FUNDRAISER UPDATE: 40/100 prints are sold. I have to sell the rest by the end of January if I’m going to be able to pay my taxes. The “Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time” print is signed by both of us, numbered and limited to 100 pieces. [More details HERE.] 
All proceeds are going to pay an unexpected IRS tax bill. Your support and help are greatly appreciated, plus you get a pretty sweet piece of art for your wall. Hate art? Hate walls? Donations are also incredibly appreciated, if that’s more your style.
I got some big plans for 2014. Check them out in the blog post under THIS comic.
Part 2 of a interview I did with The Anglerfish is up HERE now. Part 1 is HERE. It’s a good read if you are interested in why I’ve made the recent changes to HE that I’ve made. I talk a lot about parenting and creative work and softball dads. Also I ramble a bit because I was actually drawing a comic while they were interviewing me.
Why the Garfield hate? Reading Garfield made me the unhappy, sarcastic cat I am today!
There's a lot of hate around for Garfield. Poor little ginger fella seems to divide opinion. Personally I'm a big fan of http://www.garfieldminusgarfield.net.
Oh, it's simple. I hate Garfield.
Joel, I really guffawed on this one. I grew reading my dad's comics collection: Peanuts books from the 50's and 60's, Pogo, and actual Sunday comics clipping of B.C. and Prince Valiant. Good times.
Kiddo is actually working through the Calvin and Hobbes books I gave her right now. She found the Schoolastic bookclub order form for one of them inside the book having been used as a bookmark. I should really post pictures of it.
Garfield was the first comic I bought with my own money. But yes, I'm quite done with it now.
The next couple of comics will get into who it's actually written for vs. looking at it now as an adult.
To be fair, it depends on what era the Garfield comics are from. The one from the 70s and 80s are atleast readable and included some kind of effort. Hell, I loved Garfield as a kid too.
I remember picking up a Garfield book when I was around 4 or 5, and it was one of the first few collections. It seemed alright. Then I read a friend's copy of one of the more current ones (at the time this was the very early 90s) and I was appalled at the drop in quality, and that drop made me see how little there was in the first place (yeah, I was a precocious kid). Then I noticed Calvin & Hobbes existed and promptly forgot about Garfield entirely.
When the Scholastic Book Sales would come around to my school (god DAMN those were magical times!) I would pick up, say, Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons (I still have that one somewhere, with the banner on it showing it's a Scholastic printing and everything if I recall). My friends would buy Garfield and I'd sigh and hope they grew out of it.
Whoa. You just wrinkled my brain with that 5th child reveal.
He was following Jeffie home along one of this circuitous paths and was taken by jackals.
Joel, you're hitting every note I've been singing to myself these past years. Loved Garfield as a child, introduced by my mom, but when I went back and read them I realized they were terrible. Just… bad.
So thank you, sir – I'm not the only one, I'm not crazy, after all.
Garfield is terrible. Your mom betrayed you.
My heart cries for vengeance AND a bean burrito!
I'm partial to Heathcliff myself. 😉
That's because he's an instigator. A shit starter. He lives in fucking trash. He has nothing to lose. Heathcliff will mess you up.
Oh my God! I have this internal dialog with myself everyday. Garfield IS punishment.
I'm not a huge fan of Garfield anymore. He was the first famous character I was able to draw. I still make a lot of conversational references to Garfield. Well, Nermal, really.
(That annoying girl at the office who thinks she cuter than she is? Nermal.)
I think one can and should read Garfield for the juxtaposition of what "comic strips" are.
Not everything can be Calvin & Hobbes and the Far Side. Throw in some Dilbert while you're at it. She's too young to understand it now, but when she does… hopefully she never does, actually.
She'll understand it the same way I did, hopefully. Which is when you revisit those comics as an adult and discover new ways to relate to them that were hidden there all along.
Actually, you just made Family Circus sound pretty awesome
He made it sound kinda metal, even.
I loved Garfield at the time. Re-read some early Garfield recently, some of it still holds up. Clearly has longevity despite all the new internet kids on the block.
Now would be a good time for me to remember in horror that my 9th birthday party was Garfield themed. My t-shirt said 'I Only Party On Days Ending in Y'. I'll show myself out.
But then you grew up and learned better.
I don't think Garfield is horrible, exactly. It's just very, very bland. And the creator made it that way on purpose so I guess he succeeded. There's definitely a time and place for everything and Garfield is more successful as a generic laugh in the newspapers than something you read in a book. It'll give you a chuckle and then you move on. With all these really interesting web comics nowdays, it just doesn't stand up to the competition.
Agreed
I'll be talking more about the points you brought up in the next few comics.
I admit, I too enjoyed Garfield when I was little. The only thing that made me really like Garfield were the spider strips. Those still have the power to produce a little snicker out of me to this day. Plus, I enjoyed drawing him. The rest? Meh.
There is so much interesting work to choose from these days that we don't have to subject ourselves to the boring generic junk that got syndication back in the day.
Man, I feel old now.
By the way, I love the new focus of the comic. Excellent work, sir.
Thank you. It's been very rewarding so far.
♫ ♪ "…I hope you bring lots of spaghetti!" ♫ ♪
The first Garfield collection was actually pretty good. It started to get bad when Garfield went round instead of floppy and Jon's "roommate" moved out.
I thought I hallucinated Lymon….
Lyman is currently a rotting corpse in Jon's basement. remember that.
To be honest, I think Garfield has often been better lately. It's gotten a bit more surreal, which I appreciate
Garfield was the gateway comic for GenX…the first time we were exposed to books that where nothing but comic strip collections…I'm looking forward to getting my 5 month old the early collections AND hanging the daddy/daughter digital drawing print on her wall.
I will staunchly defend easily the first ten collections or so worth of Garfield comics. In the early days was when it was at its best. After that is when it got progressively worse.
My grandfather was an editor at a big newpaper back in the day and he actually has the first Garfield collection, signed. Of course, all us grandkids would read it so it's not in mint condition or anything. But out of all the Garfield I've read over the years, that first book was the more interesting of them all. I found it interesting that the cat actually got less fat over time.
Beginning Garfield was fine. They even had storylines and plots! But it did quickly devolve into panel/strip gags and caricatures of itself.
read Garfield from October 23-28 1989, Biggest Mood swing in a comic ever. Probably the most interesting thing ive ever read in a kids comic.