Just not worth the trouble dealing with that feline diabetes when you can get a new kitten for free.

ROFL

I have to say, I don't know when you did this, but it's far funnier then the modern Garfield comics out now >>

1982. It says so by the little number in the bottom right hand corner, where my signature is partly hidden behind the last panel of the cartoon.

oh, I see

I wonder why the vet looks like John's long lost friend (and Odie's original owner) Lyman

He has a mustache.

But I think I might have modeled the vet after one that Jon actually had taken Garfield to. Or then again, maybe he was modeled after a vet I actually knew, that my father worked for, and looked something like this.

Liz has always been Garfield's vet, though it just goes to show that if anyone ever murders Garfield, it would be LYMAN! Afterall, Lyman has been missing since the mid 1980's!

After 3 years I don't know if you'll even be around to read this.
Lyman's sudden disappearance was explained in a fan-fic where Garfield does some exploring in the basement ...

Last time Jim Davis was asked about what happened to Lyman, his response was "Just don't look in the basement." Also if you notice, the basement is the only part of that house never shown.

oh gods i could imagine john doing this...

or maybe just get garfield castrated - he'd never heard the end of it

Me? I'd have sold him to some lab for cancer research, or maybe a vivisectionist. Or then again, maybe just nail him to a work bench in the basement, and take my time in making the fat monster wish he'd never been born.

. . . And the last thing he sees, is Jon adopt Nermal . . .

The only problem is that without that ball of fat and fur, he'd be a sad, lonely man fighting a losing battle with depression... More so than usual, I mean.

Just like in "Garfield Minus Garfield"... ^_^

(Pretty sure I've linked that before, though.)

You know, when you put it that way, I know someobody just like Jon, except he keeps something other than a cat. But I've probably said too much already.

There was a play "Love a la mode" where the star playing Archibald McSarcasm was too drunk or something to go on and so the other actors staged the play with nobody in his role. Oddities such as history's first solo duel and the star actress in a seemingly constant state of pointless hysteria.

She: Ha ha ha ha ha ! How do you make THAT out ?
Archibald:

---

She: Ha ha ha ha ha ha !

And at one point,the entire cast laughs without reason ! HA HA HA !

That's definitely early Garfield. You should have drawn the strip, seriously.

Garfield has run out of steam creatively. It got to the point where the weekly cartoon series was showing more initiative than the original comic.

Well... look at it this way...

If you were paid $15,000 a week to draw something repetitive and without the spark of creatively, and took you about 30 minutes a day to do, would you volunatrily give it up? I don't think I'd give it much thought before deciding to martyr myself for the pleasure of my millions of readers, would you?

I used to love Garfield myself, but after so many releases things did get somewhat samey.

Even Waterson's brilliant Calvin & Hobbes grew repititious after a while. But Waterson had the integrity to stop doing it, at least. I hope he's not begging for quarters outside a 7/11 now, because of it...

Oh dear, you had to remind me of Kalvin and Hobbs. I never liked it as much as Garfield but it certainly came a close second!

As for Waterson, i'm sure he's doing just fine financially. He must have managed to sell millions of copies of books over the ten+ years of publishing his cartoons.

And although the man could have made millions through selling a wide variety of merchandise he didn't! Either because of his personal views towards merchandising Calvin & Hobbs as you may well be aware of, or indeed purely because he already believed that he had far too much money already ^.^

Being me, I would believe that latter...

Very likely he made enough from the strip and collections that he retired very hadnsomely. A man who could write Calvin & Hobbes would be smart enough not to spend all his earnings on flashy pimp-mobiles and pink stucco palaces in Beverly Hills. I almost wish he had relented just a little, though. The odd C&H coffee mug or set of trading cards wouldn't have killed him. As it is, there's just nothing to collect, not even a McFarlane vinyl figure.

I have all the collections except the "large" format ones, that collect what was in the "small" format ones.

One of the things I liked most about Waterson is that, although he had a simplified style, he could really draw. When Calvin was fantasizing about being a reporter or brain surgeon, Waterson was able to reproduce the style of the artists who did strips like "Brenda Starr" or "Dr. Kildare." And when Calvin "flew" an F-15, it was really an F-15. Some of his compositions, and very spare renderings of woods and empty space, were as good as the best ukiyo-e wood prints.

I don't think Jim Davis could draw water from a well...

Weirdly enough I have all the newspaper strips, weekly and Sunday, that appeared in our local paper, from start to finish, and even looked up the earlier ones from the Chicago Tribune, where they first showed up. And some of the books. "Winners quitters" and I salute him for this, as well as not mechandising his work the way some others have done. Not that this ahs stopped other folks from doing so - more recently I've seen a t-shirt showing Hobbes killing and eating Calvin. Very colorful (mostly red).

A couple of years ago I read an account of someone "tracking" Watterson down, a combination of Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom and X Files. Reading between the lines I got the sense that Mr W was doing OK, doing an occasional painting and so on.

The now defunct Encyclopedia Dramatica added a last panel to the final Sunfday strip: a newspaper cl;pping about Calvin getting killed in a sledding accident. He WAS a psychotic kid.

Even "Mutts" got -as you put it - samey eventually.

Indeed, Waterson's far too smart to squander everything he earned. Your right though, it's not like he couldn't have had some things produced with Calvin & hobbes on that they might have played with in the cartoons, something relevant you know?

Sadly I no longer have any C&H books, all lost whilst in a storage facility

But yes i'd agree with you, the man could indeed draw exceedingly well, it was refreshing that a very simplified page/story could be transformed into very detailed panels quickly, and not without relevance. As for 'ole Jimmy, well I was looking at a recentish release of a Garfield collection and quite frankly I don't even think he worked on it. I can imagine a bunch of university students coming up with the gags. Whilst one of them drops parts of the Garfield chracters into place using a pc program with a limited library of predrawn bits.

And no, he really can't draw much else.

There have been persistent rumours that Davis, after establishing his success, did very little of his own work. I got the impression a coming up with some gags, indicating how to draw them with a few scribbles to show which way Garfield was looking or where Jon was standing, and left it all to an army of assistents. Of course, having assistents is a old tradition in comics. It's understandable when you had to produce several pages of The Spirit every week, or a new L'il Abner strip six days a week. But Garfield? It could practically be done with rubber stamps. But, of course, he could use the same art every day, and just letter different speech balloons, as long as 15 million people read it all the same. The syndicate doesn't care.

Well, at least it's more humane than what MAD did to him years ago--had Jon suddenly tie him to his bed, blanket and all, and heave him in front of an oncoming truck.

I still chuckle when I think of him whining "Help me, Odor", as he get chucked, and the image of the truck driver bouncing in his seat as the shattered remains of cat-bed go flying past his windshield :D.

I think it's saying something that this parody is the most I remember of any Garfield strip.

John doesn't seem lonely enough, he's not in character

I especially like how you're taking on some of the old-school style of the comic, that adds even more of a nice touch to it.

Well, back in 1984 I could hardly draw the modern, "cute" Garfield, because he hadn't evolved that far yet. I imitated what I saw.

True, but still, it's nice to see some of the older stuff being imitated. Not sure why, but I kinda liked the older stuff. Still, good work.

I think Garfield deserved to look ugly. He was a curmudgeony, cynical, fat, lazy bastard, who made fun of cuddly fluffballs such as he alter became.

Oh yeah, no doubt. He was very much as you described him, though later on he had his moments and started to become a lot more caring. I also give it some props in the fact that it didn't follow the standard of 'everything is cutsie and agreeable' type of comic. Then again, one thing that kinda ruined it for me is that JD supposedly only did it for the money and not the fans.

LOL, as much as I like Garfield, this is still really funny!

Hah! I hate garfield.
To a dog, his owner is the supreme being. To a cat, his owner is a can opener.

Depends on the cat. Mine have usually been attached to me, and some downright "sucky." But a cat can grow up being pretty independent minded, no doubt of it. Even when totally dependent, you still can't get them to do what you want a lot of the time.

Yeah, but no matter the pet, it's just good to have them around.

Some people keep snakes and feed mice to them. But you ever hear of people keeping mice and feeding them snakes, why is that? Other people keep tarantulas, piranhas, skuknks, or full grown lions. No accounting for taste, or is it just that some people can't get along with most species?

I have seen a lot of people here buying pets not because of the connection but because they wanted to sell an image. Take the college student with the little puppy; you know he is trying to get some ass. Or the girl with the tarantula, trying to be goth or whatever but would freak out of the spider walks on her in bed. Or the guy with the pythons or alligators to show how manly and tough he is. And, when they get tired of the animals, or they grow past their cute period or are just now too big to be safely handled, it is time for that last trip to the woods, where they will be "released back into nature."

As we all know, the natural habitat of the American alligator is the sewar.

I get along better with my dogs than I do with people I see everyday!

Dave James!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Recurring Garfield jokes
http://graphjam.com/2010/01/22/funn.....hs-art-comedy/

Was this comic ReAlly made in 1982?!

Absolutely. I've been doing this for longer than Garfield has been in the newspapers!

Damn!!! What year did you start?

Oh... like most artists, I've *always* drawn, but the first drawing I had published in a fanzine would have been about 1972.

Can I see it?

I'm not even sure which it is. But I do have some very old drawings from the middle 70s posted here, if you go back far enough in my gallery (when I was posting old material for the record). They're all dated.

Here's one from 1972, that's close enough: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1631618/

Or these:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1223726/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1223710/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1223696/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1223665/

These are from the '60s, when I was a kid:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/766110/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/766139/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/766099/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/766090/

I would never do that.

This is like, the last we see of Garfield.