Archive: Garfield

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Garfield and For Better Or For Worse, 7/28/06

I know I haven’t really said anything about it, but Garfield has had a real actual storyline going on for, like, two weeks or something now, and there are non-Garfield/Jon/Odie characters, and backgrounds other than the featureless void of Jon’s house, and dynamic tension and Jon even kisses a girl! The reason I haven’t said anything about this is that despite what appears to be some sort of real effort to inject some energy into the strip, it’s still excruciatingly lame and not funny. There, I said it. Sorry, Paws, Inc., toilers, but my reaction to this plotline has been a sort of tepid “Huh, that’s weird,” for about three seconds each day, promptly forgotten until the next day’s strip persists with the weirdness.

Meanwhile, much as so many of us love to hate For Better Or For Worse, it still undeniably drives passions. I have to admit rather shamefully that I’ve been totally involved in this week’s horrifying Liz-Anthony meet-cute at the car dealership, and I said a little cheer at Lizardbreath’s thought balloon which I hope — oh dear God of Canada PLEASE — means that she’s afraid of leading him on because she doesn’t want to break his heart again. Let him down easy now, Liz! For his good! For your good! FOR OUR GOOD!

Apartment 3-G, 7/28/06

“Hello! I’m Eric Mills. You know, I’m not the most attractive man in the world, I’m not really much of a dresser, and, let’s be honest, I frankly don’t have a personality that makes up for either of those factors. And yet I get more action than Don Juan and Casanova put together. I bet you’re wondering how I do it! Well, to find out all my secrets, you’ll need to subscribe to my once-a-month series of cassette tapes, Eric Mills Tells You How To Succeed With The Ladies. But let me give you an example of one of my sure-fire techniques now. Let’s say you’re at a party. What you do is, you find a halfway good-looking girl at the bar, and you check out how much she drinks. Does she drink a lot? Is she by herself? You’re in like flynn! The next thing you do is invite her out for lunch — an early lunch, if you can swing it — and get her good and drunk on whatever second-rate hard liquor she seems to like. I’ll tell you, gents, boozy floozies love it when you can remember their drug of choice; if you have to choose between keeping track of their mother’s name or whether they prefer Smirnoff or Absolut, go with the vodka. Anyway, by the end of the lunch, she’ll be way too drunk to go back to work, and as a gentleman you’ll have to walk her back to her apartment, and so … well, if you can’t take it from there, you need more help than I can give you!

“Oh, one more thing. Did I ever mention I’m a hat man? I love me a drunk girl in a hat. Yowza!”

Marvin, 7/28/06

So is this supposed to mean that Ming Ming has taken such a profoundly satisfying dump that she briefly transcended her individual consciousness and glimpsed a higher plane of reality? Or just that she’s pushed a certain amount of excrement “out” of her “body”? Either way, Marvin makes us long for last week, when it was just being racist.

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Garfield, 6/29/06

Step 1: Garfield contracts avian flu.

Step 2: Avian flu passes from Garfield to Jon.

Step 3: Garfield dies.

Step 4: Humanity wiped out.

Frankly, I would say Step 4 is a small price to pay for Step 3.

Judge Parker, 6/29/06

Who knew Judge Parker was so lousy with weird alien cults? Randy has only just extracted himself from the clutches of Mimi — High Priestess CEO of the suspiciously Scientology-esque “Eon” — but now we find out that Horace’s wife has the freakishly robotic name “Alpha.” Presumably Horace himself will soon change his name to “Beta,” with children named “Gamma” and “Delta” to follow. Beware, Randy, beware!

As for Judge Parker himself, with his unnaturally stripey hair, I’m not sure he’s to be fully trusted by Earth-based humans either.

I’m quite looking forward to Horace making an appearance on the new JP artist’s watch. For those of you who don’t remember, this freak is Horace:

Yeah, try drawin’ that guy looking halfway normal, Mr. Skilled Artist Man!

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Garfield, 3/23-4/06

I never really thought I’d say this, but … I’ve suddenly become quite concerned about Garfield. The whole Garfield-and-Jon-eat-at-a-restaurant schtick is on the one hand a blessed relief from the usual mind-numbing sameness of the strip, though it may herald things going seriously awry. Yesterday’s installment is pretty much par for the Garfield course — Garfield’s fat, you see, and loves to eat, so the thought that he didn’t have room for desert is laughable. Of course, the laughing seems a little … off, what with the mouths gaping open and the spit flying and what not. Today, the laughing continues, in a way that would make no sense unless you had read the previous day. The waiter (who’s freakier and freakier looking every time I look at him) joins in. And it’s not joyful laughter either. No. It’s discomfort-making laughter. Crazy person laughter. Disturbing laughter. Did someone release nitrous oxide into the air supply over at Paws, Inc.? I sort of want to know, but I much more sort of don’t want to know, what’s in store.

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