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Garfield


Klinsy

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i post jon

it's what i do.

Being serious, I am a massive Garfield fan. I like reading the comics, I love Garfield & Friends, I don't have as much distain for the first Garfield movie as others do (The second one is absolute shit though). The Garfield Show is pretty good, although it has more lackluster episodes due to going for a lot more outlandish plots than Garfield & Friends, but when The Garfield Show gets it right, it does have some pretty good episodes.

Some of the good episodes I'd mention is the one where Jon gets a collar that allows him to spy on Garfield, and stop him from doing mischief, the episode where Jon and Doc Boy are constantly moving their annoying aunt and her granddaughters to each other, and the episode where Jon wins the lottery, but loses the ticket after spending the money.

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Even though I bought a lot of the books, I couldn't really get into the Garfield strips like I did with Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes (Which we should have a topic for here gah). It's pure slapstick humor, and it's hit-and-miss for me a lot of the time. Some of the strips are downright hilarious, and others are overused gags or ones where a lot of the panels are spent with Garfield sleeping or staring around.

Garfield & Friends is hard for me to watch nowadays but it was the literal shit for me back when I was a child. We used to plop that thing in our car's DVD player and it was non-stop Garfield every single ride. Who can definitely never forget the episode where Garfield set up devious traps so the pizza delivery men wouldn't make it on time (Thus, the pizza becomes free.), or the episode where they go shopping for a new bed for Garfield (Which includes a ridiculously cringey musical number)? The show isn't perfect, but the fact I still remember a lot of these episodes must really mean something. The show is very aware sometimes that it's a cartoon, going to the scale where there's an entire episode parodying a choose-your-own-adventure kind of thing. This is also contextualized by the fact that the show makes it way more clear that Jon has an actual job, because his job fits with the fact that he's in a cartoon. Jon is a cartoonist who's in a cartoon. If I recall correctly, they also played the U.S. Acres episodes, and those were alright, I guess. I just wished that both shows (Since they shared the same block and were both present in the DVDs) had way more interaction with each other, because some of the best moments in both cartoons were when the U.S. Acres characters showed up in Garfield, or when Garfield made a stupid cameo in one of the U.S. Acres episodes.

I watched The Garfield Show years later when it came on Netflix, and while it was clear it probably wasn't meant for my demographic, I thought the CGI was good, and some of the episodes were good watches, but that's it. :/

I guess Garfield in general is something I don't enjoy as much as the cynical/harsh Peanuts or the nostalgia of Calvin & Hobbes (Which I still read the strips to this day thanks to all of them lavish collections), but it's still great fun. Unlike my other favorite strips, it's still on-going, so I guess there's that.

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A Garfield topic, eh? Well, I was an avid reader of the comics and I still find a lot of the strips (particularly the late 70's/early 80's ones) quite funny. I still have a large number of all the compilation books produced and I still go and look at them from time to time. I am also a huge fan of Garfield and Friends, as it seems a lot of us are here. 

But I want to talk about some other Garfield media which is extremely prominent in my mind whenever someone brings up Garfield. The early 80's TV specials. One of my favourites of them all, was the very first "Here Comes Garfield".It was Garfield's first appearance on TV back in 1982. A lot of it was the standard Garfield humor taken right from the strips, but there was a larger story in it. It had the kinda stereotypical "get captured and taken to pound" plot that every cat and dog duo seem to go through, but this one was different. It REALLY had some tear jerk-er moments in it which would make you really want to see Garfield and Odie make it out alive. The song "So Long Old Friend" is in my opinion one of the saddest animated moments EVER. 

There were many of these specials, such as "Garfield in in the Rough" and "Garfield in Paradise" and they are all still a blast to watch. Most of these specials took jokes from the strips and put them into the story, which in some of these could get quite serious, such as Garfield and a panther fighting nearly to the death in "Garfield and the Rough". If you've never seen these, think of them as being sort of like Garfield and Friends, except with a longer, usually slightly more serious story.

The other thing I want to talk about is "Garfield: His 9 Lives" which was a one hour long television special produced in 1988. It's main plot was that Garfield has 9 lives (of course) but each of these lives would take place in a different setting, in a different time, with Garfield as a different cat every time. I'm gonna be honest, this special still kinda scares the shit out of me at some points. A lot of the lives here are not like the Garfield we know. They were much more artsy and just plain out WEIRD compared to other Garfield stuff. There is really not that much humor at all in some of these lives. One deals with a Garfield dying and a woman having to deal with the loss, and another having Garfield as a lab animal trying to avoid being dissected for surgery. Yeah. The art style in every life was different with some looking more realistic than others. Oh yeah, and in the end when both Garfield and Odie die for good, they meet God and he gives them both 9 lives, and it's revealed he's a cat. No, I'm not making this up. 

"Garfield: His 9 Lives" was also a book, and I never owned the book, but I will tell you that book has also managed to scare the shit out of me in the past, just looking at some of the pages that are available online. Some of the stories are similar to the ones in the TV special while others were exclusive to the book. One of the stories "Primal Self" was never put in the TV special, for...kinda obvious reasons. I can only imagine the horror of this being animated. 

Yeah, I could talk about the strips and the TV shows and all, but I think it's more interesting to bring up the more obscure, more messed up Garfield stuff of the past, which still stick out my mind. 

Edited by Osmium
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Ha, funny story, when I was considering switching majors in college and I took a look at the illustration department (I didn't due to losing credits/a year I couldn't afford), I asked about one of the faculty. A friend of mine said "Oh, Barker? He draws Garfield." I was really surprised. I looked up the professor and sure enough, I saw Garfield credits, and it wasn't just some merchandise/promotional artwork, it was the strip itself, and I was really floored. I grew up with the Garfield comic strip--I own the first 36 books in their original format + the Treasury collections--and I was never aware that another artist or two might have been working on the strip or that it was a committee project. I just thought Jim Davis was coasting (and, in a way, he is, since I don't think he's particularly involved in the making of the strip anymore beyond approvals). I wish I got a chance to talk with that professor a bit, I bet he has some fun stories to tell, and even if I dislike how safe and stagnant the strip became, his work is a part of my childhood, even if I didn't know it.

I still have a certain nostalgic appreciation for Garfield though. I liked when Davis (and team) actually took some risks, put Garfield and friends in different situations in between the usual table/spider/dieting/harassing the mailman/Jon dating fails gags that run all the time. There were some really entertaining stories that ran for weeks, and it's a shame the comic just stopped. I remember one storyline that ran for maybe a month or so where Garfield and Odie run away/go missing and end up joining the circus while Jon is looking all over for them that had some really funny gags. There's also another story that ran for about a week (I think it was coinciding with Halloween) in which Garfield has a nightmare waking up in a rundown version of his home, where everyone from his life is gone and he's all alone. When Davis wanted to do something really fun or interesting with Garfield, he did a very good job at it.

I haven't seen the old cartoon in a while, but I do remember it holding up pretty well, which is kind of surprising. And I actually didn't hate the Garfield Show that aired some years ago. It was a step above what the comic was like, and had some genuinely funny gags. They even did a storyline that explained just where Lyman went after leaving Odie at Jon's. I'm curious to check out Boom Studio's monthly comic, actually, because I've seen them let artists interpret the characters how they want, and they even started doing specials based on the Nine Lives graphic novel they did years ago (which I own and it's one of the most bizarre things PAWS ever put out).

The other thing I want to talk about is "Garfield: His 9 Lives" which was a one hour long television special produced in 1988. It's main plot was that Garfield has 9 lives (of course) but each of these lives would take place in a different setting, in a different time, with Garfield as a different cat every time. I'm gonna be honest, this special still kinda scares the shit out of me at some points. A lot of the lives here are not like the Garfield we know. They were much more artsy and just plain out WEIRD compared to other Garfield stuff. There is really not that much humor at all in some of these lives. One deals with a Garfield dying and a woman having to deal with the loss, and another having Garfield as a lab animal trying to avoid being dissected for surgery. Yeah. The art style in every life was different with some looking more realistic than others. 

"Garfield: His 9 Lives" was also a book, and I never owned the book, but I will tell you that book has also managed to scare the shit out of me in the past, just looking at some of the pages that are available online. Some of the stories are similar to the ones in the TV special while others were exclusive to the book. One of the stories "Primal Self" was never put in the TV special, for...kinda obvious reasons. I can only imagine the horror of this being animated. 

Yeah, I could talk about the strips and the TV shows and all, but I think it's more interesting to bring up the more obscure, more messed up Garfield stuff of the past, which still stick out my mind. 

Huh. I had no idea they animated those stories. I should really check that out.

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How are we this far into the topic without a mention of the best Garfield related thing to ever exist?

 

pure poetry. puts the comic strips to shame. this one's my favorite tho.

Edited by Penny
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I've never really talked about it but I actually was a massive Garfield fan when I was a kid. I loved Garfield and Friends, read the strip every day, which I still have several volumes of buried in my closet. Hell, I even had that Sega Genesis/PC game.

It actually kind of scared me a bit as a kid, as getting a Game Over implied Garfield would be forever trapped in the TV which...geebus that's fucking dark for Garfield. And I remember the final boss looked freaky and absolutely nothing like a Garfield character. But I still looked past these things and played it because IT WAS GARFIELD, DAMN IT! >:U

In seriousness though I'd be curious to play this again just to see if it holds up at all. It actually looks like a decent platformer.

But I haven't really considered myself a fan in years now. I just kind of lost interest over the years, as I did with many other things I worshipped as a kid. I still look at the strip now and then if I happen to see the funny pages sitting on the table, but I definitely don't keep up with it.

Regardless, I really do have a lot of cherished memories with Garfield, and I'm not letting go of them anytime soon.

Edited by Speederino
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Garfield and Friends is one of my all time favorite animated series! I just recently watched some episodes and I think it still holds up to this day. The voice acting is phenomenal, the humor is great, and I love the 4th wall breaking throughout the show as well. If anyone has Amazon Prime. the entire series is available on Amazon Instant Video.

I'm curious for opinions, for those who were into the show, did you like Garfield or Orson's Farm segments more? For me, it's hard to choose between the two because each has their own strengths and great characters to go with them.

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I'll say this, "Garfield & His 9 Lives" has got to be one of the most underrated TV animated productions out there, period. And that's saying a lot since you couldn't accomplish much in television animation back then such as low budgets and short deadlines (that's still a problem nowadays but on a relatively small scale). 

I shit you not, the animation in the segments is literally Disney-esque that you thought Glenn Keane was involved. You can't say the animation studio skimped their budgets. 

Edited by CrashRatchetFan
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I've never been big into it; I used to enjoy reading the strips Sundays and found it pretty likable, but it's a bit hard to justify still liking them when they seem to get lamer and lamer. It doesn't hurt that I didn't exactly start during a time when the strips were particularly good. It certainly seems that it's capable of being rather funny, so it's not surprising it's so popular. I guess it just didn't grab me the way Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes or something like that does.

There's a rather obscure YouTube reviewer that I really like called the Comic Strip Critic, and he hates Garfield xD In case you're curious, the review is below. I don't agree with him, clearly, and think he gets too worked up about the merchandising aspect, but I can understand where he's coming from. And Sonic 3 & Knuckles is his all-time favorite video game, so clearly his opinions do have a fair bit of credibility, right? :P

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