The Truth About Garfield
By: Duronto Pablo
Garfield (the fat orange cat, not the president that was assassinated) is a cultural phenomenon of the modern day. With its first comic strip in June 19th of 1978, Garfield has become as large as his appetite for lasagna, and his hatred of Mondays and Nermal. As an example of how far you can take a comic strip, Garfield is a late-stage capitalist business, with an obscene amount of commodification. But that’s not what this article is about.
With a strip being released every day for nearly 46 years, there’s bound to be some break from the norm—and there was, in October of 1989. Starting on October 23rd, rather than the usual Monday hatred, Garfield instead awakes to something strange.
(gocomics.com has an iron-fist when it comes to copyright, so you’ll have to click each link, read the comic, then come back to the article. Apologies!)
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/23
Right off the bat, there isn’t actually a joke in the comic. And it’s possible that those are tallies on the walls, meaning that this isn’t the first time Garfield has woken up like this.
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/24
We’re introduced to a narrator that not even Garfield is aware of. And more than that, we understand that Garfield is alone. Looking at it from a technical perspective, we see a dutch angle in the first panel, reminiscent of horror films.
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/25
This one sort of has a punchline. But it isn’t a very nice one.
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/26
We get an interesting reaction panel in this one, another allusion to the horror genre.
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/27
We suddenly get some insight into Garfield’s character here. It isn’t Mondays or Jon burning his lasagna that’s his greatest fear, but something much more visceral. And he’s living it.
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/28
Probably the creepiest thing about this comic is that following this storyline, the very next one is a completely run-of-the-mill Sunday strip, and none of anything in the storyline is ever commented on again in-universe. (https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/10/29, for the following day’s strip)
The implications of this storyline are a little harrowing: Garfield is a cat living in an abandoned house, in denial that he is starving and that his owner, Jon, is seemingly gone. He imagines himself as gluttonous and with lots of companions, like with Odie and Arlene (Garfield’s love interest) and even Nermal, and he imagines himself with Jon, all to cope with his reality. One theory postulates that Jon and Odie were killed in a robbery attempt, with hints of a break in with the first panel of comic 4 (glass broken in, files discarded on the floor) and a knocked over chair and kitchen in disarray in the right of comic 5 (signs of a struggle), with Garfield left in the fray and nobody wanting to explore the house where there’d been a robbery. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it would explain why Jon and Odie were missing, even with a portrait clearly showing signs that they lived in the house together at some point.
Of course, Jim Davis says this was just a one-time thing where he experimented with a non-humorous storyline. Supposedly, none of this is actually true, and Garfield simply had a nightmare. Regardless, it recontextualizes all of Garfield if you’re willing to believe that this is the truth, and the bulk of the strip are just his hallucinations.
In any case, none of this explains what happened to Lyman, Jon’s former roommate, a recurring character that disappeared entirely in 1983…
(you can read Garfield, and many other comic strips, on gocomics.com.)