Some These Pizzas I'll Be Gone

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

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

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

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

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

Rock-afire Pizza Cats

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.

Stovepipe Cat

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.

L'Ârge d'order of Pizza

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 individualism, and I'll show you a cat with garlic breath.

The Theater That Only Shows A Tale of Two Kitties

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.