As a kid, I was a big fan of Garfield the cat. Yeah, I know the comic strip got lame in its later years, but I loved the strips from the late 70s and early 80s and owned the first half dozen or so of the compilations that I purchased from the Scholastic Book Club through school. (Other notable purchases from that time include Choose Your Own Adventure books and a book of insults. Fine literature indeed.) One particular strip that still cracks me up (and I do hope this actually exists and is not a weird false memory) is one in which Odie the dog asks Garfield whether he walks with both legs on the same side moving forward together or with legs on opposites sides, and Garfield looks down at his legs for a time, then says "I may never walk again." And as stupid as it is, I admit that I still always laugh a lot watching the Garfield Christmas special; I enjoy it to a ridiculous degree. I am so close to it at this point, and my experience of watching it is so steeped in all the times I've watched it before and the resulting cascading associations, I cannot say whether it is legitimately funny at all to someone seeing it for the first time. (And no, I have not seen the recent "live-action" Garfield movie, which I understand to be a total abomination.)
My first foray into Garfield-inspired artwork was tracing drawings from Garfield school folders, coloring them in, and selling them to my classmates for $1 apiece. It was amazing to me even then how many people were willing to pony up the cash for such a thing; it got to the point where people were commissioning particular pieces from me. Good thing I stayed small-scale enough that Garfield's copyright holder never issued a cease and desist order. I do not have any of these masterworks to share with you because I sold them all.
My second Garfield craft project was creating this Garfield hook rug. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
3 comments:
I had some of the Garfield books too, and used to read them over and over. I'm not sure if the strip got lamer over time or if I simply, grew up. (This question, which applies to so many things, could be termed the "Saturday Night Live" perplexity.)
For several years, it was the most awesome cartoon there was. Then Jim Davis sold the rights and retired to fish in the woods, and none of the hacks that the new owner hired to continue the comic have approached his wit. If they could have, they'd probably just write Calvin and Hobbs instead after all. So, what happened was that Garfield became lame very suddenly.
My theory is that after a couple of years of fishing, he got bored, changed his name, and started over with Calvin and Hobbs. But he must have gotten tired again, 'cause that was only good for a few years too.
So do you think he's currently in a fishing stage or is there some other comic he is writing under another persona? He didn't have anything to do with Dilbert, did he?
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