Garfield is Dead

[Breaker]

http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/

From the Garfield entry in Wikipedia:
One storyline, which lasted a week from October 23, 1989 (possibly to coincide with Halloween, although the 31st actually fell the following week), is unique among Garfield strips in that it is not meant to be humorous. It depicts Garfield awakening in a future in which the house is abandoned and he no longer exists. This is revealed to have been a dream of some kind, and ends with this narration:

"An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice...or terrify, all depending on how we conduct ourselves today."

Alternatively, some theorize that the end of this storyline actually implies that the rest of the series, the more conventional strips, are all fantasies Garfield is playing out in his head to delude himself from realizing the dark turn his life has taken, as he slowly starves to death in an abandoned house.

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891023.gif

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891024.gif

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891025.gif

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891026.gif

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891027.gif

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891028.gif

[Kairyu]

I didn't know those were actual newspaper strips.
I'd already seen that sequence in a weird Garfield anthology book. It opened with God designing the perfect animal (a cat that looked just like Garfield) and then showed that God was a cat furry. Kinda freaky. After that it just got weirder. They had alternate possibilities for what Garfield could have been. One of them was a detective drama.

Anyway, is there a particular point to this topic, or is this just for fun? I'm not sure what we should be discussing here.

[WindStrike]

Ah yes... I remember this one. Dun remember which book it was in (Mayhaps 10... I could look it up later). The eye thing was pretty demented... a little different than what you're used to seeing in a garfield book. You hit it... and you're either a little freaked out, you're laughing at it, or you think it's just plain stupid... or some other thing. I'll just stop talking...

[moocow]

That kinda made me want to cry o.O

[Modus Ponens]

Surely Jim Davis would deny that theory, despite how much a lot of people would like to believe it.

I used to love Garfield when I was a tyke, but in later years I realised that I don't like the strip very much anymore. I still read it when I read the comics, but that's mostly for the sake of completeness--I read Family Circus, too, for the same reason.

However, there was this Garfield book that I got back when I still got Garfield books called Garfield: His Nine Lives (http://www.amazon.com/Garfield-His-Lives-Jim-Davis/dp/0345320611/sr=1-98/qid=1160327551/ref=sr_1_98/102-1077509-0385744?ie=UTF8&s=books) that I still enjoy today. It's basically nine different graphic novel-style stories of different levels of seriousness telling about nine different ways Garfield's life may have been. It's pretty cool.

[Breaker]

That kinda made me want to cry o.O

Me too. :(

[Jigglysaint]

I didn't know those were actual newspaper strips.
I'd already seen that sequence in a weird Garfield anthology book. It opened with God designing the perfect animal (a cat that looked just like Garfield) and then showed that God was a cat furry. Kinda freaky. After that it just got weirder. They had alternate possibilities for what Garfield could have been. One of them was a detective drama.

Anyway, is there a particular point to this topic, or is this just for fun? I'm not sure what we should be discussing here.

I've got that book too. I got the impression that was kind of a Rip Van Winckle kind of story, where he slept for 50 years and when he woke up, everything had changed to the point where he technically did not exist.

[Modus Ponens]

I didn't know those were actual newspaper strips.
I'd already seen that sequence in a weird Garfield anthology book. It opened with God designing the perfect animal (a cat that looked just like Garfield) and then showed that God was a cat furry. Kinda freaky. After that it just got weirder. They had alternate possibilities for what Garfield could have been. One of them was a detective drama.

I just noticed that you already mentioned the book that I then went on to try to tell everyone about. Oops.

[Mitsukara]

Wow. I didn't know Garfield was ever related to anything remotely deep @.@

While the theories and interpretations of these strips may be accurate, another possibility occurs to me- perhaps the strips were created expressly to make the reader stop and think. To say that if one lives like Garfield normally does- bored, sleeping, eating, not caring- constantly, they will waste away their lives; and that is exactly what Garfield envisions here. Perhaps he's thinking ahead about his life and really... getting it. Whether he's realized it in time or not, the point is to live life while one has it. "All depending on how we conduct ourselves today."

At least, that's what I got out of it. *shrugs*

[KJAZZ]

Yeah, I have a couple of Garfield books, and this particular segment happens to be in them. It's very interesting, I think. That quote was also in my signature for a long while. :shrug: However, whether or not Garfield is truly dead is up to the reader. Garfield has lost it's touch over the years and been less and less funny every day, so in my mind, he's pretty much dead.

[ZTC]

that's...

that's just...

damn, fricking depressing =/

[punkonjunk1024]

Thats... a bit sickening. :/

[Verman]

its depressing but not as depressing as that calvin and hobbes someone posted on here a bit ago (atmaweapon maybe?) The one where they give calvin the meds and hobbes is sitting there and then boom, hobbes is just a stuffty.

very sad. wish i could find it.

[Mitsukara]

I always felt pretty sure that Calvin and Hobbes was an edit (saw it on YTMND once). It'd be easy to do, the background was all white and they showed scenes of Calvin doing his homework several times; they could easily have just mixed what artwork they used and reinserted the dialogue. Plus, it wouldn't gel with anything I've read about Bill Watterson; the adventure/ curiosity/creativity of Calvin and Hobbes was the real point to him, judging from what he'd said in articles.

But yeah, that was depressing.

Luckily, no one can (very well at least) or needs to do this to Peanuts because it was naturally full of things like unrequited love and personal failure, yet was still funny and even uplifting in it's own way.

[gdorf]

http://calvinhobbesritalin.ytmnd.com/
Sad, but definitely a photoshop.


I loved the Garfield comic strip.

[Aegix Drakan]

About the Garfield Strip: Wow...freaky...that is definetly not the standard Garfield style...It really makes you think, doesn't it?

About the Calvin and Hobbes strip: :cry: that is the most emotional fake comic strip EVER. I can so relate to that...So damn sad...