Hey, Garfield!

Hey folks. Sorry for the late post. For your late evening entertainment, I'm going to try to sound intelligent while discussing Garfield and, so I have a second thing to talk about, post a "Girls and Sports" strip. Be sure to check out the Meekrat Entertainment Group, where there's an actual comic and stuff.

Garfield

I'm putting this Garfield up not to mock, but to damn with faint praise. Usually, the whole thing is just Jon and Garfield sitting there with nothing about the scene changing but the eyes. Today, we have three panels which are different enough, with a completely different final panel. So effort was put into the art! Not only that, but the joke, while still not the best joke in the world and is just a variation on "Garfield likes to eat", is given the smallest spark of life by actually showing Garfield going through Liz's purse. How many times has this strip described a wacky happening in recent years and failed to show us anything at all?

Reading the "US Acres" strip on the Garfield website reminded me that, once upon a time, "Garfield" had a lot more life to it than this shambling zombie it has become. While it was never a masterpiece, it was at least moderately funny and real attention was paid to the art. In fact, if one were to read all the Garfield collections (and I freely admit that I've read nearly all of them, and even own a few) you could see the steam running out of the strip's sales, going from featuring something approaching story-lines to mere changes in set dressing over the course of its long life. Most things pertaining to the Jon/Liz relationship since it began several years ago have shown a care and effort unseen since the strip's heyday.

Liz's unchanging expression in panels one and two of today's strip is sort of unnerving, though.

Girls and Sports

All women in the "Girls and Sports" world look exactly the same, as do most of the guys. At least the guys are somewhat different.