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Behold, the archetypical Garfield strip! Enterprising Photoshop-wielding readers of this feature have already had their fun creating Garfield strips that encapsulate the comic’s essential blankness (though this one appears to be the only one still online). Here, however, we have a strip that features no visual movement whatsoever. None. The question then becomes: why even bother having separate panels? Why not one big panel with a chipmunk-cheeked Garfield in the center and a long thought balloon above, big enough to contain this strip’s allegedly humorous text? Is there something about the repetition of identical images that’s supposed to tell us something about the passage of time, about comic iconography? Or does it just suck?

Speaking of sucking: if you’re just going to be using the Cut and Paste features of your design program to reproduce three panels, you really ought to use the time you’ve freed up to come up with a good joke. Sadly, the Jim Davis Fun Time Factory chose not to take this path. In protest, I’ve chosen to replace the text with a classic anecdote from the Truly Tasteless Jokes series.

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The fact that the writer for Sally Forth is a regular reader of this blog is all well and good, but here’s a really exciting fact: I just received a picture for my merchandise ad featuring Fence Post Frank himself!

What’s that on the tip of the shovel, Frank? Dirt — or Buck’s blood?

Anyway, y’all should keep them pictures comin’! And, of course, you should continue purchasing Comics Curmudgeon crap.

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Non Sequitur, 4/25/05

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: I think Wiley, of Wiley fame, is going insane. I think we can all agree that his Sunday strips have slowly evolved from tepid, ham-handed satires (e.g., “Esme in the Land Before Time” or what have you) into completely whacked-out text-heavy Jules Verne pastiches involving floating Victorian cities, mustachioed balloon-sized men right out of a Thomas Nast cartoon, and pterodactyls being shot out of the sky by evil harpoon-wielding Germans. This has been alternating with weekly strips that have for months now focused relentlessly on Danae, the most evil little girl who has ever lived, who is apparently supposed to represent the horror that is modern American life, only without the charm. Today, however, we’re taking things in a new direction, as we’re apparently going to be treated to a series about a dead hobo’s adorable puppy finding his own way in the world. I’m sure it will be uplifting and won’t make you once want to shoot yourself in the head. Hopefully.