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.

The Day Garfield Developed a Conscience

Jon Arbuckle is one sick mutha...

Jon knows how to keep the flame of love alive.

In recent years, Jim Davis' comic strip Garfield has relented somewhat in its depiction of the character Jon Arbuckle as a friendless, antisocial dweeb by giving him a seemingly-normal girlfriend named Liz, a veterinarian. That convention was taken over to the Garfield movies as well, with Jennifer Love Hewitt playing Liz to Breckin Meyer's Jon. This, to me, feels like a cheat, akin to the "bland nice guy" makeover former hothead David Seville got when the Chipmunks franchise was revived in the 1980s. This, too, was carted over to the live-action Chipmunks movies. So Dave is no longer a truly-scary rageaholic, and Jon doesn't necessarily spend his Saturday nights alone with his cat. Well, I say phooey to all this focus-group, audience-placating nonsense. I'm making these characters off-putting again, and I'm starting with Jon. So there!

A new diversion: 'Marvin' minus thought balloons

Marvin minus all those pesky jokes and stories.

Since 1982, Tom Armstrong's Marvin has been sullying newspaper comics pages with the dreary, laughless adventures of an obnoxious child, Marvin Miller, who remains disturbingly unable to develop past infancy. He should be in his early thirties by now, but he still looks and behaves like a preschooler. Doomed to spend eternity in diapers, the boy obsesses gleefully over his own feces and the discomfort it causes in others.

Most of the strip's alleged humor derives, in fact, from the child's copious and foul excretions, though Marvin's selfishness, penchant for destruction, and fearsome temper are important components of the strip as well. Marvin's weary, utterly defeated parents, Jeff and Jenny, bear the brunt of Marvin's wrath; their unenviable fate is to forever tend to the monster they themselves created.

Aesthetically, Marvin is an obvious derivative of Jim Davis' Garfield, with the pudgy, flame-haired child a mere stand-in for the famously overfed orange tabby. Deprived of the ability to speak, both Marvin and Garfield "communicate" through thought bubbles. The other humans in these strips should not be able to hear or understand these thoughts, unless they possess telepathic skills, and yet many of the jokes in Marvin and Garfield rely on just such telepathy.

I wondered what would happen if Tom Armstrong removed these thought bubbles from Marvin. What would the strip look like without them? The answers are seen above. Marvin becomes the story of a mostly-happy, forever-mute child who occasionally changes his facial expression for no apparent reason.

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.