2024 Fun Comics Advent Calendar, Day 15: Fargield

Garfield is not here to amuse you.

 

Garfield parodies are, let's say, extremely common on the internet. This is another one. What can I say? I have a weakness for the classics. Jim Davis' comic strip has been running so long and has become so ubiquitous in our culture that it's only natural for people to want to subvert it somehow. That's just how people's minds work. Naturally, I've done some Garf-inspired stuff over the years, and not all of it has been posted to my blog. Here are a couple more examples:

His logic is airtight. Can't argue with that.

It's Garfield Lacking Garfield.

Okay, that last one is clearly inspired by Garfield Minus Garfield. I don't know if they've done that exact strip already, but I just wanted to do my own version. I just liked the image of the flea counter sitting on the countertop.

Thought I'd erase Garfield from this 'Garfield' before 'Garfield Minus Garfield' does it.

A homemade Garfield Minus Garfield.

Just got home yesterday from Indiana, o my brothers and only friends. I was there visiting my sister and her family for the Memorial Day weekend. My dad came down from Michigan, so I got to see him, too. There's not much to do in this portion of Indiana, so we watched many hours of television and consumed mass quantities of starches, sugars, and fats. That helped pass the time. 

We also got out to the movies a couple of times. Finally caught up with The Avengers: Age of Ultron (a solid, if by-the-book superhero flick; a little more self-serious and hence maybe not as fun as the first one) and Mad Max: Fury Road (an expectation-shattering revelation; I may have to see it again before it leaves theaters). 

One of my favorite rituals of these family get-togethers is reading the comics with my niece and nephews. This time, I was able to introduce them to the pleasures of Garfield Minus Garfield, the Dadaist experimental comic which takes normal Garfield dailies and simply removes the title character, thus revealing the fat orange cat's pitiful owner, Jon Arbuckle, as the sad, twitchy lunatic he's always been. We read the original Garfield, too, and I found one that would make a perfect candidate for Garfield Minus Garfield. So before those guys could get their paws on it, I did my own version. You can see it above. Enjoy, and I'll catch you further along down the trail.

UPDATE: Garfield Minus Garfield did, in fact, publish its own version of this strip, several days after I posted mine. But they dropped Jon's third-panel word balloon, which to me makes it less funny. Better that he desperately plead to nobody. Advantage: Joe.

(today's zomby) AND SOME CHEAP LAUGHS AT THE EXPENSE OF LOCAL NEWS ANCHORS!

Ouch! Well, regardless, I'm still occasionally taking Ziggy cartoons and improving them by removing Ziggy himself and any other disagreeable elements. Here, for instance, is a before-and-after comparison of yesterday's Ziggy:

Isn't that second version nice -- sort of peaceful and contemplative? I find it's really soothing and therapeutic to remove Ziggy from his own cartoon. And speaking of things which bring me comfort, if however fleeting....

Local news shows are a source of great amusement to me. They're definitely a relic of the pre-Internet era, and they still rely on shameless exploitation of human misery, cheap fear-mongering, and appalling sentimentality for ratings. The news anchors and reporters, with their inflated egos and perfectly-coiffed hair, are always good for a laugh... as everyone from The Simpsons to Will Ferrell have demonstrated. One of my dearest guilty pleasures, I will admit, is watching news bloopers, which are available in abundance on YouTube. Here are some examples of what I mean. You will see some of the same clips repeated, but all these compilations are worth watching. A few Fox News clips are in there, too, which is only fitting since Fox is essentially a national network with the "local news" mindset.







If you want cheap laughs at the expense of contemptible people, look no further.

ZOMBY: The week-long experiment begins!

You might be thinking, "That sucks. Where's Zomby?" Allow me to explain. Several years ago, I became quite fascinated by two ongoing parodies of Garfield. The more famous one, Garfield Minus Garfield, takes existing Garfield strips and merely removes the title character. The second, arguably more creative spoof is called Arbuckle and alters Jim Davis' original strips in two ways: the artwork is entirely redone (in a variety of styles by numerous artists) and Garfield's thought bubbles are removed. The basic point of both GMG and Arbuckle are the same: when you remove Garfield's wisecracks, his owner Jon Arbuckle is revealed as a deeply disturbed and lonely man.

Inspired by those parodies, I wanted to see what would be revealed if the title character were removed from Tom Wilson's long-running cartoon feature Ziggy. I found some of the results to be startling. Without its titular bald man, Ziggy became a record of a strange, surreal, haunted world where either: (a) characters rage impotently at no one, or (b) nothing happens whatsoever. Take a look:








I've been meaning to return to that world for a few years, and I've decided to do so through my blog all this week. Now, granted, today's cartoon isn't particularly suited for the Zomby Minus Zomby treatment. But I can only work with what I'm given.

And if it's any kind of bonus to you, all the cartoons this week will be in color. If this doesn't appeal to you, things will be back to normal by next Monday. In the meantime, try to appreciate these cartoons as opportunities for restful meditation.