. I am hereby replacing "meh" with "with garfield" and "LOL" with "without garfield". Without GarfieldMFAO!

By: solipsophistocracy

solipsophistocracy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:52:25 -0800

Wow, that's surprisingly good. I detest Garfield, but I like the strip a lot without him.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:52:30 -0800

So the problem all along was Garfield. Color me unsurprised.

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:52:39 -0800

This is beautiful. So much better than the original, it's actually funny this way.

By: soundofsuburbia

soundofsuburbia — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:54:21 -0800

I suppose the trick to Garfield is removing things, then. Well, here's my humble attempt. Kind of like Rothko meeting Lichtenstein, I'm sure you'll agree. (And it must've been done before.)

By: quin

quin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:54:24 -0800

"I am an empty grocery sack!" I couldn't have found a more perfect image to describe my life.

By: cashman

cashman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:55:02 -0800

Counting the moments until someone mashes this with the xkcd thing of late.

By: ORthey

ORthey — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:59:58 -0800

This one is amazing.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:00:49 -0800

this is surprisingly awesome. I think I'm going to start a totally run of the mill pet comic strip, take out the talking pets and see if it's similarly awesome.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:05:26 -0800

Totally not a double. And god damn these are charming. I'm starting to suspect that Garfield is actually a subversive effort by Jim Davis to create a kind of mainstream "found materials" archive for people to do clever things to. The aggressives Paws, Inc. legal team is just for plausible deniability. Also, get back. My hand is ever alert.

By: Ohdemah

Ohdemah — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:05:47 -0800

I am all over this like __________ on lasagna.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:08:12 -0800

Huh. I wonder how the cartoon or movies would fare with this, or with silencing Garfield.

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:08:34 -0800

And you can still make your own at the NIH website.

By: mrmojoflying

mrmojoflying — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:09:27 -0800

These comix are the empty lasagna pans of my soul.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:11:22 -0800

Jeffrey Brown much?

By: agregoli

agregoli — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:11:26 -0800

Love it.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:13:26 -0800

I imagine you could do this to many other comics and get a similar effect.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:19:32 -0800

That's not a knock on this btw. Just a thought.

By: LordSludge

LordSludge — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:20:18 -0800

Holy shit. He kinda looks like me, too.

By: Hugonaut

Hugonaut — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:20:58 -0800

Jon was always a sad man. You take out Garfield and he's sad and crazy.

By: aramaic

aramaic — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:25:04 -0800

This makes me want to shoot myself. And not because I hate it.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:26:49 -0800

"Totally not a double." Flagged as Nermal.

By: haricotvert

haricotvert — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:31:04 -0800

This is spectacular. I'm sending it around to all the people I curse on a daily basis for sending me dumb crap they found on the internet. Consistency is the lasagna of little minds. And for the record, the first Garfield book was actually very funny. More or less downhill since there, though.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:33:10 -0800

I imagine you could do this to many other comics and get a similar effect. Yeah, I've been thinking about that for the last few minutes. Garfield is an unusually solid choice here, for a couple reasons: - Very few characters. Removing Garfield is removing a very significant part of the strip, compared to other comics that tend toward larger casts. Not a showstopper; you could work around this by eliminating several characters, or all but one, from a given strip, or otherwise be selective about which strips qualify for editing. But still: with Garfield, it's like they cut out just about exactly half fo the strip, here. - Extremely spartan art. I'm not sure if there's a strip out there that is more consistently minimal in its layout, and as much fun as it'd be to nuke Luann from Apartment 3-G, it'd take a lot more filling work to repair the background. Again, not a showstopper, but a lot more work than the dirt-simple "fill in wallpaper and countertop wash" thing going on here.

By: farishta

farishta — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:33:14 -0800

Fucking brilliant.

By: Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese

Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:38:09 -0800

I wonder if they did this to free up Garfield so he could concentrate on his film career.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:39:54 -0800

That's pretty much what I was thinking, cortex. Also, as mentioned above, Jon was already pretty damn sad so while doing this to other comics might make the character sound nuts, it's doubly effective here.

By: saulgoodman

saulgoodman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:40:31 -0800

somebody needs to make a hardcopy version of this available. garfield sans garfield is the funniest cartoon i've read in years!

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:42:37 -0800

I didn't expect that to be as funny as it was, just as I didn't expect the live-action Garfields to be as funny as they were. It's as if Garfield is itself not humor, but merely the primordial ooze of funny waiting for a lightning strike to invigorate it.

By: DrGirlfriend

DrGirlfriend — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:48:17 -0800

I agree that Garfield is a particularly good choice precisely because of Jon was a pretty sad character to begin with. I used to love Garfield when I was kid. Not really sure why. But even when I was 8 I felt really sad for Jon. He seemed lonely and alienated. His only friends where a dog, a cat, and a John Oates looking-dude. When not at home, he ate alone at a diner. His dates were disasters, mainly because he was so over-eager. Maybe I read Garfield as a way to show Jon some solidarity.

By: anazgnos

anazgnos — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:49:15 -0800

I prefer Garfield Without Garfield With Garfield.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:13:59 -0800

[this is ]

By: Item

Item — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:14:16 -0800

Wasn't this thread just closed?

By: spec80

spec80 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:15:29 -0800

Wow. I think I just had an Oprahstyle A-Ha moment looking at the first page alone.

By: Item

Item — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:16:05 -0800

Hmm - weirdness afoot in Castle Metafilter.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:16:43 -0800

Glitch in the matrix, item. Glitch in the nermalfuckin' matrix.

By: piratebowling

piratebowling — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:21:33 -0800

Don't forget Arbuckle comics, where garfield is a normal cat that doesn't speak (drawn by many).

By: porn in the woods

porn in the woods — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:22:04 -0800

John Oates looking-dude Hah, I had all but forgotten about Lyman.

By: Jpfed

Jpfed — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:25:01 -0800

googly- I prefer the more unpredictable Nietzsche Family Circus.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:30:15 -0800

Brilliant. Sometimes the mundane can be made extraordinary with the smallest of touches.

By: small_ruminant

small_ruminant — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:35:08 -0800

My god, Jim Davis is brilliant. I had no idea. Garfield is a mechanism by which his ideas can be accepted by mainstream papers- like wearing a cell phone allows schizophrenics to talk to themselves without alarming anyone.

By: slimepuppy

slimepuppy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:47:58 -0800

This is great, but it gets me thinking... What if someone removed Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes? Just thinking about it makes me kinda sad.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:50:07 -0800

I can't wait for the day when we can digitally remove Woody Allen from all of his movies.

By: slogger

slogger — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:02:28 -0800

Simply awesome. That is all.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:14:49 -0800

Well, there goes my period of Comics Curmudgeon sobriety. This is awesome.

By: Pater Aletheias

Pater Aletheias — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:31:57 -0800

Amazing how the world's most unfunny strip suddenly becomes either hilarious or deeply philosophical by removing the main character. I bet my life would be fascinating without me in it.

By: MasonDixon

MasonDixon — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:33:10 -0800

A brilliant resurrection of a beloved childhood comic awash with a new profundity that speaks to the perils of our modern adult lives.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:42:45 -0800

Think it gets funny when you remove Garfield? I can make it even funnier

By: oddman

oddman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:42:52 -0800

This, this is the best of the web.

By: misha

misha — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:43:54 -0800

I think "Cathy" would have been better without Cathy. Or her Mom, or her boyfriend, or...Can we have Calvin and Hobbes back, please?

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:44:06 -0800

What if someone removed Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes? Just thinking about it makes me kinda sad. The difference, though, is that Hobbes is already explicitly a figment of Calvin's imagination. It essentially already is Garfield sans Garfield. Perhaps Calvin & Hobbes could be re-cast as a prequel to this Garfield-free Garfield; maybe someone should do a strip about the transition from Calvin to Jon, from the whimsical imagination of a mischievous child to the psychotic ravings of a schizophrenic shut-in. I'd read that!

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:47:47 -0800

Well, there goes my period of Comics Curmudgeon sobriety. This is awesome. Speaking of, CC links today to both this and to a Fark photoshop thread vamping off Mary Worth. A lot of the latter is actually pretty meh, but I like this one.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:49:43 -0800

What if someone removed Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes? Just thinking about it makes me kinda sad. I feel like I've seen this. Not the vaunted fake Ritalin ending strip, but a series of actual strips with lively Hobbes replaced with stuffed Hobbes and his word balloons nixed. I could be imagining it, though. The difference, though, is that Hobbes is already explicitly a figment of Calvin's imagination. Well, yes; but the question isn't what fits the canon of the original strip; it's what the results are like when you decontextualize the damn thing and make something new out of it.

By: thecaddy

thecaddy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:57:42 -0800

.... .... THE PAIN!!!!

By: mrmojoflying

mrmojoflying — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:04:14 -0800

I can't wait for the day when we can digitally remove ~~Woody Allen~~ Spike Lee from all of his movies. I can't wait for the day when we can digitally remove ~~Woody Allen~~ Kevin Smith from all of his movies. I can't wait for the day when we can digitally remove ~~Woody Allen~~ Quentin Tarantino from all of his movies.

By: revfitz

revfitz — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:07:11 -0800

Hobbes is not explicitly a figment of Calvin's imagination. I'm pretty sure there are times when events in the strip would seem physically impossible without Hobbes existing. At the very least, Watterson's intention was to make it ambiguous.

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:10:18 -0800

a John Oates looking-dude ...who mysteriously disappeared. In the introduction to one of the Garfield treasuries (help me -- my son loves Garfield) Jim Davis says something like "Where did Lyman go? Don't ask."

By: A dead Quaker

A dead Quaker — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:26:32 -0800

I just looked at the last week's worth of Get Fuzzy strips, and I don't think they would be improved by this process. Mostly because the characters actually respond to what the others say. Of course, by that criterion, the strip would probably best be improved by removing everyone but Bucky.

By: Corduroy

Corduroy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:26:57 -0800

I don't know if any change to Calvin & Hobbes could be as successful as this one.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:45:12 -0800

The first time I've laughed at Garfield since I was 8 years old.

By: East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:00:05 -0800

G A R F I E L D I S H U N G A R Y

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:03:28 -0800

This is great, but it gets me thinking... What if someone removed Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes? Just thinking about it makes me kinda sad. Better not click this, then.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:08:50 -0800

Speaking of, CC links today to both this and to a Fark photoshop thread vamping off Mary Worth. Thus I learn that For Better or For Worse has begun its march to the Inevitable Marriage Plotline in earnest. Oh, my. This is my favorite photoshopped Mary Worth.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:26:50 -0800

Excellent post, Spaceman.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:54:19 -0800

It looks like he/she also removed Jon from a few of the panels.

By: afu

afu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:01:53 -0800

Garfield was in fact always a brilliant meditation on depression and the mundane oppression of modern life. If you look at the comics, John never talks to Garfield, the cat merely mocks his pathetic life in word balloons. Taking Garfield out of the strip makes this more clear, but the narrative does not change between the original and altered strips. I think the hate so many people have for Garfield is that they unconsciously feel the strips condemnation. Children love the strip because they empathize with Garfield and intuitively enjoy the mocking of their parents pathetic lives.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:06:03 -0800

It looks like he/she also removed Jon from a few of the panels. Can you side-by-side this? I was assuming those were strips where Jon just wasn't framed into every panel.

By: Tube

Tube — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:12:16 -0800

Garfield is not missing, he was assassinated.

By: Ted Maul

Ted Maul — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:32:52 -0800

This Garfield thing is going TOO FAR, I say! Realfield.

By: naju

naju — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:40:13 -0800

This reminds me of Chris Ware's bleak stuff.

By: regicide is good for you

regicide is good for you — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:46:43 -0800

Whoah.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:04:51 -0800

Garfield is not missing, he was assassinated. Maybe, or perhaps he was catnapped?

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:03:40 -0800

The only interesting Garfield storyline, ever. he stole it, badly (warning - sfw, but really sad)

By: mullacc

mullacc — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:28:25 -0800

Garfield forgot my birthday too. :(

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:41:34 -0800

It looks like he/she also removed Jon from a few of the panels. Can you side-by-side this? I was assuming those were strips where Jon just wasn't framed into every panel. Well, one of the variants is moving panels around and adding or removing Jon. This is not my lucky hat. This is not my lucky hat.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:03:30 -0800

This is just sad. Thanks for posting.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:14:55 -0800

Here's some more garfield mods from a random forum.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:17:36 -0800

Damn, that thread appears to still be going--I think I bookmarked it a year or so ago, and it actually starts in 06.

By: MNDZ

MNDZ — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:32:34 -0800

I like the jokes

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:13:10 -0800

Thank you for saying that, afu. Putting aside the shrewd lucrativeness of the Paws Inc. machine, Garfield is a fucking dark comic strip. No other mainstream comic strip is as brutal toward its central (human) character. The silences, the glances at the audience, the unendingly bland setting. It's dour. I get a kick out of the various Garfield hacks that people have made, but I really think that they only highlight the absurdity that is the Garfield universe; they're really not subverting anything. I secretly long for the real Garfield movie to come out; the one that consists of endless repetitions and painful silences and Jon hating his life, with no resolution whatsoever.

By: From Bklyn

From Bklyn — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:24:24 -0800

sublime

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:40:18 -0800

The only interesting Garfield storyline, ever. Yeah. That was an "interesting" period at Paws, too. Just not in a good way. Let's just say that particular storyline was the result of a self-imposed pressure to prove Garfield could be "serious", the way the artist's favorites (Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County, etc) were.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:03:58 -0800

know what i like?

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:00:49 -0800

Garfield still irritates me for the sheer laziness of composition. Most of the time it seems that he's just copying and pasting the same half-dozen sketches with different speech balloons.

By: Arturus

Arturus — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:19:37 -0800

My contribution.

By: fleetmouse

fleetmouse — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:48:53 -0800

Thorzdad, you say that like you have an inside scoop on the dirt at Paws. Moar!

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:53:43 -0800

invisible cat.

By: cashman

cashman — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:41:34 -0800

And you can still make your own at the NIH website. Heh.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:11:46 -0800

Garfield still irritates me for the sheer laziness of composition. Most of the time it seems that he's just copying and pasting the same half-dozen sketches with different speech balloons. Something tells me you'd just hate Dinosaur Comics and Get Your War On.

By: anazgnos

anazgnos — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:14:42 -0800

Yeah. That was an "interesting" period at Paws, too. Just not in a good way. Let's just say that particular storyline was the result of a self-imposed pressure to prove Garfield could be "serious", the way the artist's favorites (Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County, etc) were. That's interesting... Christie: What about Jim Davis? Watterson: Uh...Garfield is...(long pause)...consistent. Christie: Ooo-kay... Watterson: U.S. Acres I think is an abomination. Christie: Never seen it. Watterson: Lucky you. Jim Davis has his factory in Indiana cranking out this strip about a pig on a farm. I find it an insult to the intelligence, though it's very successful.

By: The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew

The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:12:17 -0800

I'm sad that my favorite one was tampered with a great deal. (not even just the very obvious added tears at the end, either.) It sort of makes it lose some of what I liked so much about the idea.

By: somanyamys

somanyamys — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:42:53 -0800

Ooh, that's a bummer. And totally unnecessary -- looking at the original, I think that one would have been way funnier/trippier if they had just left Jon alone in panels 5 and 7.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:46:14 -0800

Huh. Knowing the strips were altered beyond merely removing Garfield and Garfield's thought bubbles kind of totally ruins it.

By: The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew

The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:07:38 -0800

I did some research, a decent few are (in addition to removing Garfield) tampered with, it looks like. That bums me out. Lucky hat, original Grocery sack, original my hand, original a tunnel, original (which I think could have stood as-is, anyway.) growing old, original there are probably more, I have to go to class.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:11:38 -0800

Well, arfuckle.

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:35:24 -0800

This is the Creationism of Garfield mashups. They started with a conclusion and then created evidence.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:55:01 -0800

Is everything that seems truly awesome just a great big lie?

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:55:40 -0800

roll truck roll, those "historical" Garfield comics are fakes Jim Davis placed on the internet to test your faith in the bitterness of Garfield.

By: eritain

eritain — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:46:19 -0800

Challenge us. Go out in a blaze of Dadaist glory. There is still time.

By: anazgnos

anazgnos — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:13:35 -0800

Reading these the first time, I assumed they had been constructed beyond merely removing Garfield from extant strips wholesale. They just seemed too good to be true. It doesn't really change the effect for me. If the premise is changing Garfield strips for comedic or poetic affect, there's no reason to draw a line on precisely which changes are acceptable.

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:32:33 -0800

Yeah, on second look, the concept is more "What if Jon Arbuckle didn't have a cat to talk to?" than "what if we took Garfield out of the comics?" This is clearly the drama version. I'm waiting for a horror version where a mysterious invisible spirit consumes great pans of lasagna and kicks Odie. Jon Arbuckle: Depressed and Haunted.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:26:07 -0800

Thorzdad: Well, interestingly I think, those named strips, when they're serious, also do it in the process of being funny. One of my least favorite C&H strips, now that I think about it, is the early sequence where Calvin finds, cares for, fails to save and mourns for a dying raccoon. Very little in the way of jokes, and it seems manipulative now. A totally serious Bloom County story I can't remember, and would suck anyway -- that kind of strip would be preachy without laughs. Meanwhile, the abandoned-Garfield story is actually effective because Garfield has never, before or since, tried to be serious. And the tone is exactly right too; there are hundreds of webcomics that try the half-fully/half drama approach and are the failest fails to ever fail a fail. Fail. Meanwhile, the Garfield story just comes completely out of left field and unnerves the hell out of the reader. There's some of that in Garfield: His 9 Lives as well, a standalone sequence of stories, only about half of which recognizably about Garfield. It is a tremendously underrated book IMO. I guess what I'm saying is, I miss the Jim Davis that would take risks like that. It sounds very much like he was trying to push himself as a artist, was whacked soundly on the nose by whoever, syndicate, unenlightened readers, merchandisers, and became shy about ever trying something like that again. It is a real shame. IMO, of course.

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:26:58 -0800

It was simply a week before Halloween and Jim wanted to do something legitimately scary, as opposed to Halloween-scary. "Ghosts aren't scary..." he told me before explaining that before writing the strips he went around to everyone he knew and asked them what truly scared them. The answer he got most often was "being alone" or "dying alone". Just that simple.

By: Happy Dooies

Happy Dooies — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:34:20 -0800

Interesting. for like a minute. then kind of one-trick pony

By: ryanrs

ryanrs — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:06:34 -0800

Yeah, focus groups don't work so well for art.

By: anazgnos

anazgnos — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:05:27 -0800

One more... http://www.sparehed.com/2007/08/08/nothing-garfield/

By: Grangousier

Grangousier — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:54:54 -0800

I've been reading these every day, and I don't care if they're doctored, I'm enjoying them a lot.