Garfield Is Dead

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From the Garfield entry in Wikipedia:

One storyline, which lasted a week from October 23, 1989 (possibly to coincide with Halloween, although the 31st actually fell the following week), 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. This is revealed to have been a dream of some kind, and ends with this narration:

"An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice...or terrify, all depending on how we conduct ourselves today."

Alternatively, some theorize that the end of this storyline actually implies that the rest of the series, the more conventional strips, are all fantasies Garfield is playing out in his head to delude himself from realizing the dark turn his life has taken, as he slowly starves to death in an abandoned house.

Those strips in full:

http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Sunday, 6 August 2006 15:09 (seventeen years ago) link

The same strips on the offical site:

http://www.garfield.com/comics/comics_archives_strip.html?1989-ga891023

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Sunday, 6 August 2006 15:12 (seventeen years ago) link

"you have no idea how alone you are garfield"

Nice St. Elsewhere theory!

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 6 August 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

does anyone remember that garfield's nine lives book?

― j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 6 August 2006 17:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Yes and that shit was nightmarish, even the cute airbrushy one with the little girl and Garfield living in the clouds. Especially that one.

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Sunday, 6 August 2006 17:20 (seventeen years ago) link

I'd forgotten Garfield's Nine Lives! I remember one story ends with a realistically drawn Garfield being possessed by ghosts and viciously attacking an old woman.

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Sunday, 6 August 2006 17:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Da fug?

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Sunday, 6 August 2006 17:41 (seventeen years ago) link

That book was prettty awesome, actually - I remember really liking the noir short story, the cavecat and the aforementioned living in clouds thing (especially great because it was such a mindfuck - the garden of Eden story, but with the most puzzling twist.) The viking story was pretty crap, tho, iirc. Realistically drawn Garfield story was about animal testing, right? Creepy as fuck.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 6 August 2006 19:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I think there were two realistically drawn stories - the animal testing one, and another one which had the ending I described.

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Sunday, 6 August 2006 19:47 (seventeen years ago) link

that "remove garfield's speech bubbles" thing, that's been linked on here rite?

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 6 August 2006 20:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, and it's great. The randomizer was even better though. RIP.

― 100% CHAMPS with a Yes! Attitude. (Austin, Still), Sunday, 6 August 2006 21:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Chridoff is right!

Those nine lives in full, according to wikipedia:

* "In the Beginning" (written by Jim Davis, illustrated by Paws staff): The cat is created. Not an actual life; it is more of a prologue.
* "Cave Cat" (written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Davis, Mike Fentz, and Larry Fentz): In the Stone Age, the first cat emerges from the sea and is domesticated
* "The Vikings" (written by Jim Davis and Mike Fentz; illustrated by Fentz): An unfrozen group of Vikings, including Garfield the Orange, loots and pillages St. Paul, Minnesota
* "Babes and Bullets" (written by Ron Tuthill, illustrated by Kevin Campbell): Hard-boiled detective Sam Spayed investigates a suspicious murder. Later adapted into the television special Garfield: Babes and Bullets.
* "The Exterminators" (written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Davis, Mike Fentz, and Larry Fentz): A trio of Three Stooges-like cats chase a mouse, and mayhem ensues.
* "Lab Animal" (written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Gary Barker and Larry Fentz): at a secret government facility, lab specimen 19-GB receives an unusual injection.
* "The Garden" (written and illustrated by Dave Kühn): Cloey and her yellow kitten play in a magical, Wonderland-like, garden. However, like the Garden of Eden there is a test of character of a chest the pair must not open. The pair approach the chest and after much suspense, the pair resists the temptation and stays in the garden forever.
* "Primal Self" (written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Jim Clements, Gary Barker, and Larry Fentz): An orange housecat meets an evil force...
* "Garfield" (written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Gary Barker and Valette Hildebrand; color by Doc Davis): Present-day Garfield meets lasagna, Jon, and Odie.
* "Space Cat" (written and illustrated by Jim Clements): Our hero battles menacing aliens.

The one with the evil force was written by Jim Davis! Dude has a Dark Side fo' sho'.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 6 August 2006 23:54 (seventeen years ago) link

that "remove garfield's speech bubbles" thing, that's been linked on here rite?

Sadly, i think those may be gone forever. I looked up the "Other Side Of Garfield" thread a while ago, and it looks like the blog entry it linked to has vanished.

I did try making some of my own, but they just weren't as good as the originals...

― eyeless in gazza (Phil A), Monday, 7 August 2006 00:36 (seventeen years ago) link

garfield in a coma

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 7 August 2006 02:23 (seventeen years ago) link

The one where Garfield is about to maul Grandma is etched in my mind forever and I remember checking the credits, seeing that it was written by Jim Davis, and thinking that was incredibly fucked up even as a child. I had no use for the noir detective story because I was too dumb for words without pictures. Does anyone remember how the last story ends? In general I think I was just not ready to seriously consider Garfield's mortality at that age.

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Monday, 7 August 2006 08:24 (seventeen years ago) link

here kitty kitty

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Monday, 7 August 2006 08:24 (seventeen years ago) link

I have that book.

I have no idea how I supressed the memories of it.

Watchmen and DKR have so much to answer for.

― David R. (popshots75`), Monday, 7 August 2006 12:13 (seventeen years ago) link

This is seriously the best thing ever. I knew there was a reason that I used to like "Garfield"; I just couldn't remember what it was.

― Jesus Dan (Dan Perry), Monday, 7 August 2006 12:51 (seventeen years ago) link

I wish I could read comics from an alternate universe where this Dark Existential Garfield was a big hit and kept going on forever.

― Matthew Perpetua! (Matthew Perpetua!), Monday, 7 August 2006 13:40 (seventeen years ago) link

And there'd be a semi-obscure "Nine Lives Of Garfield" book where he likes lasagna and sleeping, and alternate-ILC would be all WTF about it.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 7 August 2006 13:56 (seventeen years ago) link

haha

― Jesus Dan (Dan Perry), Monday, 7 August 2006 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link

this is sad there is no ha :(

― chaki (chaki), Monday, 7 August 2006 21:06 (seventeen years ago) link

i had the book with this in it when i was a kid! creepiest saddest thing ever.

and there was a cartoon based on that nine lives book!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 06:42 (seventeen years ago) link

this thread is fucking with my soul

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:24 (seventeen years ago) link

i've never heard of any of this stuff

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:26 (seventeen years ago) link

the only thing freakier to me would be to learn that the meat in Jon's lasagna was al these years made from the flesh of Garfield's littermates from when he was a kitten

― you have no idea how alone you are, latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:36 (seventeen years ago) link

and there was a cartoon based on that nine lives book!

Yeah, didn't have the creepier ones tho if I remember. I gotta say, I quite liked the "Garfield" cartoon when I was a kid; started reading the comic strips (in magazine format) only leading off from there. Last time I checked out the comic strips they truly were as vile and useless as everyone says they are, but the cartoon...not gonna say it holds up, it's pretty crap, but at least lots of shit *happens*.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:40 (seventeen years ago) link

no way was the garfield cartoon crap, it was BRILLIANT, largely due to every episode being written by mark evanier (sergio aragones' co-writer on groo). just thinking about the episode where garfield wakes up in the wrong cartoon (a straight-faced transformers parody) and spends the whole episode acting as if nothing's wrong cracks me up.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:57 (seventeen years ago) link

i just mean the saturday morning one, btw, not the halloween and christmas specials and the one where they go camping or whatever. those were ok i guess, but the regular cartoon had a completely different flavor to it and i don't even really associate it with the comic strip.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 09:59 (seventeen years ago) link

the cartoon was great, i remember it being a lot of fun and....binky the clown!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 10:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Jim Davis is a tool. When I was nine there was this big charity golf tournament featuring famous comic strip artists in Sarasota, Florida, my hometown at the time. I went and got sketches and autographs from tons of folks (including a dude who I thought was Hal Foster, who looked like death, which would've made sense, as Foster had been dead for four years at that point; the guy in question was actually John Cullen Murphy). All of them were amazingly nice and gracious and truly magnanimous etc etc, EXCEPT for Davis, who refused to draw Orson from US Acres as requested, and instead quickly crapped out an almost unrecognizable Garfield doodle. He then peeled out in his golf cart, splattering me and my dad with mud, and completely ruining the near priceless photograph of Stan Lee and I playing touch football with each other. That didn't happen, but the rest of this overlong paragraph is complete Truth.

Sarasota was home to comics people. Cathy, Dik Browne, the dude who did Cap'n Vincible: what a legacy.

― barefoot manthing (Garrett Martin), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 12:28 (seventeen years ago) link

us acres was teh funney when i was little

― chaki (chaki), Tuesday, 8 August 2006 17:05 (seventeen years ago) link

The cartoon has its moments, but when was the last time any of you saw it? I watched it semi-regularly in 2003/2004 for nostalgic reasons, and there's something really swarmy and lazy about it - especially the endless resorting to meta and fourth-wall breaking.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 09:55 (seventeen years ago) link

Didn't Jim Davis stop doing the strip (many) years ago and he spends his days doing "artistic" oil paintings of Garfield or somesuch? A friend claimed to have seen the store where these are sold for thousands, completely ridiculous.

― mike h. (mike h.), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 14:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Was yesterday's ILX stoppage some transition to this alterna-ILC??

― c('°c) (Leee), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 15:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Nermal was punching the universe.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 15:19 (seventeen years ago) link

More like Odie licked it amirite?

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 9 August 2006 16:03 (seventeen years ago) link

five months pass...

http://joedanger.us/garfield.html

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Sunday, 14 January 2007 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link

HOORAY!

― Candy: tastes like chicken, if chicken was a candy. (Austin, Still), Monday, 15 January 2007 12:16 (seventeen years ago) link

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/1600/interpretivedancecu1.jpg

― Candy: tastes like chicken, if chicken was a candy. (Austin, Still), Monday, 15 January 2007 12:42 (seventeen years ago) link

How did you save that, Austin??

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 15 January 2007 12:58 (seventeen years ago) link

print screen button, then control v in photoshop.

― Candy: tastes like chicken, if chicken was a candy. (Austin, Still), Monday, 15 January 2007 14:03 (seventeen years ago) link

one year passes...

Garfield Minus Garfield

― Dr. Superman, Tuesday, 26 February 2008 17:33 (sixteen years ago) link

That's such an atsronomical improvement. In fact I laughed non-stop while reading those.

― chap, Tuesday, 26 February 2008 17:45 (sixteen years ago) link

What a colossal improvement! Really funny. Thanks.

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, 26 February 2008 21:31 (sixteen years ago) link

I think just removing Garfield's speech bubbles was a better idea. Jon as a sad, lonely man talking to his cat was somehow funnier than Jon as a sad, lonely man talking to the thin air.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, 27 February 2008 07:44 (sixteen years ago) link

-- Dr. Superman, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 9:33 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Link

-- chap, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 9:45 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Link

-- EZ Snappin, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 1:31 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I think just removing Garfield's speech bubbles was a better idea. Jon as a sad, lonely man talking to his cat was somehow funnier than Jon as a sad, lonely man talking to the thin air.

-- Tuomas, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:44 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

― Kerm, Wednesday, 27 February 2008 07:50 (sixteen years ago) link

suppose this oughtta go in that other thread, but what the hell

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/GarfieldRandom01.png

― contenderizer, Wednesday, 27 February 2008 20:05 (sixteen years ago) link

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