Lonely Planet
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Growing up, I never liked the Garfield comic strip. The glorification of sloth, gluttony and “I Hate Mondays” got on my nerves. On the plus side, it did teach me what lasagna was1.
Garfield is such a big part of pop culture that there have been multiple reinterpretations of the character and universe. Take the ImSorryJon subreddit. It’s hard to explain, but here’s a tweet that does a fairly good job:
I mean, just check out this post. Proper nightmare stuff.
My absolute favourite take on the strip, though, is Dan Walsh’s Garfield Minus Garfield. Clever and insidous, every post is just an OG Garfield strip, but with most other characters removed. So its just Jon.
The result is a statement on loneliness, ennui and desperation. Even Jim Davis agrees:
One of Walsh's occasional readers is Davis, who heard about the site a few months ago. The cartoonist calls the work "an inspired thing to do" and wishes to thank Walsh for enabling him to see another side of "Garfield."
Take a look at some strips:
Check it out here.
I later found out that I was butchering the pronunciation. But that’s the bane of anyone who learns a language through reading.