A World Withouth Garfield

In fifth grade I used to draw Garfield. Don't know why. I just did. With the help of graph paper, I got pretty good at it, copying Garfield from the many horizontally bound Garfield collections I had. Then I started doing freehand, inventing Garfield in different poses, other Garfield hijnx situations. Pretty soon girls at my school would pay me to draw Garfield for them. This was my sole leverage with girls at this time. Later it would be calculus tutoring, which would be responsible for my going to prom with the cutest valedictorian the world has ever known. But that was later. In fifth grade, the girls just wanted Garfield. I'd draw Garfield on their notebooks, on their homework, on their hands. When I got a hold of some of my father's oversize computer paper form JPL, my cottage industry moved into the big time. Soon, the girls were commissioning special edition Garfield-by-Bearman posters, one-off bootlegs for their bedrooms that, if any still survive, must surely be worth a fortune. Which means in retrospect I probably should have charged more than fifty cents.

Anyhow, all these years I though I had a lock on the secondary market of what I like to call "Interpretative Garfield." And then I saw garfieldminusgarfield. Some genius discovered that Garfield without the cat is a funny and penetrating commentary on live that Jim Davis ever intended. Example:

Full archive is here, although this seems to be a recent effort. Meanwhile, Marmaduke Explained keeps plugging on long, two-plus-years and running!

Comments

[Dan]

Garfield minus Garfield renewed my faith in the Internet. Hilarious, brilliant stuff.