Garfield

Garfield isn't exactly the pinnacle of comedy for your savvy college kid, especially one who reads webcomics and what not. Lasagna Cat is a surprisingly high quality live-action interpretation of individual garfield strips, followed by a music video, which sometimes spells out the non-humor of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwNVwiHAUUM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wFnNB6ra3o&feature=related

Lasagna Cat

I discovered it last year and still get a kick out of it. The humor derives from presenting Garfield strips humor as asinine, then ironically laughing at it. I guess you don't need me to explain it but my entry will look really short otherwise, and want to write about this relevant topic, but besides watching the videos there is not much to say.

Today while I was reading Garfield in the Sunday’s I noticed something that I thought was interesting. In the comic Garfield is looking at something in his binoculars, then puts on a mask as the doorbell rings. After that I loud scream is heard then Garfield is shown eating cookies and offering Jon one.

At first read I caught what I assume is the intention of the comic: Garfield scares a Girl Scout to get all of her cookies. Then I realized there is no indication that it was a Girl Scout. Snickerdoodles are not a Girl Scout brand, like Samoas or Tagalongs, and Girl Scout no longer wear a Beret. Official Girl Scouts Uniform Jim Davis’s joke could have been about anybody selling cookies but I think the intention was Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts are the only people I know who sell cookies, and the Beret does remind me of Girl Scouts, even though they no longer wear it anymore.

I think that as we try to talk about distinctions between web and print comics, or try to create a definition there is a gray area where a definition will either include too much (the Mona Lisa, for example) or not enough. There are difficult areas like Little Nemo, for instance. That was an old print comic scanned in and posted on the internet. Does the very fact that it's on the internet make it a webcomic, even thought it was originally a print comic? We've talked about Garfield on this site before, and all of the images we looked at were on the web. Does that make Garfield a webcomic now that people have posted them to the internet. Then there is Garfield Minus Garfield which is the Garfield comic strips where someone has modified the content (i.e. removing Garfield) to create new content that exists only on the web. Now that is being made into a book, so is it now a graphic novel?

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As Americans, we have all grown up in some way conscious of the syndicated weekday comic strip, a traditionally lighthearted companion to a hot cup of coffee. It is a form of art that, along with taxidermy, TV voiceovers, & commercial acting, valorizes the product over the producer. While certain syndicated cartoonists have gained cult followings for their art (Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, & Charles Schulz leap to mind, though there are plenty others), for the most part no one cares about who is dishing up that day's strip, so long as it is short & funny. On the flip side, there is the comic artist who draws contempt from his or her audience for repeatedly serving the same stale jokes again & again & again without care for the reader. "Cathy" artist Cathy Guisewite & "Mutts"'s Patrick McDonnell seem to use a formula for their work that dates back to the age of "Marmaduke," & for many, Jim Davis is also one of these cartoonists.

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