Movable Feast, Hold the Sauce

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.

The Jon-derful Ice Cream SQUIRRRRRRRT

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

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

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

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

Cat's Donut Dance

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

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.

The G and Cake

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.

Jon Candy 2.0

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.

Cat, Fish

The joke is fine. The structure attempted is impossible because of the realities of daily-strip dimensions. Theoretically we are confused by the first panel, follow through the second, for a reveal in the third. That's the reason for splitting the single image between three panels: a gradual build and payoff, rather than making it a panel gag. Fine. But in practice, there's no way to look at this strip and ask your eye not to take in the entire, unified composition. It happens on first glance, and the eye, seeing nothing to read or focus on in the first panels, will gravitate right to Jon's word balloon.

Would've made a good "Quickie" on Garfield and Friends though.