Garfield: Permanent Monday

Movable Feast, Hold the Sauce

2010-05-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

Now that Garfield has wadded up the spaghetti and put it in his armpit, Jon is not interested in eating it. On first scan, the gag is that the cat has swiped his master's dinner yet again. Garfield's inventive ruse, disguising the pasta as a ball of yarn, takes advantage of both the feline propensity for yarn-assisted frolics and the strip's art style which does not allow the eye to readily distinguish between food and fabric.

And that joke is there. Garfield steals this food although Jon's phrasing probably implies that Garfield was going to get a portion of spaghetti anyway. If his motivation were just to eat unseasoned, plain spaghetti, Garfield could have completed his mission alone in the kitchen. If he feared Jon's return to the kitchen, Garfield could have concealed the food as he spirited it away to a safe location. Garfield goes through unnecessary labor and trickery to dupe Jon for a matter of seconds.

Because ultimately this is not about Garfield's appetite for food. Garfield wants Jon to know that dinner is ruined. He wants Jon to know that he could have stopped it. He wants that middle panel, that moment where Jon realizes what is happening, what it means, that the man is a fool and the cat is triumphant, malicious, and a complete prick. And that, ladies and Nermals, is another sort of appetite.

And: I don't want to turn into one of those guys, but the missing hyphen in Jon's first word balloon makes my palms itch. As long as I'm being one of those guys anyway, that looks more like a fettuccine or tagliatelle.

Unfancy Feast

2010-05-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

The longer they stand around talking about this, the more burned the casserole will become. When Jon sprays water on it, it's going to be wet and burned. The boys are still excited to eat this horrible meal. Garfield and Jon are bachelors, but what does that mean? Here they demonstrate belief that the freedoms associated with bachelorhood should be relished, even those that are gross, pitiful, and, in the case of the burnt, soggy casserole, not even pleasurable unto themselves. No one wants to eat this mess because it will taste good, but because there is no one to stop them. That is not charred StarKist you're tasting, it is freedom.

This strip also suggests that perhaps the most vital function of a mate is to prevent us from acting like disgusting animals. And so it is that the thing separating us from the beasts is that human beings are trying to impress someone.

Immodest Mouse

2010-05-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

The mouse combo performs a song that both is / is about a celebration of their freedom of speech. The mice are interested in testing the boundaries and openly criticizing Garfield because they "can" do it, and do not consider whether they ought to do so, and if it will have repercussions beyond being murdered. As is all too frequent an ailment in fully developed nations with protection of natural human rights, these creatures have confused, ignored, or forgotten that guaranteed freedom of expression does not absolve one from responsibility for that expression. It does rather the opposite.

Sung, presumably, to the tune of "Blue Tail Fly" ("Jimmy Crack Corn"), the mice's song is tied to the history of minstrelsy and the larger tradition of American folk music. It is a protest song of sorts, in the mode of complaint, lament, or criticism aimed at Boss, the Man, the System; the power of these sorts of cheeky-serious numbers has historically been that they are symbolic, coded, or written in slang, and that the ruling class does not see musical expression as a meaningful threat, or does not patter Romany as it were. With this song the mice are probably a little too de-coded and foolishly perform one inch from the oppressor's face.

And so do the singing mice commit an error common among adversaries of the Batman. Criminals aware of Batman's "no guns" and "no killing" rules constantly try to exploit the perceived loophole, and particularly foolish villains will use it to taunt the hero. The self-imposed rules, of course, are flexible at best, questionable for certain. Garfield does not normally do violence to the mice because he has no motivation to do so. The mice seem to have confused Garfield's disinterest with benevolence or weakness.

Meanwhile, in the title panel, Garfield leaves his particularly unappealing bite pattern for forensic odontologists, so it is a good thing he did not eat the mice.

This is all theoretical, of course, because in practice, Garfield crushes and maims mice all the time.

Arf-heben

2010-05-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Garfield and Odie engage in the dialectical death struggle, but this master-slave conflict will never resolve, never synthesize. One side is too dumb to resist or surrender. Garfield is playing Hegel's game correctly, but his opponent barely qualifies as a self-consciousness to be battled.

Garfield's behaviors are cultivated and perfected or at least self-aware. He may not be able to control his food addiction, but he frames it as an artform, a lifestyle, a moral certitude. Odie's body simply cannot be regulated. He is beyond choice, out of control, outside the boundaries of self-awareness. His tongue protrudes, eyes bulge, body spasms because he cannot help it. Odie cannot follow Garfield's rules because he cannot process them, but also through the sheer force of the rampaging lifeforce that Garfield would annihilate.

Finally, Garfield defines himself through sheer opposition to the Other, even as he tries to conscript Odie into his own behavioral patterns. Though he can name the activities that define the dog, he looks into the core of what makes a cat — his own identity — and comes up empty.

Attempting to curb Odie's behavior through orders couched in the form of a sort of game, Garfield makes two weird logistical moves and the sum comes out less than zero.

What is Truth? Paper or Plastic?

2010-05-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

Panel 1: What is Jon doing?

Jon is dressed up in a typically pattern-blind checkered suit and polka dot bow-tie combo, and standing around by his table, staring off into space.

Panel 2: What is Garfield doing?

Garfield has inverted a paper bag over his head as a sort of improvised mask. Two tiny holes have been cut in the bag to facilitate Garfield's vision. These holes are not nearly large enough to accommodate the Garfield's bulbous eyes, currently estimated at four to six inches in height.

Panel 3: Mysteries of meaning.

An ensemble like this usually signals that Jon is going on a date, and thus leaving the house. Garfield may be implying that Jon's attire will cause pointing and stares when the man eventually goes out, but at present they are just standing around at the table where there is no one to see either one of them. Jon takes Garfield's meaning well enough, but refuses to listen, despite decades of criticism of similar outfits and from sources independent of Garfield's skewed opinions.

Garfield makes the complicated assertion that "the bag doesn't lie." In one possible sense, this means that as one creature on this planet is disguising his identity lest he suffer humiliation due to association with Jon's clothing, then Jon is, indeed, embarrassing to be seen with. The very presence of Garfield's point of view negates Jon's emphatic statement of self-worth.

The stranger innuendo is that the bag speaks The Truth, chooses its wearer because it must be worn. Between the warring forces of Jon's clashing fabrics and The Bag, Garfield is powerless. His paw is forced, and he is crowned with The Bag through necessity, not to editorialize. Thus Garfield insinuates that his personal taste is equivalent to an objective fact.

Which is more embarrassing, a badly dressed man or a cat walking around with a bag on its head? Which is more endearing?

Eye of the Tabby

2010-05-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

So outsized is Garfield's self-regard that he does not differentiate between the sort of feelings Jon has for his girlfriend and the feelings he has for his pet. Garfield may or may not be half-joking in his eyelash batting and the flirty pose he strikes, ignoring the gulf of aesthetic standards and nature of the relationships. But whether Garfield equates, conflates, confuses, ignores or blurs these separate concepts of beauty, he does so because he cannot conceive that they co-exist, that Jon could appreciate both kitty and woman in different ways. All Garfield sees is that someone else is occupying some of Jon's brainspace, usurping the center of attention, he is not being treated as special and perfect, and in his last line shifts his shame onto someone else.

Here is a case where Garfield's enormous vanity works at odds with his propensity to sloth and gluttony. Garfield does nothing whatsoever to "keep [himself] up," unless we mean that he rigorously maintains a body shape like several water balloons in a fur backpack. These contradictions run deep in Garfield, tentacles rising out of a bottomless pool of aggressive narcissism.

The third joke is that Jon's experience of this conversation is his cat making a weird face at him — possibly he even understands that the cat is flirting with him — which he thinks is "strange." And even if Garfield actually were expressing sexual feelings for his owner, the reality is far stranger than Jon knows, as Garfield seems to be using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist as a lifestyle guide and has gotten halfway through.

Smile, Even Though Your Sharpie's Aching

2010-05-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

To Garfield, Pooky is more than VanPeltian security object. His psychology may be stunted, but Garfield prizes his individuality and selfhood to a degree that suggests he needs no transfer object to aid in separating himself from the One-ness of his mother (or, in this cat's case, a stand-in for his absent mother).

The teddy bear which Garfield has historically referred to as his "best friend," an object to which he speaks with more respect than his human and animal associates, is the sole recipient of Garfield's kindness, protectorship, compassion, warmth and unconditional love. Even the self-love with which Garfield regards himself is muddied with self-destruction, but what he gives to Pooky is unadulterated. In a way, Garfield funnels these feelings into this one-way relationship with Pooky making the teddy a strongbox repository for his soul.

In The Golden Bough, James Frazer catalogues extensive examples of the "external soul" motif in folktales from wide-ranging cultures, and extending back into the misty predawn of time. Magicians of myth hide their very mortality into remote, protected objects — in Inda, Punchkin conceals his vulnerability in a green parrot, and in Slavic folklore Koshchei the Deathless stashes his death in a hidden egg. Across time and continents, warriors of legend extract their sousl and lock them away before entering battle. In modern pop myth equivalent, compare to the Horcruxes in which Voldemort seals his sundered soul in Harry Potter, the jarred soul of the vampire warrior hero on Angel season 4.

In such stories the soul is detachable from its owner but they remain sympathetic. It is physical, has mass/ may be deposited elsewhere / takes the shape of an object. The irony of the "external soul" story is that in attempt to render himself invulnerable, the would-be immortal places himself at greater spiritual risk. First of all, the soul is extracted to facilitate ignoble or violent goals. Secondly, simply by existing, the immortal invites challengers to defeat him (and they invariably succeed). Finally, the immortal's fate becomes a matter not of his body's strength but his mental fortitude and virtue — his patience, modesty, tact, wisdom, etc. as he must keep the most vital of his secrets; this capacity is already symbolically hobbled by having removed the soul in the first place.

That Garfield pours his soul "into" Pooky is metaphorical, in the way that the bottle city of Kandor symbolically contains Superman's alienness as he protects his adopted home. But the cat empties his softer emotions upon the toy bear that he may sharpen his malice, coldness, and self-centeredness. It is as if Garfield acknowledges that every creature has the instinct to love, to express affection, to nurture, and the runoff is going to end up somewhere. Everybody's gonna need some kind of ventilator, and Garfield's is Pooky.

Jon Arbuckle could use cheering up on most days, and Garfield does not try to help. Odie's default setting is joy/ignorant bliss, and Garfield actively works to defuse that joy.

Upon the plush doll where he hides his heart, Garfield inscribes a parodic grimace of happiness.

A Mid-Pleistocene Night's Dream

2010-05-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

Jon wistfully recounts an erotic dream to his cat, who mocks him in return. Before we get to the nature of what Garfield is up to, consider that we cannot understand, or at least confirm, that Garfield is being a wise-ass until the punchline. The strip is built so that the strange possibility exists that Garfield is actually recounting a parallel dream that reveals his hitherto unspoken feelings about Liz. Because we know Garfield better than that, it is fairly plain that he is taunting Jon. Though the human cannot hear the cat's thoughts, were Jon to glance behind him and observe Garfield's perfect mimicry of his posture and expressions, he would likely get the gist.

Jon's moony account centers around a dream. From his speech, Jon understands dreams in the Disneyland/Martin Luther King, Jr. mode, as a sort of fond fancy which is not yet manifest in reality, and/or a shimmering goal toward which one might aspire. Whether Jon considers the dream might have any psychoanalytic weight — Freudian, Jungian, or pop psycho-spirituality — is harder to discern. He likely understands the dream as a basic wish-fulfillment scenario, but he so starry-eyed that he fails to connect the dots and read the darker implications for his waking life. Enter Garfield.

Garfield, too, claims to have had a dream. (To head off Comment section wiseacres it doesn't particularly matter if Garfield actually had this dream or not; either way, his purpose is to submarine Jon.) Garfield's dream account begins identical to Jon's, but concludes differently.

Jon finds his dream "romantic," while Garfield does not. The cat's first point is that the dream is potentially entirely meaningless. With equal possibility, we may all dream of our waking-life lovers, movie stars, nonexistent people, and mortal enemies. Garfield does not have feelings for Liz, yet had a similar dream. Dream-Liz expressing her love is not the same thing as Jon's girlfriend saying she loves him in waking life.

Garfield both denies and and supports the argument for the wish-fulfillment dream (he is a cat toying with his prey, after all). We know it is unlikely that Garfield yearns for Liz's love, because we have deep knowledge of Garfield's character: his stunted empathy, displacement of libidinal energy onto food, a sadistic streak, etc... And, informed by that jumbled pathology, that is exactly how Garfield's dream plays out. Garfield's gluttony, pride, predatory instinct, hedonism and showboating converge in a dream of excess, power and consumption of another life. By placing his own fantasy next to Jon's, Garfield parodies Jon's desires, and also implies that he dreams bigger and better than his owner.

Dozens of mammoth carcasses in various states of preservation have been discovered over the last several centuries; the flesh has always been far too decayed, reeking and foul for consumption. Should a housecat attempt to eat of these specimens, he would likely become seriously ill. Other than these museum-case sources, Mammuthus primigenius is long extinct and unavailable for hunting or meat harvest.

Finally and most importantly, Garfield is illustrating to Jon that we dream of those things that are simply, completely, utterly, forever impossible in the real world. Among those things, says Garfield, is human love.

Cat, Cook and Candle

2010-05-03T00:53:00.000-07:00

It is impossible to admonish, throw hints at, or guilt trip someone who is behaving rudely on purpose. A cat does not sit on your newspaper because he is confused; he sits there because he knows you are reading and wants attention. Here, Garfield fully understands that he is disrupting Jon's romantic intent, snubbing Liz, and willfully disregarding Jon's forceful hint — refuting it, even, as the man implies that any company would be a third wheel, and the cat deflects the insinuation by pretending it was addressed elsewhere.

Now, as to the Garf's motivation, it is possible that he is asserting his household dominance and demonstrating his primacy to Jon and over Liz. As the devil is a lawyer whose favorite phrase is "well, technically...," Garfield inserts himself into the conversation just in time to assign himself a spot in Jon's vague personal pronoun. If Jon wants the company of One, that should, can, and will only mean Garfield.

On the other paw, this is about the food, and if only two diners will be eating in style tonight, Garfield is determined, assumes, or knows he is taking up one of those reservations.

Ink Stud Fever

2010-05-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

Rare, valuable confirmation of Jon's profession! and...
Meta-self-loathing!

Daniel Clowes once compared the compliment of being a generation's most famous underground cartoonist to being "the world's most famous badminton player." Jim Davis comes right out and depicts cartoonists as universally despised. The gag is no more explicit than "everyone hates cartoonists," so one can only speculate on the precise reasons for Liz's folks' panic. Given the personal problems plaguing a vast percentage of comics artists, perhaps those fears are not unfounded. Not without historical precedent are: O.C.D., chronic depression, impotence, sex mania, alcoholism, BDSM, agoraphobia, womanizing, domestic violence, megalomania, schizophrenia, L.S.D. damage, antisemitism, Libertarianism, Objectivism, perpetual misery, religious zealotry, intense assholism, insanity. More of these lives have ended in suicide, self-destruction, and sorrow than seems statistically reasonable.

The other roles in our world under harsh criticism today are children and parents, which constitutes the entire population. Liz's parents are unable/ unwilling to conceal their disappointment in their daughter's lifestyle choices. Liz, being a strong-willed professional woman of cool, detached demeanor, may or may not care that her parents have expectations of Liz that differ from her own. The Wilsons' disapproval takes the form of a (feigned?) threat to their physical health, forcing Liz to express concern even if she has seen past her boyfriend's social caste and her parents' prejudice.

The parent who expects more of their child than general good health, ability to function in adult society, and the pursuit of personal happiness is setting everyone up for a Catch-22 of doom. The inevitably imperfect offspring can never feel adequate and the tyrant parent will never be satisfied. This cycle begins at birth and does not end until the family tree is burnt to the ground.

One strategy for potential liberation from this loop is through acts of rebellion. Not without its own associated damages, this kind of resistance, conscious or unconscious, still binds one to the wheel: decades into adulthood you're still just acting out against your parents. The more they don't want you to date a cartoonist, the more you may feel compelled to date a cartoonist.

Compare and contrast to Liz's BF having this conversation with his mother. So long has Jon been, well, Jon, that the smallest measure of triumph in his life causes her mind to snap and body to shut down. Note the parallel, though: Jon and Liz's announcements both cause physical reactions and near-suffocation in their parents. Whether overjoyed or displeased, we'll be the death of them.

Also, hmm, Betty Wilson... Betty Wilson... ah, Betty Wilson.

Doors of Deception

2010-05-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

If you have not experienced this, it may seem a little specific, but it happens all the time. There is a strain of practical jokery which involves telling the "victim" something completely reasonable, mundane and within the realm of possibility, then cackling with self-satisfaction when they believe the lie. It is the laziest and saddest of "jokes," because the joke is ultimately on the prankster. For example, it is very funny to convince the nation they are being attacked by Martians. It is not funny say "the mail is here! No, just kidding." Pranks such as calling the police to convince them you have committed a murder fall in a gray area. Garfield's trick on Odie largely falls into the first category, wherein it is perfectly reasonable that if Odie is far enough from the door, or there is a prowler outside, the dog might not have heard the approaching human.

Garfield seems to believe that the trick proves that Odie is stupid. Perhaps it does, but not because the dog is gullible enough to act on the cat's bad information despite lack of evidence. If Odie does anything stupid in this strip, it is believing Garfield, who habitually acts deceitfully toward Odie. All Garfield has demonstrated is that he is not trustworthy, though he may have descended so far into his own pathology that it is amusing that people assume they are not being lied to about subjects of no importance. This is funny only in the way that it is funny that people breathe air to survive and wear coats when it is cold.

There is a second, less malicious level to the joke, though. It is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy gag, in which the victim is given a cue, unconsciously enacts a predictable behavior pattern, and finds the letter of the promise fulfilled by their own action, if not the spirit. That is vague, so for example: my dad's favorite of these jokes is to ask a child "what's in your pockets?" Child instinctually thrusts hands into pockets, gropes about only to find nothing. Punchline: "Your hands!" This is more a gag about the intricacies of literal language and programmed behavior than a joke at someone's expense. See also under The Monster at the End of this Book. It is interesting to consider why the prank works, beyond the dog's gullibility. Once Odie has reached the door, "someone" is indeed at the door. Most of us still might not grasp the punchline without explanation, because we do not typically think of our personal Self as "Someone." Therefore the joke is about identity and individual consciousness, if only in the broadest possible way. Related, Garfield is preying on Odie's curiosity and protective instinct, and while barking at everyone who comes to the door is an obnoxious trait of dogs, it is one of the basic reasons they were domesticated in the first place.

This does not stop it from being a dick thing to to, of course. Though Garfield forces Odie to demonstrate some vagaries of language, it is one step removed from correcting someone's grammar in the middle of conversation. Garfield intends the common irony of applying Einstein's name to someone who has just demonstrated foolishness, but given that Einstein understood God "who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a god who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind," he would likely approve of the elegant cause/effect demonstration enacted by the idiot dog and the jerk-ass cat.

I Have No Trachea, Larynx or Vocal Cords and I Must Scream

2010-04-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Ignore, for the moment, that real fish lack not only eyelids but the vocal apparatus necessary to emit a blood-curdling cry of terror. Ignore, if you can, that it is a good thing they do, lest that sound would haunt you until the end of days, forever ruining every trip to the fish taco stand.

One of the hooks which must have initially sold United Feature Syndicate on Garfield Back in the Day, is the exciting opportunity to peek inside the psyches of our housepets. What's Kitty Thinkin'? This anthropomorphic comic exploration of how cats is just like people and people ain't so different from awful cats is pushed into realms of near-abstraction by strips in which Garfield interacts with various other pets, vermin, the occasional sentient houseplant, and even inanimate objects.

In this case, we are offered a dramatic expansion of the common sight of a cat looking at a fish. Usually these Garfields are about the cat's predatory instinct and/or sadism, muted by domesticity into meanness and bullying. This one hinges also on posturing, both from the fish and Garfield. This is not totally alien, as the sense that cats are trying very hard to look cool and aloof is often hard to avoid. The specifics of this story, though, are nearing the breaking point with any reality.

Consider, then: how does a bowled fish, fresh to the house, know Garfield by reputation? Why isn't the fish scared, since if the cat is indeed known as "tough," then it is for eating every fish brought into the house? Is Garfield "tough," or does he act tough only he knows he can win?

On the other hand, what we have is a scenario in which an tiny, defenseless creature has been placed in a vulnerable situation. He sees the natural predator that will inevitably eat him alive, and decides that if he's going out, he's going to be brave. The hunter will have none of that, and ensures his prey is going to face oblivion screaming at the top of his non-existent lungs.

Maybe none of this is what is really going on when a cat stares into a fishbowl. Or maybe that is exactly how the universe works.

Mard Mall of America

2010-04-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

How Did This Happen and What Does It Tell Us?
Choose your own, from our list of possibilities...

1) Garfield did not see the mouse and came to rest where he pleased. Insight: Garfield makes no effort to be aware of his surroundings, as long as his own needs are being met. Also, a fat joke in which Garfield's body mass blocks his line of vision and causes him to inadvertently harm others.

2) Garfield saw the mouse, specifically chose this spot that he could crush the mouse. This also means Garfield is lying to the second mouse about the brother's whereabouts. Insight: Garfield enjoys inflicting physical and mental anguish on others for its own sake, habitually abuses smaller creatures and lies for no larger profit, and is compelled to demonstrate dominance and ownership of the house.

3) or 1+2 Garfield chose his nap spot, saw that it was occupied by the mouse, sat on the mouse anyway. Insight: Garfield does not care what suffering he inflicts upon others, as long as his own needs are being met.

All these things are true about Garfield's character, regardless of our plot speculation.

Bonus Game: Try to reproduce the muffled voice of the squashed rodent. You will find that the only way these mangled pronunciations can be created is by stuffing your mouth with a wad of soft material.

Burb, Baby, Burp

2010-04-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

Garfield regards Jon's accusations that he is disgusting as merely a statement of fact, rather than a complaint or criticism, as indicated by the cat's retort which adds... well, insult to insult. That Jon's observation has no effect is hardly surprising, since the "prank" that is belching in someone's face is enacted because it is disgusting. Garfield counters with not just another fact, but by 1) communicating that the horrible thing Jon has just experienced has the further consequence of depleting household supplies, (2 implying that Jon should now feel obligated to replenish the soda, which in turn (3 sets up the circumstances for Garfield to blow stomach air in Jon's face again.

This strip is about abuse cycles. Except, of course, that Garfield will never demonstrate remorse, so when Jon inevitably enters the one-man-honeymoon stage and buys more soda, he is not just manifesting his own self-esteem issues, but accepting his role in Garfield's Theater of Cruelty.

Strip Nude for Your Kitty

2008-01-03T15:59:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-01T22:01:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-10-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-15T23:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-07T17:01:00.000-07:00

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."

Garfield After Dark

2006-10-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

Garfield could have, and would have done the same thing with his evening, whether Jon was home or not. One might protest another problem with this joke about how Garfield's plans to cut loose without any authority figures around: not only does Garfield not respect the authority or find Jon much hindrance, but his goals are so mild. I don't have a problem with just this low key observation; eating junk food and watching TV all night is probably how a lot of us kick back and enjoy a night without the roommate/spouse/whatever,-it's-your-business.

The semi-joke is bolstered with slight, telling uneasiness when Garfield lovingly includes his food and electronics in a collective pronoun. There's also the implication that Garfield is using Jon's absence as an excuse for binging and being sedentary; telling himself he's only doing this because Jon's not here to stop him, as if he would behave differently otherwise.

The potentially awkward situation of a cat thinking silently to no one/the fourth wall but still setting up a joke with a visual reveal is cleverly handled with a contact-print style symmetrical layout. I can't really say the suspended thought bubble in an otherwise empty panel two exactly generates suspense for the punchline, but it's a nice layout. But yeah, it's mostly a strip about how fun it is to be home alone, even when you're just going to goof off in an unexciting way. That's actually kind of a nice observation that I don't see too often, so, uh, enjoy your "TV remote", Garfield. Do you plan to use it on the TV, or just eat cookies and look at it?

Clothes Make the Arbuckle

2006-10-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

Jon may not know what a dress code is (seriously?), but it probably won't matter, since he customarily wears a jacket and tie on dates anyway. There must be some note of social idiocy in Jon's voice that indicates to maitre d's that he is unfamiliar with basic rules of dining etiquette. Even better, it turns out to be true. Somewhere deep inside, I know this joke pushes Jon's social retardation a little too far: he not only doesn't know what a dress code is, but doesn't know what kind of clothes are for girls and which are for boys (seriously?).

Hey Garfield, so far as I can tell, Jon's had dates three nights in a row. And he may not know that ladies don't wear ties, but when was the last time you "got out"? And yes, Jon has a look of wonderment because a restaurant requires jackets, but still, good job sassing a guy who has a date by confirming that he needs a date. Witness the desperate lengths to which a lifelong curmudgeon must go when faced with a man making self-improvements.

The Orange Violin

2006-10-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

Clarifications for the Curious:
-We may assume Jon is not still making his Chuck E. Cheese requests from yesterday, but making reservations at another restaurant for another date. The immediacy of placing the two strips next to each other might seem confusing, but Garfield tends to group running gags as close together as possible. This is not a technique utilized by many other strips, because it tends to draw attention to the format, and may indicate to the audience that the writer is idea-starved. Garfield, on the other hand, takes care to highlight its stock situations, which goes hand-in-hand with the strip's ongoing mission to provide variants on a narrow range of interests. This trait that does not go unappreciated by fans, as indicated by the nearly illiterate Wikipedia article (ugh) which attempts and fails to catalog these situations. The good news is that Jon is organizing another date, which means Liz wasn't put off by the robot mouse. Take that, Garfield!

-The "juice harp" Jon speaks of is chicken-speak neologism for Jew's harp. Jew's harp is not an antisemetic term, as far as etymologists know, though all the dictionaries I consulted (and followed by the presumed experts at the Jew's Harp Guild website) are unsure about the derivation. I can't fault Garfield for the editor-pleasing, nonconfrontational choice, but the uncommon terminology does confuse the gag a little. Why not just say "jaw harp", which is equally wrong, but more recognizable?

In any case, forget the poor romantic substitution of a Jew's harp for a violin, and Jon's dismay at how weird the world is: the real joke is that Jon turns to his cat to help him decide if he should accept the proposal. Garfield, either hoping to sabotage the date, or figuring it's going to be an evening of idiocy anyway, silently nudges Jon toward disaster. Leave it to Garfield to find a way to turn affirmation into a way of being negative.

Rock-afire Pizza Cats

2006-10-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

There exists the level on which this joke is simply that Jon plans to take Liz to Chuck E. Cheese, and naturally a woman of Liz's refinement will not appreciate the child-oriented restaurant. The scenario may or may not be true, but it's why Garfield is sarcastically comparing Jon's date to A Night to Remember, the ironically-titled movie about the Titanic disaster. I've pointed out before that the kind of innocence and enthusiasm Jon displays in panel 3 is probably the reason Liz likes him. It is, naturally, the same quality Garfield frequently attacks in Jon, because he does not possess it himself.

It's dorky to take a grown woman to a kid's arcade/pizza joint (unless it's some puzzling form of slumming?), but Jon keeps doing things like this, and Liz keeps dating him. The long-term reader realizes Garfield is essentially sniping about nothing, and projecting his feelings onto Liz. One of those feelings is insecurity. Whatever, Garfield, like you don't like pizza!

Further Reading!:
In a weird reality-twisting moment, I wonder if Garfield is acknowledging a historical close-call: in the early '80s during a period when the merged (Chuck E. Cheese's) Pizza Time Theater and ShowBiz Pizza Place were struggling to unify their identity, and unable to sustain exclusive contracts with their animatronic developers, Creative Engineering, the company looked for ways to phase out the ShowBiz house robot-band, The Rock-afire Explosion. The plan was to introduce animatronic licensed characters from other media. Spider-Man was considered (?). Superman was a contender. And Garfield was in the running. Yogi Bear won. The plan failed. The Rock-afire Explosion was abandoned, the Yogis dismantled, the ShowBizzes re-converted into Chuck E. Cheese's. We missed our chance for a giant animatronic Garfield to sing doo wop while we ate crappy pizza.

Special thanks to the ShowBiz Pizza.Com archive for absolutely all the above information.

Meows in My Coffee

2006-10-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

Disconnected Thoughts:

-I've got to confess unusual amount of persona bias today, even for Permanent Monday. I love spit takes. In physical/ photographic productions, spit takes are not only cheap, easy way to provide a striking visual image, and generate a surprising shock effect more interesting than a scream, but they externalize an emotional reaction in a semi-abstract manner only partially based on real behavior. You know what a spit take "means", even though people rarely, if ever, actually "do" spit takes.

-Garfield, toying with form, withholding spectatorial expectations, and conventional comics wisdom, eliminates the moment of release. The spit take itself falls between beats in the visual rhythms of the panels. The result is mildly deconstructive of comedy language, and a contribution to Garfield's running experimentation with denying the reader the moment of comic pleasure he is expecting, while supplying something he didn't know he wanted. Namely Jon covered in cat-spit and coffee.

-It is ambiguous if Garfield's spit take is motivated by skepticism that Jon is learning about women (uh, isn't he, probably? If anything, it's an honest admission that prior to having a steady, he didn't know anything about women), or he's amused by the unintentional (?) double-entendre Jon's made. I guess it's not really a double entendre, so much as the possibility he's talking about sexual knowledge. I don't see the point in being coy when talking about a comic strip about a cat spitting coffee on a nerd.

Cat Scratch Fever

2006-10-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

Title Panel: Normally a non sequitur opportunity to place Garfield and his name in unfamiliar context for no reason, today the title panel takes advantage of the forum's allowance of exaggerated artwork to create an impressionistic emblem of the character's key passions for food, sleep, and outrageous laziness. The drawing is stretched and grotesque enough that only by familiarity with Garfield iconography we even recognize what we're looking at. It is an image of comical concentration that could have run by itself as a daily strip.

Garfield: With just as much exertion of his arm muscle, could have scratched his own back. Or he could have done what other cats do, and curled up in Jon's lap for a petting. But achieving simple goals through psychological gamesmanship is a Garfield habit, and most of the time proving his manipulation skills seems to mean more than taking pleasure in the desired result. There are times in life when enjoying the journey over the destination is healthy and meditative. This is not one of them.

Jon: Jon has a great series of takes in the bottom row, in which he thinks he has Garfield's hand-signal game figured out, then for some reason starts really getting into it, and ends with an Arbuckle slow-burn... as he continues scratching Garfield's back. There are few things in human psychology more hilarious to behold than someone confidently plowing forward when we know he is clueless, and a man trudging forward through an activity he hates as he complains about doing it.

Keystone Clops

2006-09-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

p1. Miserable as Garfield may make him (see panel 3!), if this is what Jon does with his spare time, keeping Garfield around may also serve the function of keeping Jon's life interesting. Not that this is much different than how I spend my spare time. Note also that Garfield himself spends even more time "zoning out", but less for the reason that he is dull, than a deep satisfaction with himself.

p2. Comics Technique 101: The relative size of the onomatopoeia sound effect is most frequently depicted in correlation to the volume of the sound it depicts. This is not the only possibility, however, and equal power may be derived from a subjective depiction of the sound. In the above Garfield strip, the sound of a plastic dish full of soft canned food landing on a man's skull which is padded with poofy hair, probably does not make such a loud "clop" as to warrant filling the entire panel with the noise. But the effect of portraying the sound as Jon hears it, and the added ability of the lettering obliterating our view of the action, maintains the mystery of the source of the noise for the third panel reveal.

p3. Bless again the decades of winnowing down Garfield comics shorthand. Three lines under Jon's eyes are all the "reaction" needed to convey his exhaustion and frustrated acceptance of Garfield's antics. We do not need to see the perpetrator to know that Garfield threw his dish, nor are we confused by the single-word horseshoe pitching joke in a thought bubble extending from off-frame. In Garfield, every simple element is weighted and clear, a model of comics refinement.

Cat's Donut Dance

2006-09-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

Panel 1: Damn it, Jon, seriously, you left a plate of donuts out on the table unguarded? You expect to be eating any donuts today? Though he is not in it, this panel tells us more about Jon than Garfield; about his bottomless capacity for trust, and refusal to admit how his friend treats him. Fall guys are funniest when they set up their own fall.

Panel 2: Well. At least Jon was only expecting "a donut" out of an entire plate of sinkers. When a man's dreams are so small... it just makes them easier to crush.

I haven't anything insightful to add about it, but Garfield standing with hands on hips and expression of satisfaction at a mouthful of fried dough gave me a laughing cramp.

Panel 3: The giant cat tongue is a good sight gag, offering saliva-drenched food a good gross-out gag, and the conciliatory gesture Garfield knows Jon would never accept a sharp character note about remorselessness and insincerity. Note also: It is impossible to know how much time elapses between Panels 1 and 2, which is the secret power of the punchline. In Panel 2 it looks for all the world like Garfield is chewing the donuts. Surprise! This begs another question. If all six donuts visible on the plate are accounted for on his tongue, plus another presumably buried in the stack, plus another now mushed into his cheeks, where in his anatomy was Garfield concealing the 8+ donuts? And where might we get a donut with pale blue frosting?

Verdict: Garfield donut jokes are hilarious.

The Cookie, The Thief, His Stripes & the Poster

2006-09-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

A good comedy rule of thumb is that passive aggressive behavior is usually funnier than confrontation. Admittedly, Garfield frequently disproves or at least flaunts its disregard for this rule. Today we see it fully embraced, however. At first a normal person would wonder why a man would avoid direct confrontation with his own cat. The stakes are low. The offense of having eaten the last cookie is petty, and probably not even punishable. There is no mystery about the offender: Jon knows perfectly well that Garfield is guilty.

The lengths Jon goes to in forcing Garfield's confession may not seem as excessive as Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2, but relative to the crime, maybe they are. And Garfield reacts with glaring rage, but doesn't apologize. What else could Jon have expected or wanted? And yes, that last poster likely says "REWARD," and Jon is taping it up in his own home, as if anyone were there to see it and collect such a reward besides Garfield or possibly Liz. Well, sometimes our desire for small, meaningless vindication is enough motivation.

Q: It is impossible to tell in the context of Garfield artwork, but has Jon done an artist's rendering of the lost cookie? ... Or had he for some reason taken a photograph of the cookie before its disappearance, in anticipation of just this situation? One hopes for the latter, as it indicates a sad acceptance by Jon of Garfield's ability to shape his life.

La Can aux Folles

2006-09-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

Jon's surprise in the second panel is, for me, what elevates this slightly from a normal "pet food is gross" joke. It's also an observation about the unpleasant information revealed when reading in full any food label. Since he obviously purchased the Winged Things cat food, brought it home, and got all ready to feed Garfield before even glancing at the contents: "I bought this?"

More startling than a cat's blind desire to eat any kind of bird, regardless of how good it might taste, and the disregard for human squeamishness on the part of the pet food manufacturers, is the third panel revelation that the key ingredient is an artificial additive. Perhaps "zing" isn't the only flavor-experience Winged Things has going for it, but Garfield seems unimpressed until he hears about the sparrow-flavoring. For our purposes, this means the food company is blithely killing exotic animals and violating a minor cultural taboo against eating raptors, pretty much for no reason. Garfield can get his fill of real sparrows in the backyard any time. For Garfield, even eating his dinner today becomes less about nourishment than making Jon squirm, and unnecessary destruction of animals more beautiful than himself. Good show.

As always: would any other strip make a running gag out of reading a canned food label?

The Cat and the Cannery

2006-09-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

Panel 1: Between the snooty expression and extended pinky, Jon's body language while reading food labels to Garfield is one of a man trying to placate his friend's unhappiness with reality by gussying up the ugly truth. This is even funnier because the circumstance is his cat's dislike of gross canned food.

Also: is Jon reading from an unopened can? It is not outside the realm of possibility that there's a second can of the same food, but why confuse the issue?

Panel 2: That's a "pie"?

Panel 3: Garfield's sudden enthusiasm for the meal has nothing to do with how good vulture may taste, but in a scavenger becoming the scavenged. Garfield is motivated by A) the sense of satisfaction and purpose we derive from seeing karmic justice dispensed, and B) the sense of power derived from participating in the same. There's an uneasy tinge of sadism in the scenario for those in the witness stand, but stranger still is our hero's personal vindication. What have vultures ever done to Garfield? Picked over his corpse and disgorged strips of his fatty orange flesh into the open mouths of their young? Certainly not. Perhaps it is the pride of a hunter, in this case the domestic cat, who resents the parasitic air that scavengers have been shouldered with in human anthropomorphic thinking. I doubt it, since Garfield does not look down on thievery, underhandedness or laziness. Instead, he just enjoys exerting power over a creature that has been weakened, sapped of challenge and ground into a brown paste. Garfield is a bully, even when taking unmotivated revenge on a bowl of reeking canned sludge.

Hungry Pets 2

2006-09-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Every reader understands the basic gag today, and that it is accurately portrayed cat activity to get up in your face, disrupt what you're doing, and sit on your reading material when they want something. Like it or hate it, the self-centered rules of the cat world can be a funny, blunt mirror of how people treat each other. It's an especially nice touch the way they purr and try to look cute as if you should appreciate their demands for attention.

There are subtle shades to Garfield's particular brand of amalgamation of cat behavior and human behavior. Garfield, perfectly capable of getting his own food, likes being a bother. Likes it very much. Garfield's lazy desire to be waited upon, and the way he sort of exploits the situation to provide an excuse to be rude are distinctly human. While he may not look happy about what's going down, Garfield does throw the audience the loaded glance that means he's about to roll up his sleeves and get to work. I would not hazard to say that Garfield would enjoy being hungry for the mere chance to pester Jon (some priorities outweigh all other considerations), but when opportunity pops its head, the man-cat pounces.

Meanwhile, panel three provides an unfortunate reminder of Garfield's salami-thick tail.

Kitteo Rewind

2006-09-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Garfield takes frequent aim at those elements of its own fabric most complained-about and misunderstood by critics, and in the process lays to waste the complaints and successfully turns the mirror on the strip. This Sunday strip is a prime example.

Title Panel: Between the apparent whimsy of the lovable cartoon cat and the reader's heart is the cold reality of the PAWS merchandising interest. Playful, colorful fish leap about, google-eyed, their doom in Garfield's stomach already written upon their very bodies. The last in line bears the Registered Trademark symbol upon his scales.

The Strip: The same two drawings repeated 2.5 times (and with the implication of endless repetition) become the raw material for the joke. The content, you've seen before - Garfield kicking Odie off the table - and seen for years, the same joke repeated in variation ad nauseum. You've heard the complaint that Garfield is the same jokes every day - Garfield is fat, Garfield is lazy, Jon is a nerd, Garfield is mean - but if you think Jim Davis doesn't know this, or it is an insult to your intelligence, or even a flaw in the comic strip, you are missing the point.

I Guess: Garfield set up a camera to capture his own exploits? This doesn't surprise me, and I certainly don't put it past Garfield, but it says a lot about the nature of kicking-Odie-off-the-table gags. Like most of Garfield, success in life isn't about grabbing surprising opportunities, but exploiting the patterns of predestination all around you.

The Punchline: Garfield rightly identifies perusing his adventures as "treasured memories." I get a lot of email that boils down to "I used to like Garfield as a kid, but the apparent lack of sophistication drove me away as an adult." The pleasure of the strip is Davis' ability to conjure infinite variations on the same jokes, daily stories from drawings that look more or less the same, and characters who remain in relative physical and emotional stasis. When Garfield is at its best, these regulatory boundaries themselves become the subject of the jokes. So "whatcha' watching?" = "why are you looking at the same two drawings over and over?" The answer is: it may be an exercise in cruelty, but I like it.

Stovepipe Cat

2006-09-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

Garfield does have an aptitude for bending others to his will, usually by bullying, physical or otherwise. This is usually with little or no regard for how his actions affect those around him; joys of food especially prompt Garfield to lie, steal and hurt Jon, who rarely finishes a meal at home anymore without having his food violated or stolen from his plate. I like strips in which Garfield's scheming and gluttony combine as a force to be reckoned with but his tendency to overkill thwart his lowly goals in the process.
(like this, for random, recent example). In today's plot, Garfield's scheme to force Jon into ordering pizza isn't specifically foiled; the joke is primarily about his ability to intuit how Jon will respond to being unable to cook at home. Notice how in his supreme confidence in the plan, Garfield seems to have forgotten that he began the strip with a direct address to the audience, and happily, silently places his topping requests to someone who hasn't mentioned pizza, hasn't heard Garfield mention pizza, and cannot hear an animal's internal monologue about pizza.

Reason to Love Garfield #1 Million: Jon dresses up in full toque and apron to cook dinner every night. For his cat.

Autobiographical Note: I have done this practical joke to people. I did not get pizza out of the deal.

Orange Cats Can't Polka

2006-09-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

The solidly funny reveal of Jon's idea of the relationship intensity-level between attending professional lectures and looking at hosiery is supported in each panel by more-or-less normal interaction turned into comedy mirrors by the various failings and passions of the characters. This is, in the end, a strip about how goofy and bad Jon's taste is, while straight man Liz is wearing a lemon-lime tube top.

1: Jon's sentiment is not unwelcome (Liz returns it), but the thrust of his character is in how he earnestly announces "I like you" as a way to start a conversation. Garfield stands by watching, though he is not usually interested in Jon's doings, which makes us ask: what was going on before this scene?

2: I cannot praise enough, nor do I need to unpack the image of a man announcing "I think it's time we took our relationship to the next level" as he simultaneously makes a mad dash away from a woman. It is maybe not as relevant to Jon and Liz's lives as some other people's, but it is a fine portrait of human romance through the ages.

3: Pointless observation (!): seven bubblettes is a lot of little circles to descend from a thought bubble.

If Polka-Karaoke Night sounds fun to you (it kinda does to me), and/or you don't think polka is inherently funny, you have fallen prey to a trance effecting many Garfield readers. After 27 years, it's easy to forget Garfield is a cat. The joke is that Jon has a designated night that he sings polkas to his cat. Normally he is alone for this, but now that he has a girlfriend, she and Jon get to take turns singing to each other... and the cat. God help me, I want to see the strip where Jon spends hours trying to coax Garfield to do a Frankie Yankovic number.

Unlikely: -That Jon is able to hook up a microphone and amp and lug a full-sized accordion (they're heavy, folks) into the room with enough speed to surprise Liz. This is timing that works pretty well in Bob Clampett cartoons, and can be done in radio, but functions effortlessly in comics.
-That the karaoke festivities require live instruments, which would be more of a "Sing-Along as Jon Plays Accordion Night."
-That Garfield would be so happy about polka karaoke night. Unless he's being sarcastic and/or rubbing it in to Liz that this is what her life has become.

Meanwhile... The Let's Polka blog is incensed over today's strip. Please let this start a war between a polka blog and a Garfield blog: WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY! The critics say Garfield is toothless; I say let 'em eat my big fat hairy deal.

The Naked and the Vet

2006-09-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Oh, weird. Sometimes in Garfield the Joke Logic gets so thick it's hard to tell if the gag is being mangled by the rules and realities of the strip, or if the writing is playing with the conventions of the same.

Panel 1: Liz, a professional who works with animals, tries to win a cat over not with treats, petting, or attention, but diplomatic conversation as if he were a respected equal. She is not without a history of speaking to Garfield, but it is usually to threaten him about holding still for shots, or as an ironic confidant for sarcastic remarks about Jon; the excuse for most other instances has been that she's talking to Garfield "as if" he understood, knowing that he does not.

Panel 2: Whether she pulled Garfield aside when Jon stepped out to the bathroom, or she has requested a moment alone with Garfield to have this important talk, the situation is so creepy, it's no wonder Garfield is frozen in disbelief and fright before discussion starts. Liz also doesn't have Jon's ability to hold naturalistic one-sided conversations with Garfield that make sense: as far as Dr. Wilson is concerned, she and Garfield spend the remainder of the strip standing there staring at each other.

Panel 3: Here's where I'm positive the Joke Logic is the joke itself; Garfield's discomfort is crazy, out of character, and silly on many levels. Not the least of which is that everyone sees him naked all the time. Not the least of which is that friends may see each other naked under all sorts of circumstances. Also-not the least of which is that Garfield's lament is supposed to parallel an uncomfortable turn in the doctor-patient relationship, but he doesn't disrobe before or share any personal information with the vet. Aw. He thinks he's people! And so the way a simple joke has confused itself becomes the joke itself.

The Day the Clown Sighed

2006-09-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

Groucho Marx's observation that he wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member has slowly been robbed of its stinging subtext of Jewish self-loathing and has become cultural shorthand for more universal self-loathing. Jon's dilemma today probably has more resonance for the post-Baby Boomer generation, with our special blend of ironic/neurotic whine, but I suspect it's a fear that always lives in humanity and emerges most fiercely in those eras when we don't have better things to worry about. In short, it's nice when someone likes you, but only until you can't help but wonder if that means they're screwed up. Groucho's line has a lot to do with his comic persona as a letch, rascal and ne'er-do-well, the character reveling in the contradiction he has willfully caused. The Gen X neurosis is fueled by genuine self-esteem problems and existential confusion. This is why Kurt Cobain shot himself.

Jon Arbuckle does not hate himself, and is in a third, slightly different position: he has plenty of objective data that he doesn't have any friends, and the few creatures who sort-of like him certainly don't appreciate his sense of humor. The method by which the crestfallen Jon of panel 3 might be cheered-up is practical application of Liz's sense of humor. He doesn't suggest that Liz was faking her laughter, just that she was entertained by a man of his meager comedy skills (if it makes you snicker to think this is some kind of coded sex-talk, feel free). If you share the same lame sense of humor, does it matter if you know it's lame? A lot of good, normal couples are united by a mutual bad taste. That taste is frequently in each other. Jon's got nothing to worry about. I mean, except that he runs home and reports to his cat after every date.

Sockadelica

2006-09-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

It may not have the iconic value of Pooky, or Garfield's box-bed for the public at large, but Jon's obsession with his own sock collection, and association of his dedicated sock drawer with the most intimate aspects of his life is well documented in Garfield. Overlooking the obvious weirdness of the premise, Jon's sentiment is a little heartening, because it shows that some part of him is trying to stay even-keeled on the subject of Liz. Given the excitement of any new relationship, compounded with Jon's extraordinary circumstances of loneliness, the overzealousness he's demonstrated already is being surprisingly well tempered by sweet concern for Garfield's feelings.

The Garfieldian thing to do is for Jon's happiness to, well, ruin his own happiness; the easy way would be if Jon smothered Liz with too much attention. This strip takes a trickier tack: Jon's idea of maintaining personal boundaries is confused and a little neurotic. While the sock drawer is a more intimate than public space, it's also a boring, commonplace space. So the Dear Abby advice we imagine when hearing Jon's version of privacy is nothing compared to the scene Garfield visualizes/ knows is coming. When Jon finally presents his sock drawer to Liz with some pride and a little embarrassment, I can only imagine she would not care at all. Disinterest in a man's sock drawer will be the unkindest cut of all.

Besides the mild perversity of Jon's fixation on his socks, the backbone of the joke is that even when Jon is ready to open up, there may not be much to reveal. The Garfield in us explains: Jon is boring. A happier explanation, and the reason Liz ultimately likes Jon: he has nothing left to hide, because he wears his heart on his socks. I mean "sleeve."

Speak! The Cat

2006-09-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

What an odd pregnant pause that is in panel 2, as Jon waits for a response from Garfield. So today the gag is that Garfield sort of silently "pleading the Fifth", as it were, until he cannot avoid the question, and his silence insults Jon by implication. That's a standard enough joke, but the complicated part for this strip is that Garfield can't speak; silence is expected from a cat in reply to direct questions.

Now, careful readers who are not smart-asses about such things, understand that while Jon cannot "hear" the cat, he is generally able to read Garfield's responses from nonverbal cues. This means Garfield is not only hesitant to provide Jon an answer he can understand (rolling his eyes, walking away, etc.), but also refuses to "think" an insult, which the reader and Garfield would enjoy. The timing of this gag involves a second panel that looks empty, but is actually playing with the expectations of the characters and reader, and the established rules that govern the storytelling. This is all in service of a bigger and better dis, which is to entirely ignore a man, and stare right through him, implying that his expression of concern for your feelings means nothing to you.

Kitty in the Water

2006-09-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

Title panel: This dire possible-Phantom Menace-reference image sort of summates an idea intrinsic to Garfield, unlike most Sunday title panels, which normally have nothing to do with anything. Garfield confidently moves in on his prey with a combination of cat-like hunting skill, human-learned traits, both of which he is abusing: snorklers are not supposed to murder the fish they observe. While he takes visible satisfaction in this, the cosmos are going to collect a hefty fine from the meek and the mean alike. The idea actually plays out in today's strip, too.

Panel 1: Cats have little narrow tongues. While I appreciate Mr. Davis' ongoing effort to demolish standards of feline anatomy at every turn, his depiction of Garfield's tongue always grosses me out a little.

Panel 5: The Garfieldian version of cause and effect has little to do with karma, or swift justice, or even a universal morality meting out punishment and reward in a pattern the characters can understand. But perhaps we can discern a kind of fatalistic irony anyway. What has Garfield done "wrong" today? He fails to look before leaping, literally not checking the wading pool for water. He seeks to sully a neighbor's property -- in Judeo-Christian terms, we might say he is "stealing" -- without second thought. Overcome with excitement, he showboats with an overzealous leap, boastful and prideful. But those are normal, petty sins that in the laws of Garfield's universe are not as funny to punish as the self-satisfaction of someone who thinks they have it all figured out.

Buster Keaton's physics often worked on a similar principle: dumb luck will save your life, but any plans will be demolished in the process. Garfield supposes you might also smash your face into a tree. The difference between this lesson and a Chuck Jones Roadrunner cartoon, is that there is nothing harebrained or elaborate about jumping into a swimming pool. The margin for error is small enough, the scene mundane enough, that only Garfield would see it as an opportunity for punishing a character so harshly.

Panel 6: Here was a chance to reward Odie by having him splashed with a pool full of water, or indicating that he is granted some relief by the shade of the pool on his head. No: he just gets a pool on his head.

Also: Garfield jumped into the pool so hard he reversed the color scheme? Bravo.

The Purr-ning Bed

2006-09-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

Any casual acquaintanceship with Garfield will tell you that the cat spends heroic amounts of time sleeping, eating, watching TV and lazing because he loves doing these things, and hates denying himself anything. Too true, but unlike his cartoon glutton layabout forbearers like Jughead Jones, Shaggy Rogers, or Dagwood Bumstead, Garfield is not motivated solely by joie de vivre. A true divergent thinker, he also tends to take up an oppositional stance for no the purpose of flustering others, bucking restraining expectations, and making excuses to himself for his actions. In concrete terms, Garfield not only stays in bed all day because he is lazy/ has nothing to do, but because he knows it bothers Jon. Why it bothers Jon is another set of issues. For the most part we can assume he sees in Garfield's refusal to get out of bed the futility of his daily life, an acceptance of the laissez faire nihilism philosophy "why bother?" that Jon is not prepared to make.

Who knows what Jon is really up to, but Garfield is so entrenched in habits of manipulation that he can only assume that acceptance and support is the kind of scam he's used to pulling himself. The panic in Garfield's eyes when Jon seems to approve of the cat's plan to stay a-bed all day is that of a master reverse psychologist faced with his own tactic.

The G and Cake

2006-09-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

I frequently point out how Garfield uses pride in his own shortcomings to cope with the world depicted in the strip. Which is not to say he doesn't receive the same punishments or suffer the same miseries as the rest of the characters (or the rest of humanity). He takes comfort in lack of adventure or any basic activity including movement by scoffing at its value, associates negativity with happiness, and boasts about things others would not even speak of, etc. Extending the tendency to its logical conclusion, Garfield often takes masochistic pleasure in misery itself, even when as experienced by himself; this doesn't relieve him from the circumstance of his existence, and other characters deal with the Garfield world in their own ways, but Garfield's defense mechanisms allows him to face it with less agony than Jon and more integrity than Odie.

So lest we think Garfield gets his comeuppance for his gluttony, when the expansion of soft baked goods fracture his skull into a perfect cylinder, think again. Part of the joke is the improbable ability of partially chewed cake to suddenly regain its shape, and several layers to spontaneously stack themselves with such force as to shatter cranial bone from the inside while powerful jaw-muscle pressure is being exerted on it. The other part of the gag, the real biting edge, has to do with Garfield refusing culpability for his gluttony and thievery. No, it is not Garfield's fault that he ate hot cake batter which he stole from the oven: not even bothering to twist logic, but leapfrog it entirely, this is Jon's fault.

Cat Fight

2006-09-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

Garfield is a bully; all trickster characters who achieve special mastery over their universe (Bugs Bunny, Axel Foley, Brer Rabbit, etc.) press their intellectual advantages to some degree, and could technically be charged with emotional and mental bullying. But Garfield regularly physically assaults Jon, Odie, Nermal, spiders, mailmen and others when manipulation fails or is just too taxing for his liking. This is one of the qualities -- if not the quality -- that makes Garfield a uniquely and specifically American pop culture icon, and is the source of a lot of his power as an instrument of social criticism.

On one hand, we have the small, bitter ironies of a self-fulfilling prophecy: both the dog's sign (which in part inspires the cat to retaliate), and Garfield's threat (a cruel response to accusations of cruelty) elicit exactly the reply they were intended to avoid. The supreme comic contradiction of Garfield is his utter narcissism despite failing to manifest many positive characteristics. The masterstroke, as in Confederacy of Dunces, is to position the ill-tempered slob as the hero, by placing him in a world so screwed-up that his stubborn egoism looks like integrity. Whether that little gay dog takes the sign down or not (and who made that sign for him?), Garfield, ever a credit to his race, is going to pound the bejeezus out of him anyway.

Little Orange Lie

2006-09-13T00:27:00.000-07:00

Garfield, that cartographer of barren landscapes of human existence, takes aim at anyone who thinks they can accomplish anything, achieve the smallest triumph, or even occupy their time in any meaningful way. Jon deludes himself and tries to lie to his cat (who is having none of it), that not only will his life be imbued with meaning by completion of tasks, but that he has such important occupations ahead of him. The enthusiasm of this announcement is perhaps the saddest, funniest thing in the strip, unless it's Garfield's knowing acceptance of an essentially empty existence in panel two. Only in Garfield is sloth to the point of pride in avoidance of any movement or responsibility equated with a kind of Zen perfection.

Garfield's assurance that the lowliest of human behaviors qualifies as an activity worth consideration is not totally inaccurate, but holds no comfort for Jon, who was surely looking for a way to inscribe positive meaning on his day. Now he has to look in the mirror and say "all I did today was lie to my cat, who didn't believe me in the first place." Confessing your shortcomings also counts as doing something.

Cat-tle and Hum

2006-09-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

The most unlikely part of this dilemma is that he asks his cat if he ever hums. Everyone gets songs caught in their head. Everyone knows at least one cat food jingle, probably the Meow Mix song, because it is diabolically catchy and hilarious. I don't know if Alpo used to have a jingle of any note, but maybe Garfield also remembers that one from his endorsement deal back in the day. But Jon has been under a daily barrage of un-catlike behavior from Garfield, and constantly treats him as an equal. I love those moments when the unreality of this world becomes such a matter of course that Jon can just assume that Garfield has the ability to hum.

Mechanics of Garfield Thought Bubbles: Garfield is usually able to prompt Jon's disgusted sideways glance through meaningful silences and body language. Today a lack of verbal response and movement would indicate tot he casual reader that today violates the cardinal rule that Jon cannot hear Garfield's thoughts. Among the possibilities is a subtle version of: "Did I... really just ask my cat if he ever hums?"

If You Give a Mouse a Coffee

2006-09-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

Garfield's imperviousness to abuse in the second panel lets us know something is "up", and then points out one of those funny rules life. That cheese is to mice as coffee is to humans, and, er, cats (and comics bloggers) is not the most crucial point. There are times in life we will forgive, or at least overlook, personal insults, short tempers, and general bad behavior, and one of them is excusing grumpiness in people who haven't had a cup of coffee. This grace period for manners is actually nice, and I wouldn't imply it is a hypocritical standard or anything; it's just funny. Garfield forgives the mouse for being rude out of a common courtesy, and explains this to us. Garfield feels no need, however, to explain why he regularly allows the far more outrageous lapse of manners toward his housemates, of allowing vermin to cavort around the house, and in fact encourages the mice to steal food. Lest we think Garfield is being too soft letting a mouse call him "Fatso," do not lose sight of the larger discourtesy he commits in the process.

Jon Candy 2.0

2006-09-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

Title Panel: When Hippie Garfield hallucinates, he sees letters spelling out his own name and built of his own flesh. He is so self-involved that while pursuing enlightened states, he ends up deeper inside a maze of his own identity so encompassing it threatens to edge his physical form out of the frame.

The Journey of the Candy Bar: An allegory about the pleasure of anticipation, the power of guilt, and the eternal cycles that leave no hunger satisfied and no behavior rewarded. Though if we think about the individual characters, it is unlikely Odie has the power to guilt-trip Garfield into relinquishing the chocolate bar, Garfield sometimes (frequently on Sundays) asks the cast to enact jokes with full awareness of their own archetypes. The strip plays on the dynamic that Garfield will shamelessly steal Jon's food, and that Jon is so used to defeat in all things that he gives up without a fight. It also sets up an endless loop; these three have been through the scenario so many times, it's hardly about getting to enjoy the candy anymore. Nobody ever will; it's a Milk Chocolate Maltese Falcon. The power isn't with you because you have the material goods, and it's not in the McGuffin itself. It's in knowing you can wrest the chocolate from Jon at any time.

The Jon-queror Worm

2006-09-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

Jon consciously attempts to blind himself to any negative associations about time spent with Liz, only to crash back to reality. The intoxicating powers of romance can effect even those characters inhabiting a world as thick with ennui as Garfield, but the small happiness of time spent with a woman he likes is not enough for Jon. He has to build a scaffolding of self-delusion (look at that lost expression), and fight off even the tiniest unpleasantness. That the date activity was kind of poorly chosen is not a big deal, it's not a character flaw in Liz, and Jon's discomfort could've been avoided by better communication; part of this story is about a thin facade of perfection Jon puts up around Liz. Alternate reading: Jon's horror at the lecture was largely because being reminded of the vulnerability of household pets to tapeworms, i.e. the evening spent with Liz clarified the potential for repulsiveness deep inside his best friend.

The other part is about how Jon and Liz had a good time even though Jon was variously bored and disgusted during the medical lecture. Because while a lot of Garfield is about pointing out how empty and unhappy-making our culture is (Jon's 27 year string of failed dates, Garfield's TV-watching habits), a lot of it is about rooting out the small joys we root out of unexpected crevices. Maybe it's self-delusion in panels one and two... maybe Jon got a weird charge out of getting sick looking at pictures of gastrointestinal systems with his girlfriend. And if the Garfield audience laughed, then maybe we all did.

Q: What does Garfield's rejoinder mean? Is he sarcastically pointing out that since Jon is sick to his stomach he obviously wouldn't want to eat? Or is he implying Jon vomited, and may actually be hungry again? Why do I care about this tiny variable, when the overall meaning of the joke is the same?

Either way, it looks like Garfield is trying to sleep while Jon keeps him awake, babbling about his new girlfriend. The only part that catches his attention is about spaghetti. Who has their priorities in order?

Paws for News: Feeding Time & Trouble in Crustwood

2006-09-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

Site Feed

Because of time wasted goofing around with Blogger Beta (Yawn! Nap attack!), Per-Mon got a even more behind than usual this week; I expect this will happen now and then. It is my understanding that newsfeeds do not update with backdated posts, so to avoid undue anxiety, I assure Atom subscribers that no day's strip will be skipped. If Permanent Monday gets behind, you can always check the blog and find the missing goodies.

Dinette SetScandal!

Sadly, to say nothing of ominously, Per-Mon's favorite daily comic strip criticism journal, Dinette Set Deconstruction has fallen under legal threats by singularly perplexing cartoonist Julie Larson. But hoorah, it moved to: Blather 'bout Burl, including the old archives but minus the strips. Viva critical theory!

Throwing In The Bowel

2006-09-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

Jon, Panel One: Childlike, questioning, possibly concerned about strange but certainly innocuous practices he does not understand, like "slide projection".

Liz, Panel One: Sweet, amused, slightly condescending in that approving way that only your mother or girlfriend is allowed to speak to you.

Jon, Panel Two: Though already excited for the lecture to begin, the promise of such minor embellishments as pictorial slides pushes the deal into entertainment territory for Jon. What sort of avant garde "shows" Jon is used to attending, I cannot say, though I do know he is easily shocked by exotic sights in motion pictures.

Liz, Panel Two: Knowing silence, as with all silences in Garfield, gives us special windows into characters. Anticipating the disaster of the next panel, and possibly just the refreshing company of a man thrilled by the prospect of slides.

Jon, Panel Three: Garfield Storytelling 101: Audience reaction is a funnier reveal than seeing a picture of a diseased intestine.

Liz, Panel Three: The moments when we can stomach repulsive sights our friends cannot is a small joy not documented often enough. Savor them. They bring us closer together, even when those moments include a woman's high tolerance for photos of rotten colons.

Recurring Gag: Jon has an unfortunate tendency to demonstrate willingness to participate in Liz's life by faking fascination with animals' excretory systems.

The Concession Stand: Complete and Unbuttered

2006-09-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

In a room where even the vets in attendance look unhappy, and professional decorum is stifling any pre-lecture chat, Jon manages to amuse himself and his date. Jon's baseless enthusiasm and silly optimism (squelched easily enough though it may be; confidence is still not Jon's strong suite) are the same low-key, uncelebrated traits that get any of us through the day. In Jon they're a little heightened, and while not a man of burning Wuthering Heights passion, this is a good demonstration of Jon's appeal. Boyish enthusiasm, ability to make fun for oneself, and curiosity about new experiences, however minor are all are among the qualities in this man of little personality which I suspect Liz sees in him. Doubters would do well to ask themselves if they are fun-loving enough to bring their own big bag of theater popcorn to a medical lecture.

Veterinary Fashion Beat: In for Fall '06: extra-wide ties and neck scarves.

I'm So Bored With The AVMA

2006-09-06T23:15:00.000-07:00

Jon does not simply observe that his typical night at home might be about as stultifying as listening to a professional address on a subject he knows nothing about. He suggests that his personal expertise might coincide with and enhance a perverse appreciation for the lecture. Jon's connoisseurship of dullness is a joke about the empty plains of his personal life, but when sized up next to the gradual triumph of cult, camp and divergent art criticism in the 20th century, it is not far-fetched. As Andy Warhol said, "I like boring things", an apparent contradiction (If you "like" it, can it be "boring"?) that bears an outrageous truth on its back. What is Warhol's greatest legacy, but a meta-joke he shared in common with Garfield?: the cultivation of ennui as a cultural commodity and pursuit unto itself. But there's a difference. Where Warhol ironically regurgitated the used-up spectacle of celebrity culture as a demonstration of how our preoccupations are hollow and malnourishing, Garfield never got worked up about anything in the first place. There is not an ironic turn when Jon explains why he's anticipating a lecture he won't understand.

Intricate discourse on hyperspecialized topics obviously interests me, and some days Garfield seems to comment or speak indirectly about the journey of Permanent Monday itself. It may not be that anyone reading is a Garfield expert. From the hate mail, I presume a large portion of the audience is not even Garfield fans. But during some lectures, it's not the topic itself.

Feignable Lecture

2006-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

Jon begins his discovery of how being in a relationship can make one as profoundly unhappy as not having a girlfriend. Today (and potentially this story arc) is about the increasing phenomenon of being forced into things you don't want to do to spend time with someone you like. This factors into all intimate human relationships, but perhaps it is one of the primary differences between a girlfriend and a platonic friend: they expect more attention and indulgence. Not that Liz makes particular demands of Jon, and seems to be simply inviting him to the lecture if he feels like going; the telling moment is Jon's eagerness regarding all things Liz Wilson. He's beginning to lose both a sense of self and in the process of overdosing on Liz, risking the mystique of a new relationship by spending an increasing amount of time in activities that bore him. At some point the average person would begin associating the activity partner with the experience of boredom and disinterest, but luckily for Jon, his own hobbies lean toward the dull and/or nonexistent.

Garfield, it is good to know, is such a studied liar and so accustomed to zoning out while dullards babble at him, that he immediately knows how to handle the situation, and advises Jon thus. Garfield has also been so long and so deeply mired in boredom that he believes sincerity itself can be faked. One may wonder when Garfield, who tends to wear his heart on his sleeve and speak bluntly, would have cause to present a facade of interest; the answer is: every day that he bothers to get out of bed and face the world.

Cat Bites Lip

2006-09-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

Biting his lip, presumably that he does not laugh or say (read: "think) a rude rebuttal. Jon obviously understands the signal anyway, and is hurt and angered, so if this were an attempt by Garfield to save Jon's feelings, it's backfired. In the instant karmic/insano-cosmic retribution of the Garfield-verse, your internal negative thoughts and judgment are going to shine through half-hearted attempts to be nice anyway, so why bother?

Or does Garfield really try to hold his tongue? Normally, snappy answers to Jon's stupid questions are Garfield's stock-in-trade, so why would he censor himself today? The cat is unable to speak, and in strip production considerations, having him laugh at Jon out loud was a gag used last week, but the requirements of the scene are that Jon lose his cool because he understands Garfield's thought. Garfield is able to convey skepticism and condescension through expressions normally signifying an attempt not to communicate, here the lip-biting ironically reveals more than Garfield could express without it (i.e. - he can't talk). And this, we may suspect, and surely Jon does as well, is a calculated move to have it both ways: Garfield gets to look like he didn't want to burst Jon's bubble, and gets to insult him by implication.

Bonus Funny: Man plagued by self-doubt even after new girlfriend gives him first confirmation of basic human worth in years, takes this problem to the source of most of his self-esteem issues.

Pudd'nhead and Dr. Wilson

2006-09-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

Jon rolls out the front door, and back in again after his date. The creepy part is not that Garfield has not moved over the course of several hours (he's barely moved over several years, after all), but that Jon is sliding around the house in a blissed-out love trance. Garfield can always tell how Jon's date went, because Jon is so expressive he either looks happy or like he's been hit by a train.

So again, the unsettling thing is that Garfield can normally count on Jon sharing all sundry details of his date, but Jon, driven to distraction, isn't speaking. In a way, he doesn't have to: the onset of twitterpation is one of the times the world can not only read you like a Denny's menu, but the world doesn't probably care to. Here is probably where Garfield's world will "change forever" (as we were promised by ballyhoo on garfield.com when Jon and Liz started dating. Garfield, rather than being glad for Jon, is disgusted with his idiotic, face-mutating grin. But do we sense something else? I think that undercurrent is not simple jealousy that Liz is taking up Jon's time, but not wanting Jon to be happy. Because Garfield likes to make jokes about Jon being a loser. Because Garfield has a perception of his friend that he wants Jon to live up to. Because Garfield needs a victim, an abuse object. And Garfield needs someone who needs him. That may be so he has the opportunity to withhold or dole out affection as he wishes, but it is endearing nonetheless.

Fan Edit Suggestion: The same story could have been told using only Panel One, and the last two frames. This would have preserved Garfield's determined lack of scenery, but robbed us of knowing how much Jon and Liz love seeing ill-attended movies after filling up on twin helpings of meatloaf.

Arbuckle Fashion Watch '06: It's great to see at least the blazer from the old Ugly Date Outfit back in action, after its recent banishment in favor of more dignified threads.

Bad Day at Cat Rock

2006-09-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

Garfield frequently takes pleasure, brags about, and shows off his bad behavior. Today he is amazed and held in thrall by the power of negative feelings to overwhelm and transform him. Similar to a recent gag in which Garfield finds amusement in his own boredom. To a point, Garfield always likes to wallow in negative emotions, which is why he insults those he cares about and frightens and hurts the innocent. But those are behaviors that allow him to victimize others to make himself feel powerful. There is a certain usually unspoken thrill in the feeling of giving way to damaging emotion (the comfort of feeling sorry for oneself, the adrenal rush of anger). To be sure, Garfield is feeling this in panel one. But by the end, where the cat is delighted by the physical transformation caused by grumpiness, and fascinated by his apparently unmotivated mood swings, he's degenerated into pure naval-gazing. He just finds everything he feels and does endlessly interesting, and wants to tell others about it. This is a testament to Garfield's dedicated brand of narcissism.

Panel Three: all tied up in thinking about his own mood, Garfield attempts to summon Jon from another room by "shouting" - i.e. thinking loudly at him.

Live Free or Lie Down, Roll Over

2006-09-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

It's the kind of punchline whose brazen cynicism you have to admire, no matter what the political clime of the day. Garfield does not just propose that incarceration may be necessary when crimes have been committed. Nor is he saying that having personal freedoms stripped may be necessary when an individual proposes a substantial threat to the safety of society. Garfield says unrestricted liberty has been ignorantly championed, because it is dangerous.

Is Garfield really a fascist? I doubt it. His rebellious streak is too strong. Garfield's closing comments are usually to be read as sarcasm, and today is no different. "Freedom is overrated" is simultaneously the reasonable conclusion of fear of others, and the ill-reasoned results of a flawed premise. Since Garfield's goals are unambitious to start with, if we subtract the quotient of his cynicism and self-pity, the philosophy is better stated: YOUR freedom is overrated, while mine is sacred.

If one extrapolates Garfield's combined beliefs and desires to a logical conclusion, everything in all creation - except the fulfillment of basic hungers - is overrated. So don't be too shocked when that includes your dearest ideals.

Also: That dog's head is the size of Garfield, who is in turn half as tall as Jon. I know the joke is bolstered by a big dog, but is some kind of Ice Age terror-dog necessary?

License to SNATCH

2006-08-31T20:40:00.000-07:00

Panel One: A classic Garfield last-panel-reveal joke. These usually sustain our interest because of a character's inexplicable, strange behavior, or an out of place, unfamiliar element. Today we join the action midstream, and all the reader wonders is "what is Garfield taunting Jon about this time?"

Once we find out the answer and reevaluate the story, a new question is provoked: did Jon come home from the DMV and ask his cat's opinion of his new photo? Well of course he did.

Panel Two: Jon's arc through these three panels is not the simple embarrassment of a bad driver's license photo, but the dual-motivated surprise and hurt of ego deflation and betrayal by a confidant. Jon obviously thought the picture was either flattering, requested damage-assessment, or had handed over the card for unrelated inspection, and reacts as if not expecting this jarring outburst from Garfield. As Tweetie once said, "he don't know me very well, do he?"

Panel Three: Garfield's ironic appreciation of the photo because it embarrasses Jon has further weight than simple insult, because Garfield makes no effort to improve his personal appearance. Though the cat is outrageously vain, the quality is baseless pride, entirely delusional and narcissistic. When Garfield teases Jon about the photo, the taunt carries the implicit message that since he could not be wounded in the same way, Garfield is laughing at. Not with.

Also Garfield seems to inflate in size for no reason.

L'Ârge d'order of Pizza

2006-08-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

Garfield's "NO FEAR!" cheer, a proclamation of true grit normally applied to sporting contests and dangerous living, is incongruously applied to two guys who are going to eat as much gross pizza as possible. In the joke-logic world, the pizza toppings are so disgusting, or will render Garfield and Jon so smelly, that they actually will be a danger, and arguably gorging yourself on melted cheese is not the safest of dietary choices. This isn't actually far removed from normal Guy Behavior, where eating and drinking contests, and feats of consumption fuel good times and liver problems alike, all the time.

The slight difference is that Jon and Garfield, for no reason besides sheer contrarian mischief, decide to go for broke with their antisocial behavior. What else is there to do when your personal habits and desires - be it nasty pizza toppings, bad music, cigarettes, weird haircut - are being attacked? Even if social standards require only the smallest of personal compromise? Even if the reasons to cooperate are for entirely logical, understandable reasons? Garfield advises not only to let one's freak flag fly, but to crank up Here Comes Garfield and blow smoke in the face of oppression. Of course, this only applies when personal appetite is at stake. This is less War on Freedom than "Don't Crowd Me".

Show me the ultimate end-product of American individuality, and I'll show you a cat with garlic breath.

On Top of the Table and Dreaming

2006-08-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

The key to Garfield's personality is not that he is simply lazy and grouchy, but his determination to be as lazy as possible. He doesn't just space out like a normal person, but plans and makes an effort to space out. Understanding this is critical to appreciating Garfield in general. It's not boring, but a hard look at what boredom means, and the damages and comforts we may find there.

As the joke in a newspaper comic strip, Garfield examines what audiences demand in popular entertainment; it should be new and thrilling, but please, more of what we're already familiar with. It also reminds us of the special pitfalls of writing Garfield: when the point is that nothing ever happens, how does one continually engage an audience?

"I want to do absolutely nothing, but I want it to be a new absolutely nothing." The paradox is the joke, but Garfield's dilemma makes a sharp observation about a fundamental reason people are miserable. The unresolvable, eternal tension between desire for excitement and need for comfort. Garfield mocks the heightened conflict of other fiction by inventing a hero whose irritation threshold is so low that he can't help but have his plans foiled. What happens to a life that pursues ennui believing it to be fulfillment?: eventually, Garfield sees the ricocheting effect as he stares into the void; he runs out of dreams. In Garfield, the universe itself is so fundamentally barren that even a creature who bores himself for entertainment is frustrated in his effort. The oh-so-Garfield response to this ultimate spiritual crisis?: "Nuts."

Mouth Wide Open

2006-08-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

Besides the awkward necessity of two text bubbles emerging from the same character in panel 3, here's a primo joke about Garfield's personal standards. He places an importance on living with flare and style over the remarkableness of achievement, and even his lethargy must be remarkable, world-class laziness. Likewise, though characterized by inactivity, Garfield selects to participate in only those tasks he can perform in excess and with mastery. This tendency in Garfield has always reminded me of Oscar Wilde, who not only made Lifestyle an artform, but whose enduring legend outweighs his writing in quantity and arguably in import.

Garfield is the rare iconic American character known entirely for his attitudes and opinions, and barely at all for his adventures or the stories that he is involved in. This entire blog is dedicated to understanding what it means that a nation embraces a character that mirrors and celebrates cultivated gluttony, laziness and meanness. Today we see how Garfield twists the Puritan work ethic to suit his own useless ends: a job is only worth doing if you can do it right, so make sure the things you're good at further your self interests. May we all be as spectacular at displaying our apathy as Garfield.

Dog Drool Afternoon

2006-08-27T22:40:00.000-07:00

The basic dynamic: Odie's expression of unconditional love is overzealous and physically repulsive, and inspires not appreciation but misery. In the Garfield-verse, counting on others for happiness is an unwise proposition, and moments of joy tend to be born from self-reliance and/or self-indulgence. Total obliviousness to others' feelings is a partial explanation of Odie's happiness; ignorance may be bliss, to a degree, but it also gets him put out of the house and branded as an outcast. The other part is simply rushing headlong into what he wants to do. Lest we think Garfield endorses this kamikaze happiness as a successful coping mechanism, note that there is no character as put-upon, loathed or physically abused as Odie. Closer to the truth is that Garfield tells us it's unnatural and stupid to be so optimistic, and in episodes like today's, it is disgusting as well.

Point of consideration: Odie's primary job is foil to Garfield, perpetual optimist to the pessimistic cat. But another aspect of Odie's character is a distilled mirror-version of Jon, specifically Jon's approach to dating; Arbuckle throws himself at women with supreme confidence.

A Note on Cartooning: One of the strip's specialties is suppressing the moment of physical comedy. This is certainly not a hard-and-fast rule, but Davis frequently selects to portray those panels of aftermath, or focusing on a character's reaction to off-panel action. Today the scenes of Odie's tongue actually making contact with others are hidden behind sound-effects so large they blot out the action. Add to list of What's Awesome About Garfield: it solves story problems and invents joke structures with techniques specific to the medium, without drawing attention away from the jokes the innovations are supposed to service.

What better panel to advertise the Garfield goodies available via cellular phone, than the image of two angry, miserable characters quietly seething and dripping with saliva? Probably none but the first panel proper, in which Garfield stands motionless and staring into space.

Mother, Jugs and Spuds

2006-08-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

Jon's mother, while oblivious or obstinate on most topics, responds with such exaggeration to news of Jon's steady dating that the reader is nudged to remember exactly how monumental a development it is. By keeping Mom off-stage, we're allowed to read the entire spectrum of possible responses, from "I am happy; finally my son will begin a family" to "the bottom has dropped out of my reality". Because all that we know of Mrs. Arbuckle's reaction is that her circuit breakers have been tripped - she could be shocked, delighted, etc. - perhaps the reactions we personally migrate towards can tell us something about our own responses to Jon, or even about our relationships with our own parents and how we feel they view us.

Another dimension to Jon's mother's surprise is underlined by the secondary joke that the Arbuckle family is so cornpone that there is always a big helping of mashed potatoes in the immediate vicinity. The generational and cultural gap between Jon and his family likely means Jon's prolonged bachelorhood has seemed even more extreme to his rural parents.

Garfield of course has zero interest in either Jon's love life, or Arbuckle family business, and latches onto one tangential idea for his own personal punchline, "I've had dreams like that." It's a double-barrel joke, telling us A) that the Arbuckles are so boring/ Garfield so self-absorbed that he's not even paying attention, B) Garfield's gluttony extends into a deeply confused place in his subconscious. It's one thing to have a wish-fulfillment dream about diving into a swimming pool of mashed potatoes, or eating your way out of a cave made of mashed potatoes... but fainting unconscious into food means that in the dream you're not even eating, but being covered, smothered, consumed. This wiggles past defiant indulgence, or even food addiction and into fetishism that will take expert psychologists with more serious training than I to untangle.

Optional Reader Activity Worksheet: Call your mother and inform her that Jon Arbuckle has a girlfriend. What is her response? Into what food does she pass out? Will real cats even eat potatoes?

Cry for Jon

2006-08-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

Two particular points of interest today. Garfield regularly trades in schadenfreude gags, wherein Garfield takes pleasure in Jon or Odie's pain. This visit to the movies provides a sweet-natured and related counterpoint. It's not Liz's sadness that gives Jon happiness, but her need for comfort, which is a natural byproduct of sadness. There's nothing insidious about taking pleasure in the ability to be there for a someone in need, but it is a minor human failing we do not usually admit. In more dire circumstances it is better known as the sin of pride. But Liz is not hurt or sad on a soul-shaking level - the reasons we attend weepy movies are the reasons the Greeks produced tragedy, and ultimately cathartic; the audience in their own way is happy because of their willful immersion in superficial sadness. Because of this we aren't concerned that Jon's exhibiting sociopathic behavior and feeling gleeful while others weep, rather there's a wistful little joke about a man unaccustomed to a social touch feeling his way in the world of interpersonal contact.

Audience Reaction Studies
Whatever the movie is about, surely a bittersweet romance, a real-life drama is happening in the theater, and goes unnoticed by all but the knowing and/or leering elderly woman. The rest of the audience is rapt, and from the neckless soda-sucker to the neck-braced popcorn-eater to the fright-wigged aerobics instructor, in true Garfield fashion, no one looks like they're enjoying themselves.

Besides Liz, who I hope is talking at normal volume during a movie only for expositional purposes, no one is communicating the emotional effects of the film so well as the redhead in the turtleneck. Cartooning crowds of ugly people without distracting from a simple joke is a tricky tightrope. Her one-handed pantomime makes her the only audience member vying for our attention in the packed frame. Also I'm pretty sure her date is one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

So This is What Makes Life Feline...

2006-08-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

As a Movie Guy, I admit I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with any genre, even the "chick flick". The genre formerly known as "women's pictures", with a long and illustrious history from Now Voyager to Love, Actually, may not be Jon's ideal Friday night entertainment, Davis hasn't gone out of his way to identify a specific torturous film. Jon is indeed the target audience, a young man on a date, and even if he doesn't find something to enjoy in the movie, he may make good by Liz and the genre is pretty inoffensive anyhow. We've seen Jon mention a love for children's films, and settle in for an evening with Brigette Bardot movies; while there's plenty to sustain male interest in a Bardot picture, most of them aren't Dude Movies par excellence. Choosing a date movie is tricky business anyhow, and most would agree a healthy ability to suck it up and let your date indulge their interests is a good thing. I spend this time to illustrate that it's not Jon's behavior at the heart of the joke.

Garfield witnesses one of the small compromises that happens in all relationships, and gives it a thumbs-down. Granted it is not just Jon's willingness to spend Friday night at a movie he doesn't want to see in exchange for time spent with someone he cares about that Garfield views as emasculating, but Jon's blissed-out zombie state confession that small nuisances don't bother him right now. Garfield's stubborn self-centeredness causes him to draw a hard line in all things: the cat will never do anything he does not want to do, and when his back is against the wall he will sabotage the situation (e.g.- constantly abusing Odie) or complain about it (e.g.- everything Jon does every day). Garfield cops a song title from Cinderella for his sarcastic refrain. It is a song which celebrates approximately the state in which Jon finds himself. Days like this both the guys might be right, but the thing about cynics is they think they're realists.

The Naked Kitty

2006-08-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

A fine result of Jon and Liz's recent dating developments is it allows jokes on the topic of Old Friend Hates Buddy's Changes in Behavior Over Significant Other. This plays beautifully in Garfield because the characters and relationships are already set up for it. Jon's desperate and eager attempts to please a woman at all cost to personal dignity and comfort flow naturally into a man totally pussy whipped, even by a woman making few if any demands. Today all Liz has to do is call him, and Jon bends over backwards to be attentive, even as he brazenly violates his friend's comfort zone and lies to Liz. It's also a sweet observation about how exciting new relationships are, but in Garfield it's always tinged with the ominous undertone: Jon overcompensates because he's love-starved.

Garfield is just as naked as Jon, of course, but chalk it up to joke logic. Besides, it's funny that Garfield would complain about having to look at Jon's scrawny, soapy body, finding it more disgusting than his own robust physique, that he holds Jon to certain human standards of decency while he allows himself to pick an choose. Even better it tells us something about mutual understandings in Jon and Garfield's domestic situation. Maybe not much, but at least that Garfield has divested himself of at least one more normal cat behavior, that mysterious love of staring solemnly at their naked owners.

Also Garfield's phrasing "could you do nothing with a towel on?" holds the awareness that it may be a given that Garfield is a chronicle of inactivity, but at least it's not usually waving its crotch in your face.

Mr. Sar-Jon-icus

2006-08-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Jon's Mistakes:
-Liz may like Jon's smile, but not that smile.
-Believing he should modify fundamental aspects of his behavior to please a woman.
-As long as he's bothering with an unnatural grin, to continue the grimace at home.
-Sharing any relationship problems, no matter how miniscule, with Garfield.

Garfield's Awesome Response:
We see characters with the same half-lidded expression nearly every day. It is the default facial expression for most Garfield characters, but it's amazing what a versatile utility player it is, and how subtly it can shade a character or moment. Garfield in panel one has to both look calm and normal next to Jon's frantic grinning. and express something like "I cannot feign too much interest, but as long as you're sitting here with a horrible Man Who Laughs look on your mug, and it's a given you're going to tell me anyway, we all might as well see how weird your explanation is." In panel two, the fourth-wall aimed pupils shift a millimeter: "You guys hear this?"

There's a world-wise truth to what Garfield says: being in love invariably causes pain, and it gets worse the harder you pretend to be happy all the time. Lest we mistake a lazy, intentional jerk for sage, ask what life experience Garfield has with romantic love.

Auld Lang Sigh

2006-08-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, hoorah for those kind of girlfriends you see once a month. While I honestly don't think it's Jim Davis' intention for us to question the commitment of Jon and Liz's relationship, I do think it's funny that he's spent more strips talking about her than spending time with her.

Jon's excitement about the relatively distant future is not so outrageous. It is part of human nature to imagine the possible development of a fledgling relationship. Fantasizing that a couple might still be dating in five months is not necessarily ridiculous, and while Jon's bug-eyed expression is supposed to indicate that he has become overeager, it's not the soul of the joke. It is Garfield's inability and/or stubborn refusal to take interest in Jon's happiness. Jon often speaks to Garfield not just as a housemate, best friend, or confidant, but as if Garfield is part of his internal mental dialogue. The unrelenting cynicism sometimes functions as it's own celebration of bad behavior, sometimes as comic counterpoint to Odie's moronic glee, but against Jon it can run the gamut. Contained in Garfield's brief response is a healthy "reality check" for Jon, an observant lashing-out about the jealousy of friends towards a chum's new relationship, and perhaps best of all, unnecessary meanness for the sake of being the force of contrariness in this small universe.

Peanuts, Featuring Fat Ol' Kitty Orange

2006-08-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

Title Panel: Why the springtimey reproductive-themed title panel when summer is ending and autumn's hand of death is soon to wrap the nation in it's chilly grip? Has Garfield's body become a flowery cursive rendition of his own name? Or is he lurking in wait hoping for some vicarious thrill as the insects go about their natural pollenation duties? The sly smile on his lips tells no lies.

Cat Covered in Packing Peanuts - 1: Garfield regularly practices the art of pantomimed physical comedy, especially on Sundays where seven panels of a cat sleeping on a table might be too much even for Gar-fans. A lot of cartoonists would have had an establishing panel of Jon calmly drinking coffee. Garfield knows it doesn't have to. Garfield has carefully established for a quarter-century that Jon is always sitting calmly at the table.

Cat Covered in Packing Peanuts - 2: Only because Garfield's anatomy is so grotesque would anyone be frightened. If a real fat kitty walked up behind you with white foam stuck all over his fur, a real person's brain would seize up and explode from seeing the cutest thing in the universe.

How Does Your Garfield Grow?

2006-08-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Panel One: Garfield is giving us gardening tips, one amateur horticulturist to another, though with his trademark dearth of enthusiasm. As usual, the strip flows smooth as honey, but after staring at it for a few minutes, subtle cracks emerge in the surface: is Garfield telling us about the benefits of talking to plants because he knows Jon is doing it, and is leading us to Jon for a demonstration? Or do the events happen to coincide? Garfield's surprise in panel two is partly because of the nonsense Jon is spouting, but couldn't Garfield see Jon a foot away down the table when he started walking and talk/thinking with the reader?

Answer: The rules of how light and sound travel between off-panel and on-panel spaces is variable depending entirely on the requirements of joke mechanics. We understand this intuitively about other laws of physics in comics, but the relationship between the on-panel and off-panel is so subtle the bending reality may not even register.

Panel Two: Jon's fear is funny for any number of reasons (e.g. - how much are elbows supposed to match? How can you tell when wearing a long-sleeved shirt? Why is this inspiring terror?), not least of which is that he seems to be asking for a second opinion from the plant. Since he usually gets a response from his housepets, maybe this isn't such ridiculous behavior.

Panel Three: Garfield: Actually mad that Jon hurt a plant, because he cares about plants? Disgusted that Jon has upset his gardening lesson for the reader? Or looking for any excuse to smack Jon? You decide.

Sit, Odie, Sit. Good Dog.

2006-08-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

It is not ours to question the comic strip reality of a cat who has built scale versions of restaurant waiting line placards, nor of a dog who takes commands in written form, nor of that dog's anatomy which is so tortured that it is difficult to recognize at a glance that he is indeed sitting in the third panel. Joke Logic or no, it's a little counterintuitive that a restaurant-protocol gag should take place on top of a table in the house.

That Odie can read is pretty much the crux of the joke, because the associative gap between the meaning of "wait to be seated" and the command for a dog to sit is not very large. There's a second shade of meaning, in which Odie is so dumb he must be ordered both not to sit and to sit. Lord knows what he'd do if given no commands. Squat, maybe? Funnier is how Garfield shuffles through panel two, disinterested, though he is surely the one who made the signs. There are a few levels to these presentational strips in which Odie and Garfield mime a broad joke for us in vaudeville style. We are treated to the joke itself, the acknowledged artificiality of the format, and the self-conscious performances of our silent clowns: Odie with full confidence of the antique material, a happy, catatonic Fatty Arbuckle, and Garfield a weary Buster Keaton, stone-faced with disgust or defeat. The idea of an entertainer so lazy he doesn't care about the audience is a masterstroke. Your comedian is indifferent: laughing is your own job.

Abre Los Olives

2006-08-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

Jim Davis must find the idea of inanimate objects yodeling intrinsically funny. As an improbable image it works much better here than it did last time, though compared to what used to go down in Pee-Wee Herman's fridge, yodeling baloney is nothin'. It's always been a running gag that the Arbuckle refrigerator is a museum of horrors. I don't know that it jibes with Garfield's tendency to eat anything, including raw pancake mix and bottles of condiments, but it allows a lot of good jokes about the behavior of bachelor slobs.

Though Garfield and Jon are both ineffectual in their own ways, the performances demonstrate the great comic divide between them, even in attitudes toward cleaning the fridge. Neurotic, easily frazzled Jon looks so shell shocked he's not going to be able to confront the mess by himself. Garfield lounges in his most blatantly worthless signature posture. Normally Garfield posed on his back like this is reserved for gags about his laziness. At it's heart, that's what this is: though the rancid food situation has gotten well out of hand, he suggests procrastinating... for no reason. The usual excuse for procrastinating is that a problem will solve itself, or at least not worsen. Garfield fully acknowledges that the olives already have eyeballs in them, and will further mutate. And he just doesn't want to get up.

Fine. That's Garfield. Why does he care if Jon wants to clean the fridge himself? As long as you're going to try to be worthless as possible, the only way to truly achieve the goal is to drag someone down with you.

The Book I Shred

2006-08-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

What happens to those who engage in destructive hobbies? The larger story of Garfield, who dives into the deadly sins with a show-off's flare, is of a creature defined by self-destructive interests. Conventional wisdom and practical observation tells us that the binge drinker, amateur pyrotechnician and drug user tend to destroy themselves in the process of indulging their interests. Garfield says as long as you can't dodge the bullet, you might as well run headlong into it.

So what becomes of the vandal, the pugilist, the sharpshooter, those hobbyists who specialize in defacing property, injuring others, causing destruction? They deal with the ephemeral in a special way, and today's strip ponders their dilemma. While they may have their trophies, equipment, periodicals and club T-shirts, the collections are snapshots of the event. As a collector, I ask myself a lot: is the true fun in having the rare book, record or Garfield T-shirt, or the thrill in the chase? The answer for the collector is "both". Garfield tries to mix the event-oriented hobbyist appreciation of the moment and the collector's aesthetic sophistication. Because his only way to relate to love objects is to do violence to them, Garfield ends up with nothing but scraps. Scraps, and something to brag about as master contrarian.

Party Jonster

2006-08-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

There are two punchlines dueling for laughs but building on one another: Jon's indecisive dithering/enthusiasm for mundane chores and Garfield's disgusted evaluation of Jon's partying skills. Before Garfield's elaboration that chores and fun are unified in Jon's mind, Jon's dilemma is a basic one we all deal with daily. Objectively it is kind of funny that some nights you go out and goof off and some nights you stay home and do housework, and not only that but some nights you want to dust and vacuum. We're a social species, but a domestic animal as well, and maybe taking basic pleasure in activity like washing the dishes, scrubbing the bathtub and brushing our teeth keeps us from shooting ourselves in the mouth when we realize not-partying is really the majority of our time. It's a bleaker take on the idea behind Disney songs like "Whistle While You Work" and "A Spoonful of Sugar".

But even funnier than any of that are the first two panels. A man enthusiastically tells his cat he wants to party, as if the cat can do anything about it. And then he stares off over his shoulder, beaming, as if the party will spontaneously happen, or maybe sitting at the table with the cat was always going to be the extent of the party.

They Came for the Garfields and I Said Nothing

2006-08-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Very, very little popular media is as self-critical as Garfield. Though the strip is constantly berated by the amateur critic for monotonous artwork, and eventlessness writing, these are part and parcel with the themes and worldview of Garfield. It is the running gag and major character trait of Jon Arbuckle to be boring. The meta-gag of this strip is that maddening tedium is a job hazard of documenting the life of a dull man and his lazy cat. It's practically the mission statement. Garfield's conspiratorial glare at the audience in panel two indicates this is about more than the cat being Jon's irritated foil. The joke boils down to "WHY does this comic strip exist?", and that is a dangerous question for any art to ask.

The man with nothing to say and no one to hear it is a special Everyman archetype, entirely unidealized, unromantic. He's not just a funny dork character, but everything boring about our lives. If we wonder why anyone would bother writing, drawing, let alone reading, a daily check-up on a character whose essence is to be dull, the answer is that no page in the newspaper will give you real life like the three panels devoted to Garfield. The rest of the news is dedicated to documenting the "remarkable", the noteworthy, the extraordinary. The rest of our entertainment diet for the day is spent escaping life or pinpointing those moments that give it meaning. Those times when everything makes sense, those moments we remember until we die: those are rare and fleeting. Jon Arbuckle's daily struggle is the great wash of our lives in between those moments. Garfield isn't boring: you are.

Kitten On the Wind

2006-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have no problems with the commercial juggernaut of Garfield. My home obviously stores a fair amount of PAWS-licensed paraphernalia, and any accusations that Jim Davis has whored his kitten on the marketplace will fall on deaf ears. No matter how garish the ancillary merch gets, it doesn't effect the spiritual despair of the strip. If a Garfield pillowcase makes a some 6-year-old happy, I say no harm done in this case. In fact, I love that Davis' calculated attempt to capture America's imagination on a Snoopy-level involved morbid obesity, anger and relentless unhappiness, and the nation couldn't get enough.

And I don't doubt that when I'm done typing this, I'm going to download the daily Garfield-delivery application to my phone.

But for real, advertising it in the Sunday strip title panel!? Brilliant.

Windy Day
The structural effort of an explanatory punchline after six pantomimed panels is admirable, but honestly I think the art in the very first frame is too explicit to expect any reader to be confused about what is happening. What is disorienting is that the weather is such that a 27-pound cat is blown across the lawn but the wind does not cause a ripple across the surface of the birdbath. That and Jon's activity for the day, which seems to be standing around the living room wearing a red cap.

Negative interior decoration points for the poor attempts at Southwestern style. It always looks silly in Midwestern homes, and worse when it extends no further than one sub-roadside-truck-sale landscape painting.

Jonny Crack Corn

2006-08-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

The dreamy look in Jon's eyes and general air of being out of it tells me Jon doesn't quite realize what he's saying. He thinks he's relishing the time spent alone with Liz, but his line of reasoning has nothing to do with the company at the movies. What Jon most enjoyed was time away from Garfield. It's actually fine, good and probably healthy, for Jon to realize this. It's a poor thing to subject Liz to, however, and the ideal result in a developing human being would be to make sure future dates are not just to get away from Garfield.

Part of how Garfield asserts his authority and deeply integrates himself into the Jon's life is to force the man to ingest parts of his body. The vagary of Garfield's angry retort is part of the joke. How can Garfield make good on such a threat? By either sabotaging Jon's dates so he has to stay home and eat the tainted house supply of popcorn, or by violating the entire concession stand at the theater. Perhaps the theater the reader frequents. The heart of a gross-out joke is to ask the audience to imagine themselves with a greasy, salty, crunchy mouthful of fluffy popcorn sprinkled with white flecks of cat dander, and matted with buttery hunks of golden orange fur which stick to their shiny lips and slick fingers.

Panel Three Art Examination: Perhaps it is Garfield's massive right forearm blocking the view, but it appears the limb has become disconnected from our hero's body.

The Theater That Only Shows A Tale of Two Kitties

2006-08-11T02:39:00.000-07:00

Even as he's in the middle of a transaction with the ticket booth attendant, Jon and Liz, can do nothing but talk about Garfield. Liz must know she's going to be entering weird psychological territory in the Arbuckle house, because neither her question nor Jon's answer are the way one would speak about a normal cat/master relationship. This feeling must be gleaned not from Jon's behavior in the office, where he is all-eyes-on-Liz, but Garfield's tendency to show up in disguise or as a third wheel on their previous dates. One can't help but wish we'd witnessed the missing scene of a crying Garfield begging Jon not to leave. If you know someone's got such a codependent relationship in their life already, why go out with them? Press one for pepperoni, folks.

While I appreciate Garfield misbehavior in Jon's absence, and Jon's clueless belief that Garfield cannot function without him, I'm not sure the cat's behavior is wild enough to justify the punchline. After all, isn't letting Garfield eat pizza something Jon does on a daily basis anyway?

Thank goodness for the innovations in interactive push-button pizza-phone technology or Garfield would be stuck in a situation like this:

Boy would he feel dumb!
Also: Either Garfield's gotten a lot bigger, or telephones have gotten a lot smaller since 1980.

Orange Colored Sky with Black Stripes

2006-08-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Comic Observations on the Art: Did Jon get advice from his new girlfriend on the order of "do not wear that green plaid suit and bowtie on our first steady date?" Certainly this purple blazer and red tie (note to real-world bachelors: this color combination is not acceptable) is a superior outfit, but she might have better advised "evening casual is preferable to a full suit for a movie date."

Today's Life Lesson: It's cute that Jon's bolstered confidence stemming from his love life has given him courage to scold his pets in ways he normally does not. His glaring expression in panel one indicates he actually means business, so his tone must be surprising and hilarious Garfield and Odie... and even to Jon, a little bit. Panel two is a fine tableau of three characters in various states of disbelief, but all three sharing the same basic thought: Jon can't seriously think he's in control of his life, right? All your perceived power and poised confidence means nothing when confronted by those with no shame, standards, or impulse control.

Lessons in Comics Grammar: I point out panel three for those slow on the uptake in understanding Davis' methods for maintaining the Garfield reality. While the conversations between Jon and his pets are one-sided, the animals generally give physical cues to their thoughts, and Jon's ability to read his pets' expressions is heightened; today Garfield and Odie's devilish smirks let him know they aren't heeding his commands. Simultaneously, the joke is usually shaded with the understanding that Jon cannot hear Garfield's sasses, which even Garfield seems to forget; today, in panel three, Jon knows something is amiss, he's just staring at his pets as they make creepy faces at him. The reader is the only one privy to both meanings of the joke.

And yes, those unwilling to accept Garfield's fluid timeline and flexible clock: Jon leaves for a Friday night date on Thursday.

Personal Aside: I have been waiting to use that post title since the day I started Permanent Monday. That is all.

yes I said yes I will Yes.

2006-08-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Jon: is either using comic strip generic language or plans to make out with Liz. Because when I ask someone to go to a movie, it's a specific movie, and I tell them the title. If I just say "the movies", it means I do not and you should not care what the movie is, because the theater is just a place to make out. Panel one, Jon puts on his half-lidded, smirking ladies' man face, a picture of confidence. Panel two reveals Jon has long-forgotten the signified emotion that's supposed to be behind a confident expression. Panel three shows Jon's self-destruct reflex trying to kick in and put his life back into the miserable rut that deep down, we consider our natural state.

Liz: is probably impressed Jon was able to restrain himself from calling her for 12 days, even as she counted each one and knitted her brow, looking at the X's on the calendar. I know I am.

Garfield: is not really happy for Jon, as evidenced in panel two. He is finally amused by a man's confusion and probably terror, and relishes the possibility that Jon's anxiety may continue for some time.

Again: Does Jon move the phone to the table for these calls, or is it a different table, or is it a different part of a very long table?

Per-Mon Image storage goes SPLUT!

2006-08-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks, I haven't had any problems viewing the blog with images, so I had no idea they were down. The problem is being attended to, though it will take awhile to move every strip to safe ground.

Re: vacation. I was experimenting with doing a whole week of strips at once, but it turned out to be a lot more work than trying to keep up with the daily installments. Things should be back to normal/boring after today's scheduled Blogger outage.

Sock! Theater

2006-08-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

I don't recall off the top of my head more than a couple instances of Jon's personal hygiene being the butt of jokes. There is more supporting evidence that Jon takes good care of his sock drawer, for instance. I always like when Jon realizes/ foolishly believes that he should make a behavioral change for Liz. Jon will put on a jacket, try to be suave, lie about his personal life, anything to impress Dr. Wilson. Anything except stop letting his walking heart-disease-risk cat from eating bacon and eggs for breakfast. Is the lady vet going to put up with that around the house?

I'm not sure where else Garfield's thought balloon could have gone without tipping off the joke, but it doesn't really complete the thought preceding it.

You know what's awesome? These are installments about how Jon has a girlfriend, and I see him saying words indicating everything has changed, and they're still just stories about him sitting around, talking to the cat. No matter how hard you consciously try, no matter how extreme you think fate, the universe or God is treating you, no matter what order or chaos you perceive in the cosmos... the center holds, because it is a straight line across a blank field, and it represents your kitchen table. Whether you want to change it or not, the only reality you can know consists in majority of the empty moments when you're wondering if you should change your socks.

Liz Lips Sink Dip

2006-08-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

Fledgling romances are funny things, and today the continuity invigoration promised two weeks ago starts to take hold. Garfield doesn't just ease into change, but yawn, stretch, hit the snooze alarm a few times and meet change when it's totally unavoidable. True to form, content, purpose and philosophy, the first strips are going to be about the difficulty of the characters and fabric of the Garfield universe to accept change at all. Similar strips surrounded the introductions of Odie and Nermal. By the by, though they discussed nothing of the sort, it's safe to assume Jon and Liz are an item, and that Jon isn't just reading too much into their kiss; while such a delusion would be ripe with possibility, it is not the kind of world-changing plot we were promised, nor would it feel organic after the date story.

What Jon may not know is that after the phase where the test subject feels like Jon in panel three, everyone goes back to how Jon looks in panel two. But we can assume Garfield the strip knows it: panel two is the baseline for Garfield, the throughline, the lifeline, the perpetual punchline.

Garfield may or may not know that the weeks of constant adrenaline-tide eventually must wear off. Whether this is a practical safety release valve to ensure humans in love will resume regular habits of sleeping, eating and not screaming "yahhh-hoooie" without motivation, or a cruel tendency of society to beat dreamers into submission, neither I nor Garfield can say. But the punchline today isn't Jon's Rat Fink impression, but Garfield's pinpointing of Jon's moment of doom: at the height of his excitement and personal triumph, the boy is sunk.

The Onion Says "GOINK"

2006-08-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

Title Panel: Which is more coveted by Garfield fans across the globe? A meal at Eat? Or one of those salt shakers with the Registered Trademark ® symbol?

Also: Indiana may seem like a boring state, but I don't know of any other that will issue driver permission for housepets to operate vehicles. As Louis Tully said when he saw Slimer driving a bus, "okay... but I didn't know you had your license."

Things That Happen in Garfield Today
-Garfield's cheeks pooch out to a width matching the length of his entire torso minus legs and tail.

-Garfield was planning on eating two entire onions on his hot dog.

-Garfield was either going to eat a raw hot dog or happy to cook a hot dog with several pounds of condiments warming gently in his mouth.

Davis portrays only the moments of jar-dumping, to give the feeling of an uninterrupted, free-flowing waterfall of condiments. The unrestrained joy exhibited throughout the mouth-stuffing process indicates to me that Garfield may not even care that much about the wiener. Is the taste of a single wiener even going to register with a mouthload of all that gunk? This isn't about enjoying a fully loaded hot dog.

Joke logic or no, I think it may be assumed Garfield has no reason to believe Jon is sitting at the table reading the newspaper and has a "spare wiener" in his vicinity. An unclassy double Jon-tendre may be intended, but you don't need me to help you with that (though as a dirty joke, a cat with its cheeks crammed with relish demanding a wiener is admirably weird, repulsive and funny). Consider instead that Garfield has gone out of his way to make sure Jon is aware of his outrageous feat of gluttony, and is trying to gross him out, for reasons of a power dynamic gone totally goink-goink.

Torch Jon Trilogy

2006-08-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Why exactly is Jon telling Garfield about the can opener? What is the implied message? "The can opener is broken... so I'm not going to feed you"? "... so dinner will be late"? "... can you help me with this can"? "The can opener is broken so I'm going to set the unopened can down in front of you and watch you walk away."

Garfield, despite a steady diet of human food, still considers cat food a vital part of his regimen. Now could be he likes it, could be his food addiction is so advanced it doesn't matter. They're all insightful, none so much as realizing that though he's confident walking around on hind legs, stands on the table to be at eyeline height with his peers, and has learned to operate devices like blowtorches, Garfield maintains vestigial traces of his animal roots. We get few glimpses to let us know if this is species pride, self-punishment, or a way to remember his roots, but today Garfield considers missing his sacramental meal "an emergency."

I generally roll my eyes at those wags who question comic strip joke-logic, but it's kind of funny that Garfield has managed to conceal an acetylene torch in the sparse environs of the Arbuckle house.

Q: Why not just keep a second can opener for emergencies?
A: "I have a second can opener" is not half the punchline as Garfield threatening to burn his master's face off for a mouthful of wet horsemeat.

A Dream is a Whisker Your Heart Makes

2006-08-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

Jon's recurring anxiety dream explained in panels one and two are fine illustrations of Dr. Freud's explanations of the unconscious' dream-work. The "day residue", in which conscious thoughts from the waking day crop up in the dream, of Jon's dream is both literal - Jon really does find himself locked outside without his pants - and a dream element that manifests his unconscious desire to be more a outgoing and openly sexual person. In the special case of nightmares repressed wishes from formative years which the id wishes to see fulfilled are straining against the more recently developed adult ego which tries to sublimate the infantile urges. The polymorphous perversity of running around without one's pants would probably be too literal for Freud's liking, but the id's extra touch of locking the front door to thwart Jon's ego is funny. In an inventive only-in-Garfield riff on postmodern storytelling and Freud's dream-work, Jon's ego's attempts to censor the infantile drives are the framing of the comic strip itself, which protects all views of the depantsed dreamer far off-panel.

Presumably the end of the joke today is that Jon is not dreaming, though this is never made explicit. Either way, Jon indicates that when he has the pantsless dream, Garfield is normally present, as the cat's presence does not confuse or startle the dreamer. Garfield's role in Jon's dream must be closer akin to Jung's archetype of the Shadow: a dream figure for the irrational, unpleasant urges the conscious mind tries to repress, in some aspects we might say the opposite of the dreamer's. The tidal wave of indulgence in bad behavior that Garfield represents seethes in the collective unconscious, taking pleasure in the perpetual anxiety dream existence of the Jon Arbuckles of the waking world.

Staring at the Ceiling

2006-08-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

For those unfamiliar with Garfield shorthand, those puffs of smoke and drifting hairs in panel three do not mean Garfield has spontaneously combusted, so much as dashed off the table quickly.

Jon normally asks Garfield to carry in groceries for him? As long as you've accepted that your cat understands and emotionally responds to English, has opposable thumbs and walks upright comfortably, you might as well expect it to help around the house. The imagined sight of Garfield assisting Jon putting the groceries away in the kitchen cupboards, his furry hands clutching canned vegetables and opening the crisper drawer creeps me out though.

This joke eliminates from the narrative space half of the characters involved, the more visual and action-oriented perspective on the story, and poses its only half-catatonic on-panel cast to prevent any facial expressions. Not only that, but the only moment of kinetic action is dumped into the gutter between panels. Davis marries a joke about the sudden disruption of prolonged stasis, with a staging and timing that twist into agonized positions to avoid any depiction of action and excitement. Though the punchline is Garfield's frenzy and mad dash to the food, the rhythms of the panels show us only Garfield dozing and an empty table... depicted as a straight line across a blank field. Let the surface of the water be never unstill.

A Windsor Knot in the Door

2006-08-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

If the Date With Ellen plot was Garfield on story-overload, this week is shaping up to whittling the art and storytelling down to the barest elements. The table long ago reduced to a single horizon line, any unnecessary background detail eliminated, and increasingly, Garfield's foil does not even share space with him. Also more and more Garfield, who used to stand on the table more frequently, sits at the table, removing his lower half from the panel. The funny sight gags, and eye-pleasing rounded artwork is an underappreciated key to Garfield's success, but these gags are such an interesting experiment I wouldn't mind seeing a few strips with no characters in the panel at all.

Today and yesterday's sound-based jokes are a throwback to radio plays in that dialogue and sound effects alone form coherent stories. In other ways, since the reader does not actually hear the indicated noises, but mentally forms them from the onomatopoeia provided, they are like reading short anecdotal jokes in text form. However, the real power of these strips is a technique available specifically to comics.

The backwards logic behind the framing of the scene is not to aim the viewer's eye at the narrative, but to stubbornly leave the visual landscape exactly the same: the mise-en-scène necessarily includes whomever is sitting at the table because it always does. That nothing is so impossible to draw or outlandish to depict in this plot that it could not have been portrayed in pictures, and Garfield's remark that Jon has made "an entrance" would all ratiocinate a staging of the action within the visual space. Instead, we are given only a large amount of blank space and a bored character whose gaze is focused on the invisible space being denied us. The joke is less that Jon has asphyxiated himself by getting his tie caught in the door, than that the natural tendencies of the medium and desires of the audience are being subverted. A cat sitting alone in an empty room has never been so perverse.

The Needle and the Damaged Jon

2006-08-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Some days the table is next to the kitchen. Some days this means Jon must be doing needlepoint in the kitchen, or at the other end of the table. I like these joke constructions because they force sense out of two non sequitur panels and encourage reexamination of the strip. The staging is perfect for Garfield because it rings a mental image of plot, movement, human drama and comedy out of a motionless, nonplussed cat at a table with absolutely no on-panel action.

Jon's recent and chaste-even-for-Garfield makeout session with Liz has encouraged one of his most self-destructive and endearing personality traits. The small pleasures he is deriving from needlepoint (or stalking Liz, or phoning Ellen, or being friends with Garfield or waking up in the morning) must outweigh the agony of having his flesh pierced, because he just keeps doing it. Do you find Jon's idiotic perseverance in the face of adversity admirable? Pathetic? It doesn't matter: you better find it funny, because it is the truth about you, too.

Garfield today continues an ambitious tradition of audio-based gags in an essentially silent medium. I like the Todd Klein-esque tortured stem on the word balloon for Jon's cry of pain. A less exaggerated version attaches the singing balloons to Jon's mouth, which either indicates he is singing off-key, or his singing is becoming more forced and anguished as he "la la la"s grimly through the blood and pain.

Ah Choo Baby

2006-07-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

Garfield Storytelling Devices 101: Something mysterious happens in Panel One as Character A sits at table with nonchalant expression. In Panel Two Character B, to whom something bizarre has happened, walks past silently. In Panel Three Character A explains what has occurred off-panel.

It's a useful structure, because it allows a medium-strength sight gag to be coupled with a semi-funny life-around-the-house-is-boring joke, and both are bolstered in the process. Though silly, I slightly prefer these strips to simple Garfield put-down gags, because they're harder to write, and gently nudge against the boundaries of the Garfield universe's reality. There's a quiet absurdity to the strip that actually augments the cynicism.

For example, today Garfield watches intently as in the adjacent room Jon opens the caraway seed canister (why?). Jon sneezes into the spice (why?), and promptly exits the room (why?). Garfield lets us know Jon has done this before. It's our job to understand: Jon goes out of his way to make sure it happens again.

BIDDITTY

2006-07-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, folks, looks like Garfield's world has changed forever! He's... sleeping.

The ill-chosen colors of wall and tablecloth today have created the temporary illusion that Odie and Garfield are sleeping on the lawn. They still may be, but "outside" is usually indicated by grass blades and/or a swirly shape representing the sun.

I guess the joke is supposed to be that Garfield fell asleep too close to Odie's butt and got kicked in the face. There's a second level in which Odie's Dream Garfield Avatar inadvertently screws over his real-life counterpart. In Garfield the wish your heart makes is to punt someone in the skull: our great aspiration is to kick a man when he's down. Even the Dream-field in the final two panels indicates with his devilish expression that he knows the seemingly innocuous act of throwing a ball he found, that someone, somewhere, even on another plane of consciousness, is getting screwed over. And it makes him happy.

Title Panel: I'm probably the only person in the world who is concerned that the creepy title panel resembles John Lennon's cartoon contribution to the early queer anthology The Gay Liberation Book. It showed a guy in a turban riding a flying carpet and enthusiastically masturbating.