Garfield is dead?

KevlarMoses

Hey, you guys remember Garfield, that fat orange cat who loved lasagna? After reading the Garfield plugins at the main page i remembered this comic from my childhood.


http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/

"You have no idea how alone you are, Garfield" is that not the most twisted piece of text Jim Davis has ever written?

Sorry that i had to give you the link to ytmnd. i hate music i cant turn off too.

this strip is mention in wikipedia as this entry:

One storyline, often referred to as the Garfield Halloween Strips, is unique among Garfield strips in that it is not meant to be humorous. It depicts Garfield awakening in a future in which the house is abandoned and he no longer exists. Fans hold various opinions and theories on the meaning behind this enigmatic storyline, varying from A Christmas Carol like interpretation to a theory that Garfield is actually dead or dying, slowly starving to death in the abandoned household.

"Slowly starving to death". so Garfield is dead?

Caveman Paws

I saw this months ago on another thread here (or was it in the artists section?). Mildly depressing but over all not bad.

werehippy

According to Jim Davis the answer is no.

edit: Though I will say that those are pretty much without a doubt the best things Davis has ever done. Which makes it that much more of a shame what a vapid money hole his work has become.

Nogs

posted this in SE++ a few days ago, some of you guys here might like it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

Me Too!

beautiful

wwtMask

Nogs wrote: »

posted this in SE++ a few days ago, some of you guys here might like it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

:^::^::^:

Golden Yak

That whole strip creeped me out so much when I was a kid I almost cut it out of the book it was in. I wound up just skipping past it whenever I read through it. I figure it was just Garfield having a bad dream.

Sentry

Nogs wrote: »

posted this in SE++ a few days ago, some of you guys here might like it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

It's like... silent garfield, but AWESOMEER

you know, I kind of figure the "death" comic was a metaphor for Jim Davis's talent and creativity dying... because (and I could be wrong) I think that might be the last time Garfield was ever good.

Balefuego

You are wrong, because Garfield was never good.

KVW

It's better than Family Circus. It's not much, but it's something.

DJ Eebs

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dZ2q9NmYf6g

Garlic Bread

Nogs wrote: »

posted this in SE++ a few days ago, some of you guys here might like it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

This is amazing.

DouglasDanger

Keith wrote: »

Nogs wrote: »

posted this in SE++ a few days ago, some of you guys here might like it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

This is amazing.

That's really good.

Sentry

KVW wrote: »

It's better than Family Circus. It's not much, but it's something.

It's hard to be worse then Family Circus... it's like seeing seeing cartoon versions of Thomas Kinkade/Norman Rockwell paintings... only slightly more nauseating.

Synthetic Orange

The Geebs That Is A Mod wrote: »

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dZ2q9NmYf6g

I love Lasagnacat so much.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vubtGImJXqk

NoelVeiga

Nogs wrote: »

posted this in SE++ a few days ago, some of you guys here might like it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

I'd seen the link on the main page post, but it took me till the second page of seeing it again through you to realize what those strips actually were. It's even spookier when you don't realize where the strips come from.

CoJoeTheLawyer

KVW wrote: »

It's better than Family Circus. It's not much, but it's something.

Anything is better than the Family Circus...Anything.

I remember reading that particular Garfield when I was 8 or so and thinking "WTF" but it didn't really stick with me. Now it’s kind of creepy, but ultimately unimportant. It's a shame that Jim Davis went from being a talented cartoonist to a full-fledged success story to an unrelenting sellout whore.

Forar

To be honest, I liked Garfield as a kid.

That said, my loathing of Family Circus knows no bounds.

Munch

I still love the Garfield's Nine Lives collection, and subsequent animated version. Davis had plenty of creativity, but fuck, if I had to choose between sitting on my ass and making millions and laboring over a drafting table being creative, I think I know which I'd choose.

Still, check these out: 1 2

I watched that stuff as a kid, thinking it was going to be like the Saturday morning cartoon. I'm pretty sure I was crying by the time it was over.

Nogs

man, garfields christmas movie thing was one of my favorites when i was a kid.

basically, garfield and his friends came across waaay better in animation than in sequential art.

Delzhand

CoJoeTheLawyer wrote: »

It's a shame that Jim Davis went from being a talented cartoonist to a full-fledged success story to an unrelenting sellout whore.

I'm fairly certain he admitted at some point that he set out with the sole intent of creating the most marketable, non-offensive comic in the world.

Sellout whore, or master manipulator?

Wildcat

Surely you can't sell out if you had nothing to sell in the first place?

Silvoculous

ohoho yes

Arcibi

Garfield was a big part of my childhood so I can't really bring myself to hate him

I will agree that the older strips are better than the newer ones though

MikeRyu

Being British Garfield wasn't as much of a big thing for me growing but I remember the cartoon and I love those Garfield minus Garfield strips. They would be very sad and depressing but they are far too hilarious.

SageinaRage

The early garfields were actually pretty creative and entertaining, especially the 9 lives book and the other weirdness. It was only in the really late 80's/early 90's that it became the boring dreary existence it is today.

Orogogus

http://www.slate.com/id/2102299/

Today, Garfield the comic strip appears in nearly 2,600 newspapers around the globe, and its readership is estimated at 260 million. If the readership number is right, then 4 percent of the world's population reads Garfield every single day. Garfield products—sold in 111 countries—rake in between $750 million and $1 billion each year. This was not accidental: Davis meticulously plotted Garfield's success. And part of his calculation was to make the strip so inoffensive that it's hard to hate it even for being anodyne.

Davis makes no attempt to conceal the crass commercial motivations behind his creation of Garfield. Davis has the soul of an adman—his first job after dropping out of Ball State, where he majored in business and art, was in advertising—and he carefully studied the marketplace when developing Garfield. The genesis of the strip was "a conscious effort to come up with a good, marketable character," Davis told Walter Shapiro in a 1982 interview in the Washington Post. "And primarily an animal. … Snoopy is very popular in licensing. Charlie Brown is not." So, Davis looked around and noticed that dogs were popular in the funny papers, but there wasn't a strip for the nation's 15 million cat owners. Then, he consciously developed a stable of recurring, repetitive jokes for the cat. He hates Mondays. He loves lasagna. He sure is fat.

I'm one of the ones who doesn't think that Garfield was ever "good", but apparently it works. My previous landlord's daughters, ages 9 and 14, eat it right up.

I don't understand why Family Circus gets singled out, though. That whole stable of comics that have just been taking up space for the last several decades -- Marmaduke, Dennis the Menace, Wizard of Id, B.C., etc. -- seems to be on the same tier of mediocrity. I don't like B.C., but that's probably more because of the creationism thing than anything else.

Clint Eastwood

I would posit that the main reason that FC gets singled out is because, unlike those other comics, it never has a joke in it.

Also because of the political messages that he sneaks in there every once in a while and the message that "kids r dum". That's just me though.

DouglasDanger

Garfield used to be kind of entertaining, back when stuff happened. Jon, Garfield and Odie used to go on trips and stuff. I remember really liking it back in middle school. The library had all of these hardbound collections from the early days of the strip.

Forar

Orogogus wrote: »

I don't understand why Family Circus gets singled out, though. That whole stable of comics that have just been taking up space for the last several decades -- Marmaduke, Dennis the Menace, Wizard of Id, B.C., etc. -- seems to be on the same tier of mediocrity. I don't like B.C., but that's probably more because of the creationism thing than anything else.

I don't think I've found more than one Dennis the Menace or Marmaduke strip funny in my entire life, but that's more than I can say about Family Circus.

Wizard of Id and B.C. get the ocassional smile, but it's true that there are few comics widely printed that get a real laugh out of me.

Sherman's Lagoon, The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were probably the only ones I really looked forward to reading when I was younger, though I'm probably forgetting one or two.

Bloods End

Theres one strip of Garfield where he looks into a mirror and sees Snoopy looking back at him and then deadpans "Yup. One of those days"

Had me on my ass laughing.

Delduwath

I keep trying to figure out what I think about Jim Davis's move with Garfield. Yeah, I haven't really laughed at a Garfield strip since maybe junior high (and I agree that the animated series was way better than the strip), but (especially of late) people seem to come down on Garfield specifically for being bland and marketable and safe. Why? Is it just because it's bland and marketable and safe? Or is it because Davis is betraying some artistic ideal by not pushing himself and his characters and his medium, and not trying to improve and evolve and so on?

There are people who come in to work every day, do their nine-to-five, and then go home. They don't do anything out of the ordinary at work, even if they might be capable of it. There are engineers who don't push themselves while they are calculating a building, construction workers who don't push themselves while laying down bricks, and there are coffee shop owners who don't push themselves while they are serving their drinks. In fact, I'm probably in this category too (I'm a computer programmer; I do strive for elegance and quality in my code, but I don't think I've done anything to make the world sit down and go "wow"). I don't think most people would be too outraged by that. Do we expect something different from Davis because his line of work is supposed to be more artistic? The dude comes in to work, writes and draws some solid, if not revolutionary, stuff, and then clocks out for the day. And then collect a fat paycheck for it - one that he deserves, because he specifically planned for it and worked for it. Why do we resent him for it?

Balefuego

when your occupation is to entertain, then yeah being bland is a perfectly legitimate reason to slam his work.

Delduwath

Yeah, I agree, but someone is buying all the crap that the Garfield factory spits out. I doubt it's just because they have extra cash and don't know what to spend it on; I imagine that it's because they like it. While you and I might think it's trash, there are plenty of people who seem entertained by it.

NoelVeiga

Whoa, all the Garfield hate.

Is it maybe that webcomics have spoiled people's tastes? Have we gone beyond added value to another publication and into actively seeking the content either by itself or in the form of a larger product, as in PA's post/comic combo?

Because outside of political strips I'm in the field of those who don't think there aren't many strips out there that are poignant or groundbreaking. That doesn't seem to be the point of them, or a result that the medium and its distribution is well suited to create.

By the way, my bet for best strip ever? Mafalda. Spanish speakers probably know what it is. The rest of you, look it up.

DJ Eebs

DarkPrimus

So now that Liz is dating Jon, I suppose it's only a matter of time before she goes down into the cellar and opens the icebox where Lyman's body is.

humina

After looking at the Garfield minus Garfield you really get a sense of how unfunny Garfield really is as a character. When the reader has a chance to be the one cracking jokes at things going on in Jon's life, it is much more entertaining:

http://oehlberg.com/blog/2008/02/29/garfield/

DarkPrimus

I much prefer the Silent Garfield approach, where Jon is really just a lonely pathetic man who talks to his pets because he has no social life.

The Lord of Hats

DouglasDanger wrote: »

Garfield used to be kind of entertaining, back when stuff happened. Jon, Garfield and Odie used to go on trips and stuff. I remember really liking it back in middle school. The library had all of these hardbound collections from the early days of the strip.

Yeah, I remember that. Garfield's fairly good when he's following a plotline, but as a daily joke strip, he's absolutely horrible.



Also, Garfield minus garfield is great.

Angry

you guys should be directing your hate towards ziggy. i swear if i ever meet tom wilson i will kill that man.