I’ve written before about my fascination with what I like to think of as ‘factory-like’ art, and Garfield is definitely up there (almost literally, given it has a team of artists churning out the strip). One of my favourite observations I’ve heard about art is someone who said there was a whole generation of kids who thought they were smart for liking Garfield only to grow up and realise how trite it is, because that’s definitely true for me. The reason Garfield Minus Garfield is so funny is because it reveals how hollow the comic is; people mainly focus on Jon because it’s sincerely funny to watch him blunder around talking to himself and occasionally bursting into tears, but the project made me reassess how many strips that actually are about Garfield are just him riffing on sleeping, eating, and watching mindless TV.

Then there’s the step further: people also often point out the way the entire comic is specifically crafted to mass appeal. Garfield’s increasingly cute and marketable design has been noted, but I’m also amused by how many have pointed out that Garfield hating Mondays makes no in-character sense because he hasn’t got a job, and it only really makes sense when you know how many stickers are sold to people who put them up in their workplace. You can see how the rest of the design choices from that; he’s got that ‘ugly cute’ design that appeals to a mass audience who sees themselves as cynical, world-weary, and adorable all at once (Stitch of Lilo & Stitch and Minions have the same appeal and are often used in the same context by the same people), and his simplistic callousness in a mostly abstract space with a few one-note characters allows people to project their own cynicism on him without any real emotional risk. His lasagne is specific enough to stick in the brain and generic enough that just about any idiot can see their own impulses in it.

Now, part of my reaction is that I think the comic was actually pretty good in the Eighties, when Garfield’s design still had a bit of personality to it (and he still actually looked like a fat cat). Davis’s dialogue does have a pleasurable rhythm to it that comes from offbeat word choices – someone using ninth grade language to communicate a fourth grade idea. One of my other childhood faves – much more defensible than Garfield – is Footrot Flats, which has a similar comic premise of a ‘talking’ animal who uses downright Biblical language to convey his melodramatic emotions. Garfield is much more emotionally stable, with the energy of a bureaucrat who finds a new way of saying the same things he has to every day.

During Garfield‘s salad years, he also had a wide variety of cast members and situations to riff on; Davis would spin out whole storylines of Garfield interacting with guard dogs, city officials, Jon’s family, and other characters even on top of the wide circle of regulars. I particularly liked the storylines of Jon visiting his family in the country and Garfield having to find his way home in the city. It wasn’t Get Fuzzy, but it was pretty funny.

But I also respect the attitude. Davis is famously open about how he got into cartooning specifically to make money and I admire how he follows that to places other people wouldn’t. Obviously, there is the way he crafted the conceit of the character to be appealing, but I’m also intrigued at how he openly enjoys the Garfield Minus Garfield phenomenon, even contributing to it; I’ve seen other equally mercenary creatives get weirdly touchy about parody and criticism, and of course I’ve seen many a capitalist (both in and out of creative fields) see every cent they don’t make as a personal insult. I suspect Davis only wants exactly as much money as he needs and recognises that these parodies and remixes are not a threat to his way of life, and indeed could be seen as an extension of his brand.