Arf-heben

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.

Doors of Deception

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.

Sit, Odie, Sit. Good Dog.

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.

Kick Me Beneath the Milky Twilight

Criticism: I usually try to ignore it unless making a joke about it, but... The computer color job on today's strip is atrocious, distracting, and doesn't make sense. It's a simple, reasonably funny gag confused by some kind of spotlight (?) at frame right that looks like it should have something to do with the action but does not. As a light source, it's badly rendered (explain the shading in row 2 panel 2?), and besides, Garfield isn't normally drawn with deep shadows unless there's a reason.

Praise: Today's Garfield combines a solid character joke and a typically cynical assessment of our role in the universe. In the first, Odie is so used to being physically abused that it is the only way he makes sense of his existence, and will hurt himself if Garfield is not there to do it... The dog equivalent of a cutter, I guess. In the second, Garfield is punished for not accepting his eternal job as Odie's designated abuser. If Garfield had taken his preordained place on the table top and kicked an innocent dog, instead of being on the floor, he would never be crushed by the punishing will of the cosmos. If it's in the cards for you to physically injure animals, Garfield urges you to rush to your work with open arms.

Insightful Observation: Odie looks more and more like Super Mario's dinosaur friend Yoshi.

I Got All My Whiskers With Me

That's really sweet... and it's Jon's guileless enthusiasm when he realizes they are a family that gets me. I'd like to think in panel two that everyone simultaneously realizes what they mean to each other. The cutest part is how Garfield has to maintain his curmudgeonly facade, but acknowledges the relationship, even if he has to couch it in sarcasm.

Except... what is Odie doing? NO! Why does he have to ruin this moment?

That drawing of Odie is so gross, and directed to no one but the reader. I'm used to this kind of sassiness on G-field T-shirts and merch, but it doesn't usually encroach on the strip this blatantly. Plus, I don't like the head-on view of Odie, because it reminds me that his tongue is wider than his head.

In other news, today the back page of the paper features a photograph of the cursive letter M.