Oh boy! What a mess!
Panel One a: What are they looking at?
Panel One b: Garfield's legs have mutated and/or atrophied such that I'm not sure he can walk on all fours even if he wants to.
Panel Two a: If Garfield doesn't know that he ate checkers -- clearly he has no visual recognition of checkers-- then why would the word "checkers" trigger his moment of clarity? I would hazard to suggest the strip would work better with no reaction from the cat until Jon asks where the checkers have disappeared to.
Panel Two b: It is one thing to talk to a pet, despite getting no reaction for better than 25 years, because we all do it, and Garfield is more reactive than most. It is another thing to realize you will be sitting at home with your kitty on Saturday night. It is another thing entirely to ask your cat to play checkers with you.
Panel Three a: Woah, jump cut, settle down! I guess Jon went and got the checkers box, set up the board, and returned to precisely the same position, but it's disorienting. I cannot, however, explain why he is consulting the front of the game box to determine the location of his missing playing pieces.
Panel Three b: Somehow this checkerboard measures six squares on the long sides, four squares on one side... and three squares on the parallel side. It's his professionalism that I respect.
Panel Three c: If Jim Davis ever draws Garfield's tongue like that again, I'm gonna barf.
7 comments:
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actually, the checkerboard is 6x4, with 4 squares on both sides...dunno how you missed that
Woah. Yeah, the checkerboard is 6X4. How I missed it is posting at 4 AM.
I at first thought that Garfield immediately ate the checkers thinking that they were food when Jon got the game, and, Jon being really pathetic, had to check the box to see if eating the pieces was even part of the rules. Just goes to prove that the third panel IS jarring.
I think in panel 2 Garfield doesn't know what checkers are AT ALL... hence his bewilderment. When Jon tries to set up the board (I like to think he has not moved because the checkers box was under the table) Garfield knows he ate something out of that box... so only in panel 3 does he actually realize what a checker is and why those treats "went down hard". (A common phrase yet seems like a double-entendere when you type it...) So if the board is 6x4, how many checkers did Garfield eat? Less than if it were 8x8 at any rate.
By the way since in panel 3 Jon is looking at the box not Garfield, I don't think he realizes that Garfield ate the checkers... I think he thinks he got a box with no checkers in it (implying the set is new or at least never used). Maybe Garfield's tongue is so RED because he ate the red checkers last? Why it's that big I don't know. I don't want to know.
Checkerboards and keyboards (of the typing type, not generally the musical) are fun to look at in cartoons. You can usually count on them to lack the requisite squares/keys.
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