Strip Nude for Your Kitty

Were Garfield a human being, we would not hesitate to read this incident, in which Garfield strips a 3-year-old child to his underwear and leaves him standing in a snowbank, as cruel at best, sexual-assulty at worst. This is one of the many advantages of Garfield's constantly shifting blur between cat, anthropomorphized cat, and cat-in-name-only.

Because of Davis' cartooning style, in which everything is mildly grotesque, we always have to take characters at their word when it comes to aesthetic evaluation. Jon's looks, for example, are regularly evaluated as somewhere in the spectrum of plain to unappealing, but he's drawn essentially the same as world class hottie Liz; that these assessments are often made by the spiteful and rude Garfield does not make them easier to parse. We take it as a given that Garfield is morbidly obese, but from the physical evidence, he does not appear out of the ordinary next to, say, Nermal. This is an interesting phenomenon/ problem for cartoonists with a penchant for exaggerated, hideous stylization, from Don Martin to Kaz to Jim Davis. When a gag requires a character or object to immediately read as ugly or tasteless, the art has to go an extra mile... a sprint of which Garfield is perfectly capable. Witness the character design of Greta the pet sitter only last week.

So the "stupidity" of the boy's outfit in today's strip doesn't even register. No clothing ensemble is particularly fashionable or flattering in Garfield, so as with the case of Jon's bad taste in evening wear, the kid's outfit requires additional cues in dialogue/ reaction, etc. We get no such help until the far right of the final panel. The strip's focus clearly isn't on the kid's fashion crimes as Garfield perceives them, on the kid's hypocrisy, or really his comeuppance for calculated rudeness to animals. The core of the strip is a burgeoning little bully mistakenly trying to tango with a grandmaster. Garfield bats not an eye as he goes way, way past the point of eye-for-an-eye in return of a child's meaningless insult. He lays something else bare, besides the child's vulnerable white underbelly: Garfield cares about what this idiot thinks. And he cares that his art has been attacked, even if he has to destroy it to refute the criticism. And he cannot resist striking the kid out when he steps up to the plate, even though the lad's hopelessly outmatched, because it's a bullying contest, and that's what bullies do. When everyone's an asshole, the biggest asshole may win, but he's still an asshole.

I humbly submit that both combatants in this battle of insults are slightly wrong, as any tiny cat-crafted snowman is not going to be "stupid" but rather "adorable", and with the little outfit, it would be just precious. Not that these things can't happen, but there must've been a heavy surprise snowfall overnight, since spring was in full bloom only yesterday.

"Tango with a grandmaster" officially marks PerMon's first glaringly mixed metaphor of 2008.

Some These Pizzas I'll Be Gone

p1. There's a subtle violation of cartooning conventional wisdom in the first panel. Time flows in a fluid, dynamic manner through comics panels when they don't depict a moment of frozen temporality; i.e.- any time you're reading dialogue, time is passing in the panel. The period depicted in the first panel spans the time it takes for the doorbell to ring, Garfield to physically react, and Jon and Liz to have their exchange. This time-crammed panel isn't unusual, but the left-to-right reading rules of the Western world usually demand that the incidents unspool in an organized fashion that mimics our reading flow - left to right, or top to bottom - so that the causality is clear. The typical way to lay out the panel would be with the eighth note / DING DONG on the left, or hovering above the reactants. The front door is more often than not to the right of the kitchen and dining room, but the geography of Jon's house is malleable, so the action could easily be staged with the cast reacting to a doorbell off left. The solution may not be a Scott McCloud approved method of seamlessly depicting time-passage, but isn't entirely a botch-job. Because the huge sound effect takes up 1/6 of the panel with jaunty lettering, it is likely to draw the eye before the dialogue, and before we begin studying the characters who we've seen in these poses roughly 10 bazillion times.

p2. Panel 1 is going through such layout tortures to preserve a left-to-right line of action, because it has to extend the imaginary stage into off-panel space. The fast/slow area dynamic is being played with, as our eyes push through left/right, only to find static images of people and cats standing around (slow area), with their attention and eyelines focused on off-panel action to the right. The gag is that the pizza delivery person is fleeing Garfield, presumably running and screaming (fast area): the structure of the joke, of the strip, of the composition (even the house's siding is angled to slide us along the path) tug our eyes continually right, playing with the reality of how we physically read Garfield. The strip simulates the urgency of the delivery person running away, even while remaining glued to the spot to watch Garfield and Liz's reactions. The imagination fills the voided image of the delivery person and the flight from Garfield. The joke doesn't hinge on that terror, but on Garfield's nonchalance and Liz's natural surprise and shift to understanding: this happens all the time.

p3. The dust eddying back in Garfield's face is the last element of a sure hand using eloquent cartooning shorthand to build a story in which the action takes place in imaginary space, centering on a character we never see.

The punchline, however, doesn't make a terrible lot of sense, because "customer appreciation" normally means a show of appreciation for customers, not, as Garfield has it, an overzealous appreciation by the customer.

In other news, winter is apparently over in Indiana, and the shrubbery have returned in bushy green force. For the Lizes of the world, this may signal Short-Sleeved Sweater season, but our fashionable readers are advised never to wear such a garment, even in unseasonably warm weather.

2008 Pound Cat

The staging here is Garfield 101: an outlandish sight gag is the punchline to a story about bad behavior, but remains off-panel, and is presented to us only by the cast's shocked and/or laconic reaction. In this case, the un-sight gag is the destroyed sofa and the pet sitter's weightlifting performance. One school of cartooning understands this technique as a gyp, and the Garfield reader knows that half the joke is that we don't see the joke. To untangle this reasoning a bit:

A) The spare staging of a Garfield daily is nearly always about paring away unnecessary information and stimulus, both in the name of clean, minimalist gag writing, and depriving the audience of some traditional form of pleasure and payoff.

i) In some regards, this technique strips potential joy and liveliness out of the strip, but matches the Garfield tone, worldview and characters' experiences. The reader is free to find this cynical, frustrating, lazy, or ingenious as she sees fit: no answer is wrong, and all are thoroughly appropriate for the strip.

ii) On the other hand, the non-traditional staging helps Garfield avoid certain easy gag-strip pacing clichés. Today's episode is perhaps not a prime example, and the off-frame outrageous incident style carries its own historical baggage as well, but it is the less common option for funny animal cartooning. In a way, Garfield makes you work for the gag a little harder.

B) Relegating complex sight gags to off-frame serves several practical purposes regarding the cartoonist's physical labor.

i) Given Davis's big-shape, bubbly style, there is no logical way to stage the couch-lifting, including Greta, the couch, and any reacting witnesses in a way that would read. The daily strip panel is simply too small.

ii) The trashed couch would be hard to draw. Especially in Garfield style.

C) Seeing the couch would not actually be funny in and of itself. Nor would seeing the terrifying sight of Greta mangling the couch. However...

D) This isn't about the couch, or Greta's uncouthness, or even the intrusion of hyper-masculine behavior into the all but degendered Arbuckle household. This is about Jon, Garfield and Odie's reactions in the aftermath of Greta's visit. There might have been a funny freak-out reaction moment in Jon finding the trashed sofa, but we're in some undefined period after that, and he's had time to readjust. Readjustment, a return to normal in Garfield is usually a rapid slide back into slight disappointment and weariness. The key here is that Jon doesn't even raise his eyelids in surprise. This is how things go in this strip.

E) For all the pets-in-panic fuel the strip got out of Greta for a few days -- she posed a physical threat, claimed she would impose discipline, and cast a strange air of gender confusion over the house -- in the end nothing came of it. In the only glimpse we had of Greta interacting with Garfield and Odie, she was letting them sit on the couch and watch TV with her, which is business as usual. In Garfield and Odie's perception, Greta's only crime was making them uncomfortable by being unattractive and defeminized.

So given that i) it's unlikely that if the sofa were clean and jerked in the manner Odie indicates that it would be "bent", and ii) Greta, established as obsessed with discipline, would destroy a client's property and leave with no explanation, we are led to wonder:

Did Garfield and Odie somehow bend the couch, and drive Greta out of the house, then blame it on the pet sitter to avoid Jon hiring her again? In the end, Jon's home would've sustained less damage had he left Garfield and Odie with run of the house, so he's screwed either way. Which is, of course, the way things go in Garfield.

Happy New Year, sucker.

A Nerd in the Door

In every world except Garfield's, automatic doors have sensors to protect people from being smashed in their mighty jaws. In Jon's double-barreled dumb-move, he not only managed to injure himself in an impossible way, but wants to twist the focus into a joke about our horrible relationship with technology. It's not that joke. It's a story about Jon's good intentions being squashed under the weight of his zealousness. It's about unnecessary, overwhelming desire to please others, and being thwarted by your own stupidity and inabilities. Jon feels on some sublimated level that his chivalrous intentions are a positive trait, and refuses to acknowledge that the automatic doors of the Garfield world are telling him otherwise.

Garfield, meanwhile, has concocted a coping strategy that leaves his arm unwrenched and ego unbruised: he doesn't try to impress anyone, and pretends he doesn't care about them.

They Shoot Garfields, Don't They?

Jon's father is such a dyed-in-the-wool hayseed that he can only think of women as breeding stock, and on top of that, absurdly evaluates them using livestock-judging criteria. That's solid enough, but elevating the primary gag is Jon's bored here-we-go-again response. In panel 2, he suddenly remembers his father is insane. His expression in the remaining panels is that of a man disappointed: with his father, and with himself, for thinking for those fleeting seconds that this conversation could be normal. He was calling his father for approval, because he has finally achieved modest success in a basic area of human life, and all he got was a white slavery joke.

Garfield, too, lets us know he understands the joke of the senior Arbuckle's questions. But since he has no vested interest in Jon's dad's reaction, Garfield instead responds to Jon's weary disgust. And it makes him happy. These things matter to cats.

Scent of a Veterinarian

In this strip, Jon tries to reconcile his former glumness about women with his recent successful relationship with Liz. In the first panel, Jon repeats a customary lament about the supposed inability of the sexes to relate to each other. In the second panel, something clicks, pops, or lights-up inside Jon, and he realizes the accepted truism doesn't ring true. There are platitudes that are not cosmic truth, but trite ways to justify whatever bad mood you're in, and I think Jon recognizes the tinge of shrug-shouldered misogyny in "women are a mystery".

But Jon doesn't discard the idea entirely. He appends it with affection and admiration that closer approximates his experience with Liz. The new, weighted shift in meaning still holds, even if the punchline is motivated by a general affection for women and not Liz specifically, though that makes it sweeter. Women may be a mystery, after all, but Jon cannot pretend to be irritated or frightened of the idea. His method of expressing this is silly, but the sentiment is strong and positive. Little wonder, then, that Garfield would feel the need to belittle it, and therefore Jon and Liz's relationship, and by proxy all those with romantic interest in women. We don't need your hate speech, kitty cat!

Video-Watching Dog

Title Panel: In the spirit of radical, twisted Garfield self-referentiality, investigate the obnoxious/ funny Bean Me! non-game on the official website. Yours truly chugs enough coffee every day to kill a tabby several times over, and few graphical representations of the queasy ecstasy of caffeine jitters have achieved the subjective accuracy as Garfield.

Since You Asked: A lot of readers left comments or e-mailed, specifically asking for either explanation of the joke or... well, mostly people are just baffled by the joke. Not to boast (as I regularly misread or can't figure out Garfield gags), but I thought it was pretty clear, though that is bolstered by familiarity with Garfield gag techniques. It's a patented Inexplicable Behavior Explained by Last Panel Reveal strip.

The Plot: Jon and Garfield look increasingly anxious. Eventually their frenzy peaks, and they run screaming from the room. Odie sleeps calmly through the outburst, and in the end, reveals the TV remote control, secreted under his body. It seems Jon and Garfield were driven to the brink of madness because they could not find the remote. With his newfound power to choose stations, Odie selects a program about a dog waving at the camera.

The question of when a mini-TV was put on The Table remains unanswered.

Man and His Machines: Odie dupes his intellectual superiors by striking at their cultural Achilles heel. The readership may find it fair or unfair, but television in Garfield is always depicted as idiotic and intellectually corrupting. Today, being deprived of this commodity of idiocy causes panic and eventual degeneration into helpless, preverbal animalistic frenzy. There are any number of icons of sustenance Odie could withhold from the Garfield cast, to cause such a meltdown. Garfield without coffee, Pooky or lasagna or Jon with a locked sock drawer might react the same way, but it is telling that the stupidest character achieves power over the others by mastery over their stupidest addiction.

So pervasive is Odie's conquest that he summons programs that do not seem to otherwise exist, and he has made Jon and Garfield forget that the main, full-size television is still available for use in the living room, and probably uses an entirely different remote control.

Dog Bytes Man

At a glance, it may be a standard-issue "These Days Everybody Is On The Internet!" joke. Garfield is usually surprisingly in-touch with technology for a strip about a cat and a guy sitting around at a table; it's in a rare league with Dilbert and Fox Trot of strips that don't blow it every time a computer appears. Everybody Is On The Internet is not a particularly offensive or ignorant joke anyway, and this one comes with added Garfield venom.

Everybody is on the Internet, even those people with no real reason to be. If there is any knowledge or entertainment to be gained from the official Tabasco Sauce website, we are hard pressed to find it. Garfield's joke points out that not only is everyone on the Internet, and not only do they not need websites, but some individuals and experiences cannot/ should not be translated to the medium. The dog is so swept up in the perception of a website as modern necessity, that he contradicts the purpose of his sign in the first place, namely as a warning to avoid the dog. As a MAD Magazine fold-out poster said, "DO NOT READ THIS SIGN".

The strip confirms the central hollowness of virtual replacement for real-world experience, no matter how miserable (e.g.- getting bitten by a crazy dog). All Garfield has to see is "www" before glancing out at his audience to confirm our mutual disgust. Do not read this Internet.

Bunniculfield

Choose which joke you like more:

1) There was a rabbit in this yard, and whether ironic or not, the passers-by were alerted to the pet by a "Beware Of Bunny" sign. Then a huge dog ate the bunny. Then Garfield came by, wondered where the rabbit was, and was horrified when the dog revealed his massacre by loudly belching.

2) The purple-gray Madame Mim-esque animal sitting in the yard is supposed to be a grotesquely outsized man-weight rabbit. Garfield is aghast that such a monstrosity could be called "bunny".

3) Some unfathomable conflation of #1 & #2.

Waiting for Dogot

Garfield loves jokes that point out our conditioning to rules, control systems, and society's behavior restrictive constructs. By extension, Garfield questions and draws attention to ideological apparatuses, though the conclusions drawn are largely more observational and defeatist than progressive. As today, this is usually manifest as i) the application of a familiar rule system to a situation in which it cannot logically restrict, or ii) the continued cooperation with outmoded rule systems well past the point of usefulness, outside logic, or the original intention.

This is best demonstrated, as above, in individual strips and jokes, but is reflected to a degree in the general plot/situation and regular behavior of characters. Garfield continues nominally behaving like a cat, despite opposable thumbs. Jon and Garfield watch endless amounts of television less out of enjoyment than cultural obligation. Odie frequently puts himself in position at the edge of the table, waiting to be kicked, because he has internalized his role in the stock situation.

The Beware of Dog strip above relies first on our recognition of the omnipresent deli numbered waiting system, and the absurdity of a dog having access to and understanding of this system, and the mechanical ability to install it. That is fine and good, but the real mystery and contradictions are dense and endless. Why would anyone wait in line to be bitten? Don't we sometimes wait in longer lines for equally miserable, arbitrary tasks? Doesn't the acceptance of the waiting line by participants negate the purpose and message of the "Beware" sign? Why do people choose to obey one sign over the other? Do we simply try to compute every fresh directive, even when it contradicts prior knowledge? Why does Garfield take a number and take his place in line? His weary sideways glare tells us that he has the ability to see through the inanity of the situation. The Garfield conclusion tends to be that self-awareness is not a free ticket self-improvement. Knowing where you are does not set you free.

Canis Complexo Cattus

Affection in Garfield is an aggressive emotion, its most frequent expressions normally portrayed as unwelcome and overbearing. In its most common manifestations, we see Jon's desperation for love from Liz, and companionship and respect from Garfield, Odie's indiscriminate attacks of physical ardor, Nermal's narcissistic longing for praise and attention. This is not to say it is a negative, or destructive impulse, just that the infrequency of characters exhibiting reciprocity to caring and understanding give affection a specific power and commodity in the world as Garfield sees it. The means by which Garfield copes with this shortage is to channel desire into aesthetic passion for food, sleep, TV, flowers, etc., which he variously decimates or overindulges and exhausts the love-object. This is less self-delusory than an act of self-deprivation; in the interest of sustaining control over his surroundings and self, Garfield eliminates from his nature those desires which cannot be reliably self-fulfilled. In effort to maintain his Cool, love takes a backseat.

So when faced with warning that his tactics for moving through the world emotionally unscathed may be undermined by force, Garfield panics, and casts his normally cooling, penetrative gaze about in comic impotence. Love comes crashing, blundering in sudden and huge, but unstoppable even with forewarning. Garfield finds himself pressed face-first into a heart that mirrors his own technique of avoiding communication by taking what he wants by force; his eyeballs smushed the unavoidable reality of love's existence. You may be scared, but can't deny it, when it its clutch.

Sixteen, Canine and Shy

Garfield often trades in the absence of objects, ideas or feelings to conjure the presence of a joke: food Garfield has stolen, Garfield's failure to respond verbally to Jon, or lack of empathetic response to Jon's problems. Above, the absence of the dog itself seems at first to inadequately justify or explain a sign warning against it. The 1, 2 count of the joke being if the dog is shy, the (sign) reader needn't be wary, and the sign is the only testament to a dog that is so shy it would not otherwise appear. That is, the sign contradicts itself in multiple, self-defeating ways, while serving only to put the dog, who wants to be left alone, front and center in the reader's mind.

A knee-jerk response might be to say the strip would be funnier and achieve the visual sparsity in Garfield that I'm always talking about, if the dog did not appear at all in the final panel, leaving only the empty lawn and sign. This was my own reaction on first read, but the reveal of the dog confirms its existence, and further extends the complex play between language and visual . The already confused sign, which has the appearance of making sense while seeming to achieve opposing goals, finally does protect the dog, in spite of itself. First, the dog is visually concealed by the sign. The most basic level - the physical impossibility of the large dog squeezing itself behind a small sign - doesn't concern us so much as that the signifier ends up physically masking the object signified. Secondly, the language on the sign is so muddled that it cannot be decoded properly; unable to entirely map the territory to which the signifier points, Garfield chooses "SHY" as the key idea over "BEWARE". Despite approaching from the side where the dog is hiding, and seeing the dog, Garfield walks past without a glance, assured not to worry by a sign that would seem to say the opposite. The dumb-tongued intent of the warning ends up functioning to protect the dog's feelings and the passer-by, leaving only the third party in the audience with full comprehension.

The whole episode points to another Garfield truism, that announcing one's own failings and negative traits loud and proud tends to help you get what you want, for better or worse.

Bag the Dog

The form of the Garfield Beware of Dog sign joke is normally that the sign seems absurdly specific or unlikely, then Garfield finds out it is accurate or ironic in a way that effects the degree to which one should be concerned about the dog's propensity to attack. This looks like it may be a different joke, but at heart it is not. The dog having a bag on its head does not render it unable to attack, though Garfield stands by comfortably, as if now that the sign's message is reconciled, he is safe from harm. The sign does not warn of traditional attack, but an assault on aesthetics: the dog's ugliness itself requires wariness. The bag on the dog's ugly face neutralizes the threat, so Garfield is "safe" and unharmed, though standing within inches of a growling dog twice his size.

But Garfield still favors us with his sidelong glance of revolted disappointment. Casual readers will probably interpret the expression as acknowledges of the outlandish image, or even the half-heartedness of the joke. I propose the strip is also about the aesthetic of Garfield itself. Garfield passes contentedly through the first panel, an uncluttered ideal Garfield landscape, with a mid-frame horizon line, and utter void of other details; most Dog Sign strips do not start with such an image. Piece by piece this ideal is cluttered with props debris and partially-coherent raw joke-material, first shocking, then disgusting Garfield as he forges further ahead into the mess and mystery. After the release of the punchline, Garfield seems less impressed by the resolution than repulsed by the effort of resolving the illegible. Garfield is happier with no one, and nothing else crowding and complicating the space without permission.

The Jon-derful Ice Cream SQUIRRRRRRRT

Title Panel: Oh boy, Garfield, the gooey scrapings off your greasy spoon's grill are gray? Please serve me a pastrami sandwich and a foot-long pickle spear.

Bottom Left: The panel at the extreme bottom left corner is a prime opportunity to see just how flexible Davis is with Garfield's anatomy. The left arm needs to be 12 inches long? No sweat. Don't need the other arm? Fine, it's 12 millimeters long.

The Gesture of Kindness, Rebuked: Jon is so generous as to not only give ice cream to Garfield, but to serve it for him, and even allow Garfield to administer his own chocolate syrup. It is an act of sharing, and faith in Garfield's responsibility, and trust that he will not abuse this trust. Garfield makes good on none of Jon's good faith. The cynical observation is not to trust anyone, not to share without limit, and to take what you can, when you can. The less cynical observation is that Garfield, contented and oblivious, or maybe simply not caring, as he totally shafts Jon on the syrup, is not the role model to follow here. It is a joke about nice guys finishing last, but given no indicators of which character to empathize with, Garfield is less about lessons than observations about How Things Are.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not before they are taken advantage of, squirrrted, guck-ed and left with naught but an empty plastic bottle.

Garfield Walk With Me

Beneath every close friendship runs a terrifying undercurrent of hatred. You know each others' pressure points, anxieties, and secrets. The tension is in the knowledge that these powers could be unleashed, the pact is that they will not, the reality is that they seep out in small doses all the time. An enemy cannot cause you quite so much pain as a friend.

The stare Garfield gives Jon, that makes him so uncomfortable, is administered on almost a daily basis. It is practically Garfield's default expression. The above communication, acknowledging as it does, that Garfield trademark derisive glare is as much for Jon's benefit as his own or ours, adds even further sadism to the last 28 years of strips. That Jon receives this treatment when only offering to have fun with Garfield, or offer assistance with light self-improvement (walking with your friend is probably the least taxing exercise possible), extends Garfield's reaction into mild overkill. Refusal is not enough, smart comeback is not enough. Garfield has to respond to an innocent question by pulling out a move designed to hurt Jon; the condescending stare-through is doubly-annoying because it's being employed after entreaties not to.

Garfield is trying to get across the relativist idea that what sounds "nice" to Jon may not sound nice to Garfield. All Jon ends up hearing is crickets, as Garfield's silent stare continues to burn through him. I'm reminded of the Beavis and Butt-Head Zen observation "I don't' like stuff that sucks"; Garfield inverts even the inarguable. In "You know how I hate nice walks," the implication is partly that somehow Garfield is so overwhelmingly negative that he's able to reject things that are empirically pleasant. Next time some one tells you Garfield is stupid, feel free to tell them that stupid is the new "brilliant."