I personally would not give Garfield access to a phone. Nothing good could come of it
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Slylock Fox, 1/21/26
One of the things that truly sets people apart from animals is that our enormous brains are too large when fully formed to pass through a human birth canal, which means that much of that brain formation happens after birth and we’re basically helpless for the first few years of life, unlike newborns of most species. A baby chicken would indeed “instinctively step upwards as the sand rises,” whereas a baby human would simply cry pathetically as the sand buried them. This may have been a particular advantage to the non-humans in their great rise during the Animalpocalypse, as even their very young could participate in their war of extermination against H. sapiens. The mechanism by which they gained sapience despite their tiny skulls is still unknown, and Count Weirdly should probably be putting his scientific acumen towards answering that question rather than trying to sell fake honey-making machines or whatever.
Intelligent Life, 1/21/26
Say what you will about Intelligent Life, the strip where a character will say in all seriousness that “2026 is going to be huge for movies,” and then use as a data point the upcoming release of the most bottom-dwelling “who on Earth is this for” garbage you can imagine, but at least it got me to research a little and learn that Skeletor will be played by box-office poison Jared Leto, which I have to say brightened my day a little.
Garfield, 1/21/26
Garfield’s contempt for Jon, Odie, and indeed most other characters in the Garfiverse is an integral part of his whole vibe. But is his contempt justified? That’s a whole different question. Today we learn that, within his own reality, an objective third-party source (an app, clearly the best determinant of truth) confirms his opinions on his superiority over others. Will this reinforcement of his beliefs unleash a wave of “cattitude” the likes of which the funny pages have never seen, to the delight of eight-year-olds everywhere?
65 replies to “I personally would not give Garfield access to a phone. Nothing good could come of it”
Slylock Fox:
I know what he will have suggested — “Call the Fire Department!” They’re good at that kind of stuff.
Because if there’s one thing foxes excel at, it’s saving the lives of chickens.
Slylock Fox:
I’ve got it! — Slylock will simply position himself next to the hole and Chester will rise up and stick to him, because with that debonair Sherlock Holmes-like cape and hat, Slylock is clearly a chick magnet.
FC – You’re a plugger if you got the reference in today’s punchline. (I’m a plugger).
Curtis – Did Curtis just tell Michelle that she’s got her head up her twat?
Slylock Fox:
Another day of Slylock, another simulacrum of a Fellini film in the scene, as an eclectic assortment of animals is just kind of hanging out, each one doing something completely different.
Fear not, the alarm clock on the phone Garfield is holding simply went off. His belief aside, he downloaded nothing. He’s been “browsing” the main screen, and playing the calculator for years. Cats are bad at phones.
SFox: The real science here is that a 3 foot by 6 inch cylindrical hole in sand is prone to spontaneous collapse, they probably don’t have time to slowly fill it in. Things don’t look good for Chester.
Garfield’s app is banned in The Wizard of Id.
Intelligent Life:
The name of this strip puts the “moronic” in oxymoronic.
Garfield is a lazy bastard convinced of his own superiority, but who has never done anything to prove his worth except making sarcastic comments and being a member of his species. The fact that he fell victim to an IQ measurement app is the least surprising thing ever. He probably found it on X
@richardf8: re: FC; it’s too early in the morning for you to murder me like that.
As absolutely no one under the age of, like, 43 is going to a Masters Of The Universe movie, are the dipshits in Intelligent Life actually…Pluggers? Are these two terrible streams crossing? Is THAT why this bleeding, screaming vortex has appeared in my closet? I’d really like my towels back.
What if the “idiot” Garfield’s phone app is finding is Garfield himself? What if it is, in fact, the reader? Truly, a complex and multi-layered strip.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the app is registering Garfield’s own proximity to the phone.
We complained that Rex Morgan had abandoned medical drama, overall. We deserve what now get.
@richardf8:
IS that what he’s saying? Panel 3 in Curtis today seems like the exact moment Billingsley stroked out. Still managed a lameass punchline though, thank God.
It’s ironic that Slylock saves the day only because the fence meant to keep him out (judging by relative positions), and the cause of this calamity, isn’t complete.
Intelligent Life: As soon I noticed that the artist had decided to get lazy and draw clouds in the background instead of any kind of streetscape, I burst out laughing and haven’t been able to stop for about a minute now. I don’t know why Skip’s car is soaring majestically through the sky – Is it a flying car? Are they on drugs? Is it the Rapture? – but no matter what fantastical happenstance is occurring, it’s not going to stop these nerds from doing what they do best: nitpicking the costuming of a nostalgia-slop Jared Leto movie.
(Also: you know you’re a character in a comic strip when you think Prince Valiant is a more famous, genuine pop cultural icon than He-Man)
Garfield: But why would Garfield download such an app? Was he looking to date idiots in his area? Murder them? Have his opinions of his family justified so he could bask in his own superiority? Or was he just standing on the touchscreen, as cats do, and downloaded it by mistake?
MW: …Is Moy reading our snark comments? I swear someone pointed out that if Sunny were a fugitive parrot smuggled from Mexico, he ought to speak Spanish.
SLYLOCK: Given the merry misrule here, shouldn’t the alarm be sounded by a human version of Lassie? “What’s wrong, Bob? Chester’s in the well?!”
MW: So let me get this straight:
-The bird is bilingual, both expressively and receptively.
-The bird does not just respond to rote cues, (“What’s your name?”) it comprehends more advanced language. (“I wonder what we should call you?”)
The only conclusion is that the birds are escapees from a government lab and have PhD’s.
MW: Rosie understands English but answers Toby in her native Spanish. W.T.F…? Is this Moy’s attempt to make this strip more culturally aware? If so, maybe Mary could help Carlos Alora, who has been trying to find work in the field of neurosurgery (for which he studied andtrained extensively in his native country), and who is, among his Spanish professional colleagues, considered to be a brilliant medical expert who now is only trying to get his footing in the US before resuming his medical career and who is temporarily reduced to working as Mary’s gardener/handyman, right up until the point at which he is rounded up in a sweeping ICE raid in Santa Royale and shipped off to Alligator Alcatraz.
SFX: Digging post holes in sand seems pointless so I’d hold off complimenting the brains of these beings
Intelligent Life:
I don’t think that the world is necessarily a worse place for the fact that neither of these two guys is wearing a seat belt.
SF: A more proactive Fox would have recognized the danger of building a fence in the middle of a child-filled beach, and would have demanded that the workers at least put up some safety cones or something. This is why they don’t let Slylock anywhere near the REAL crimes, like homicide.
Garfield: These hookup apps are getting more disturbingly niche. Who knew Garfield had a bimbo/himbo kink?
Slylock: Personally, I would simply make the hole bigger and dig the bird out, rather than dumping sand on it and hoping I don’t bury it alive, but that’s why there’s no daily comic strip about me.
RMMD: So we established that the Morgans had all this extra time before the procedure, then immediately cut to them checking in for said procedure. Is this the comic strip equivalent of a *wink wink fade to black* moment, or is the plot just thinning?
MW: This storyline is about to get icy.
Wary Morth:
Sunny: “Talkative Spanish-speaking axx!”
The writer of “Intelligent life”, writing this strip some months ago: “Well, the start of the year is usually slow news, so maybe I can have some fun banter about future movies”
Garfield, don’t you get it? Globalisation and information technology have abolished distances and severed connection with our material existence. Social media like X, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram are not “Idiots near me” but “Idiots from all over the world”!
Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: Why are the construction worker dogs identical except for their bandanas? Why are they building a fence in the middle of the beach, right where families are playing? Why are the families playing in a construction zone? Why are they at the beach in January? Why are the construction worker dogs using an impact driver with a flat head bit? I’m starting to think the animals’ in utero brain development might not be as much of an advantage as advertised.
The child nostalgia boom of the 2010s dominated pop culture — see those idiots in “Intelligent Life”, but it has produced a huge backlash. Hollywood is trying to euthanise all nostalgic franchises by putting Jared Leto in all of them. It’s the most efficient way to cull the herd, though not the most humane
It’s probably best to assume that this conversation, like all conversations in Intelligent Life, is severely hampered by the constant pinging in the background. Garfield, beware!
SFx – If you find yourself in a shithole, you might as well just keep shitting. US Ambassador Training Manual – 2025 Rev…..
IL – So says the guy who’s been sporting the Skeletor trim since middle school….
Garfield – If you look at the world and all you see are assholes, then the asshole is you….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Ettorre: The society of the spectacle produces social relationships mediated by images, promising unification but ultimately only producing delusion and false consciousness. “Ping” is the official language of universal separation.
Frank Langella is forever Skeletor! Yes, the 80s He-Man movie sucked as a He-Man movie and wasn’t great as a regular movie, but it’s delightfully camp and Langella showed up with an appetite for scenery. And Meg Foster as Evilyn? Meg Foster is a B-movie delight.
But yeah, fuck Jared Leto, he sucks.
Phantom Seething and ruminating seems like a bad frame of mind to head into military action, but what do I know? Compared to the Jungle Patrol standard mindset of orders can come at any time from someone with no verification codes this is likely a completely sane attitude.
MW These birds’ language abilities have me thinking the “smuggler’s van crash” is just a cover story for a Sectret of NIMH avian escape.
JP It’s dumb, but conceivably dumb unlike Wilbur’s-survival-would-make-international-news
INTELLIGENT LIFE: You can tell this “comic” was created though an AI filter ran by an ad agencies “content creator” division because they called the movie the “official” Masters of the Universe title instead of “The He-Man Movie” like regular people would call it (or “The He-Man Flop” like regular people will call it one week after release.)
Side note to Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: When I was just a little chick, we used to visit the Indiana Dunes National Park national monument near Michigan City, Indiana. There was an ancient beach from which you could see Chicago on the horizon, rising like Oz above Lake Michigan, and Mt. Baldy, an enormous (135+ feet) sand dune you could climb, spotting the nuclear power plant to the north and prison to the east. Sadly, that’s now closed off after they discovered Mt. Baldy has a number of sinkholes when one opened up and swallowed a teenager whole. This morning’s comics started off with a mighty dark turn, is what I’m saying.
@richardf8: I’m guessing this is a rerun from 1970-ish.
IL: This is literally the first time I’ve heard there’s going to be a Masters of the Universe movie, and since I’m presumably* its target demographic (ie. someone who watched the animated series as a child and remembers it with some fondness) that doesn’t speak well to its advertising campaign. But even my thirty seconds on Google knowledge is enough to confirm that no, Scrawny Nerd Whose Name I Will Never Bother to Learn/Remember, He-Man will not have a bowl cut, he’ll have the same beachy waves sported by nearly every fantasy warrior protagonist since the 90s and if you were being written by someone who sees geek culture as anything more than a lame punchline you’d know that.
*I still have no interest in seeing it, which adds credence to Josh’s “who is this even for” analysis.
I’m confused if Luann knows she created Cockman with careful placement of that sock or if this is an innocent juxtaposition of clothing since she has never seen a penis. For that matter, has Karen Evans ever seen a penis. Perhaps Sex-Negative Nellie can lend her insights.
Don Abundio, translated:
“This is Don Abundio, and I’m afraid the elk lure you sold me could land me in legal trouble”
“Legal trouble? What do you mean?”
“I might get sued…”
“For breach of promise!”
@richardf8, Curtis: Ooo. Subtle. I give him points for that.
Slylock Fox: I like the way the bulldog pup is side-eyeing the situation.
“Yep, the chick fell in the hole. No one ask how the chick fell in the hole, thanks. I’ll just be over here, playing with my toy shovel. Nobody ask about the hole.”
Slylock’s next case — find out who’s killing all these damn fish.
C’shaft: How fortunate that you knew so many people with appropriately punny names.
Dustin: Why does Dustmom host this talk show? She clearly has no personal insights on what a functional, happy marriage looks like.
JP: Ann, you’re not supposed to read the notes from the writer aloud…
Luann: Welp, there goes my appetite.
MT: Since when is Cherry into Las Vegas? She doesn’t strike me as the gambling type.
MW: Poor Toby thinks Rosie just asked for some soy beans.
RMMD: *bursts out laughing* I’m sorry, I thought Rex just said that he prefers human interaction.
Slylock Fox-Slylock can only offer hollow words of comfort. “There’s nothing to be done. Focus your attention on the surviving two.”
MW-There will be another “accidental” fire. This time there will be no survivors.
FC-“This guy looks familiar. Billy, do you remember our grandfather? Our dead grandfather?”
RMMD-I think that was a spleen you stepped into. They should really clean that hospital.
Intelligent Life – Note the two lines emanating from Skip’s head in panel three. Is that supposed to indicate surprise, as in “I can’t believe this is the best Reddick could come up with for a punchline”?
A working “idiot detector” likely wouldn’t be able to differentiate between those around the user and the user themselves. If anything, if I were able to get someone to download it and enter personal information at set up, I would have it just beep very loudly too because idiot detected.
***
I can’t believe a straight hole dug in the sand would be stable enough to even attempt this rescue. Also, what do carnivores even eat in this world? You have a danged fox running at you, Mrs. Chicken. Let him know he can dig up Chester for lunch and get the heck out of there before someone decides a beach BBQ would be a fun day.
RMMD: “Call me old fashioned. I prefer actual human interaction.” Referring back to yesterday’s strip, whatever June’s kink is, Rex is not too happy about it.
Lip positioning indicates that Thing 1 and Thing 2 are whistling coherent sentences in the second panel of Generic Geek Comic #8, which is far more impressive than a He-Man movie, as it at least takes talent, or at least dolphin DNA.
One day a farmer’s donkey fell into an abandoned well. Terrified, the animal cried for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old and impossible to retrieve. He realized the well needed to be filled to prevent future losses. He grabbed a shovel and began to throw dirt into the well. After a few shovel loads, the farmer looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit the donkey’s back, the donkey would shake it off and take a step up.
As the farmer continued to throw dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take another step up. And another. Unfortunately all this commotion attracted Shai-Hulud, the great sandworm of Arrakis, may his passing cleanse the world.
Phantom: “Oooooooo, dat Lulu! I am going to give her SUCH a potsch on da tuchis!”
RMMD: “You’re old-fashioned, but wouldn’t it be worth it just to fire Summer?”
Garfield – Kind of reminds me of any man shopping for a stud finder at the hardware store, and then making beeping sounds when he picks it up.
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: We wanted medical drama, not medical drama queen.
Garfield: Back in the day, it was common joke of how Jon was a universal idiot/loser.
Then Jim Davis threw him a bone by giving him a girlfriend. And the “loser” part slowly faded.
I guess that this is the comic going back to its roots.
I miss old lame Jon.
@RichterCa: Well… that escalated quickly.
@TheDiva: on Crankshaft: I hope Batton realizes, that knowing so many people with pun names. Causes him to realize “Am I fictional??” and have an existential crisis.
RMMD: Rex is pretty adamant about the human touch; but myself, I’m on the fence with respect to robotic prostate exams.
Three feet down is probably below the level of the water table that close to the shore, so the answer is “it doesn’t matter, he’s already drowned.”
Happy reading and puzzling, kids!
FC: “The fingers on his left hand do all the wanking.” —what I read early this morning.
Intelligent Life: Are flying cars a new Musk thing? Because I stopped paying attention to him quite a while ago and these two look like the type to use their life’s savings to buy his latest contraption.
The animals may have achieved dominance, but not intelligence. Sand dunes move. Sand close enough to the shore that crabs are wandering around? Next time, Slylock will be quoting Matthew 7:26-27.
Frazz : …I’m enjoying this “Caufield keeps trying to roast Mrs Olsen with an observation about fact checking, only to be exposed as a dumbass who doesn’t properly fact check” bit, I hope it goes into saturday. I hope it ends up that Caufield DOESN’T get one up on Mrs Olsen, that he has to wait for next week when the storyline changes to get to mock her again.
Wishful thinking, I know************
Garfield :
a) Awful generous of you to assume Garfield HIMSELF isn’t setting off the idiot detector, Josh.
b) Awful uncharitable of you to assume what’s setting off Garfield’s idiot detector being Jon and Odie, and not the fact that he’s in Muncie, Indiana
…Too far?…c) A *and* B are true.
************
Moose & Molly : …this is a Hi & Lois gag. (except Hi & Lois would somehow even be LOWER energy, and that’s a REALLY anemic “kids and pets are misbehaving” second panel)
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Six Chix : …not the weirdest Pygmalion adaptation. That goes to that weird In-Name-Only Japanese Anime that’s really just a generic fantasy series about a boy on a quest to defeat the witch who turned his village into statues.
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Slylock Fox : …Usually, this riddle has a TENNIS BALL stuck in the hole, not a small child….
PBS: I’m calling BS. No way Rat loves his mother.