"You all know the comic strip Garfield. About this guy, Jon, and his cat—the cat eats lasagna and delivers snarky asides about Jon’s various romantic and professional shortcomings. There aren’t many other characters—Jon also owns a dog named Odie, and he used to have a roommate, and we sometimes see the women he’s dating. It’s been around forever, and isn’t great—a pleasant enough strip, but hardly groundbreaking or even all that funny consistently.
Anyway, some genius looked at Garfield, and had the brilliant idea of removing the cat. And it turns out, when you take Garfield the cat out of Garfield the comic strip, the result is nothing short of amazing. It becomes this strip about this desperate, pathetic, miserable, border-line crazy lonely guy. It becomes a comic strip about isolation, alienation, existential angst. It’s astonishingly sad, profound, and because it’s so painful, it’s also way way way funnier than the original."
I clicked on the link and was laughing out loud within the first ten seconds. Maryn was there and couldn't understand what was so funny. I'm not sure I understand what's so funny. I just know that there's something bizarrely hilarious about Jon Arbuckle talking to himself with no wisecracking cat there to try to make funny.
Tell me what you think.
2 comments:
He does look pretty pathetic. But even WITH the cat, he's still pretty much in the same state. I mean, he's regularly getting his butt kicked emotionally by a cat day in and day out.
Sad!
Garfield is pretty ruthless though, think about the crap he puts Odie through.
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