6 ms·
The week Garfield died. Analysis & comics
- vitaminj 18y agoWhile reading this, I couldn't help but feel that it had the tenor of an english lit assignment... then realised that it was exactly that. A+ notwithstanding.
- omouse 18y agoThat tenor, the idea of it, the very thought, comes with little, almost no practice whatsoever. You, the reader, are astute in making this observation, however English Lit. is more than a tenor, it is a soprano of the highest order! (English lit. encourages students to write essays that include unnecessary words or phrases. Bullshitting is a fine art apparently)
- diN0bot 18y agoi read that as "the terror of an english lit assignment." ::wipes tear of nostalgia from eye:: as i read i kept wanting to see the punchline, that is: how did this effect the next 30 years of garfield (seems unchanged to me) and other comic strip themes. also, when i used to read comics i'd always wonder if comic writers were all given the same "list of suggestions", because quite frequently they'd all go through the same theme-phase together.
- angstrom 18y agoYou're too forgiving. D- for not researching Calvin & Hobbes.
- Herring 18y agowhat the fuck ...
- ojbyrne 18y agoI think it's plausible that Jim Davis was on vacation that week, and somebody with some talent filled in. Then he came back unfortunately.
- unalone 18y agoBy the time this came out, Davis wasn't writing his own Garfield strips anymore. I remember him saying in an interview that he thought this week was a "fun joke" to play on readers. He obviously didn't read much into it. Am I alone in really wishing this sort of thing wasn't on Hacker News? Not just because it deals with comics, but because it makes a mockery of real analysis. Garfield is not art. It's brilliant marketing, but no actual content - not by the time this strip had been created, anyway. Analysis like this distracts from the analysis that really matters: analysis that might introduce casual readers to an entirely new medium. I'm not exactly a comics maven, but I remember reading a strip-by-strip analysis of Krazy Kat, a comic that absolutely does benefit from such analysis. It got me into that entire era of comicry. There are more recent comics that benefit from such analysis. Peanuts. Bloom County. Calvin & Hobbes. Each has strips that benefit from really thinking, panel by panel. This? A mockery! Nothing interesting is happening. The person that made these strips was just stringing along clichéd views. The only interesting thing is that it happened in a strip that's usually punchline after punchline - the comic itself is bland, derivative, and in fact quite bad. This isn't the "I'm upside down" of Peanuts, or the pterodactyl flying away in Calvin & Hobbes. This is bullshit. And the analysis is bullshit compounding bullshit. It's a disgrace. Stuff like this is why people mock the sorts of analysis that really ought to be praised.
- markessien 18y agoShould I send you a box of matches, perhaps you'd be interested in burning his article? There is no "right" intellectualism, thinking about things and analyzing things does not first have to pass through a filter created by you on what is right to think about, and what not. Your statement is awful because it advocates the creation of a limited and closed world, with only special topics being "worthy" of thought.
- Silentio 18y agoUnfortunately, Davis went back to writing the same old shit after that story arc.
- jwilliams 18y agoThis reminds be of the great Garfield minus Garfield (The standard strip, but with Garfield removed): http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/ http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/ It's actually brilliant - Apparently J. Davis loves + approves of it too - says it bought a whole new perspective to his work.
- alaskamiller 18y agoThe guy that made that stole it from someone else and is getting a book deal out of it.
- almost 18y agoPosting a message like that without supplying references or evidence just seems wrong.
- halo 18y agoI'm not saying he stole it, but it is a fairly natural extension of older ideas. The Garfield Randomizer, which randomised panels from Garfield strips, came out sometime in 2005, then the idea of removing Garfield's speech bubbles from the comics appeared on Truth and Beauty Bombs forum in January 2006 along with a few variants. Garfield Minus Garfield came February 2008. It doesn't seem to matter who has an idea anymore. Free-spirited exchange of ideas eventually seems to give way to whoever can market themselves the best in order to extract the cash out of those ideas, whether it's CollegeHumor, Ebaumsworld or I Can Haz Cheezburger.
- unalone 18y agoDon't forget the strip Arbuckle, which used the same idea a long time ago. And the first G-G strips weren't originals, they were plucked from the Internet. Kind of worrisome that G-G is what passes for genius online nowadays. It's clever, it's humorous, but it's a one-off joke that got old really fast. No?
- maw 18y ago
- ph0rque 18y agoReminds me of a much dark, and wittier, comic (imo): http://pbfcomics.com http://pbfcomics.com.
- ngvrnd 18y agoPBF is definitely edgy. It often makes me feel that I shouldn't be laughing at it.
- timcederman 18y agoHmm, how weird -- I've read a very similar analysis before, which I assumed this was. Then I noticed the current date. I wonder where this person ripped it off from?
- olavk 18y agohttp://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/ http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/
- antidaily 18y agoI remember seeing a For Better or for Worse (http://www.fborfw.com/index.php http://www.fborfw.com/index.php) comic where a guy says hi to a little girl in a shopping cart at the store, she waves back. Her mom freaks out and moves the cart, scolding the girl for talking to a stranger. The last frame of the comic has the guy saying "Sometimes I hate this world". Not very funny. I mean... what?!
- unalone 18y agoWell, yeah. Not all comics are funny. FBOFW has a serious side to it.