I'm not crazy, I promise... someone deleted Garfield.—Jon Arbuckle commenting on the webcomic
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.—The original summary for the webcomic
In a World where Garfield never existed, one man imagines that he does.
Garfield Minus Garfield is a strip adapted by Dan Walsh from selected
Garfield strips. In this edited version, Jon is the only main character; all other main or non-essential cast (and their associated dialogue) have been removed. However, Jon still behaves as though they, most often Garfield, were there.
Garfield Minus Garfield has been published in a book, which contains the original strips alongside their "Minused" versions, as well as a foreword by
Garfield creator Jim Davis (who not only openly approved of the concept, but made several "Minused" strips for the book).
Other people have made edits to Garfield strips, these edits including, but not limited to: putting random Garfield panels together;
Silent Garfield, which removes all thought balloons;
Realfield, which replaces Garfield with a photo-realistic cat drawing, and
Garfield As Garfield, which replaces Garfield with the 20th President of the United States, James A. Garfield. These predate
Garfield Minus Garfield by a few years. Dan Walsh admitted he was not the first to come up with the idea of editing the strip or removing Garfield entirely, but he was the first to put the edits on one site as opposed to assorted forums and imageboards, and so got the most attention.
It can be seen
here
.
This comic provides examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: By removing the polarizing main character, Jim Davis' work is now a masterpiece of existential angst.
- Animated Adaptation: Someone took the Garfield Thanksgiving special and edited it into this.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:invoked The point of the comic is to show how sad, pathetic, and most likely psychotic Jon appears if he is just viewed a little differently.
- Beat Panel: With Garfield gone, a lot of panels are left empty, or at the very least include no action or dialogue. This works surprisingly well. A variation of this involves a single panel of Jon doing something zany or eccentric, surrounded by two empty panels. Oddly enough, the empty panels make it funnier.
- Black Comedy Burst: The end of the above Thanksgiving edit. Jon realizes that Liz put him on a diet, goes crazy and kills Liz with a chainsaw (although offscreen), and then it goes back to more Jon talking to non-existent pets.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: This one comes surprisingly close.
- Captain Obvious: In this strip. Happens a lot given that Jon is no longer actually speaking to anyone.
- Crapsack Life
- Christmas Special
- Dada Comics
- Darker and Edgier: It's amazing how much the presence of Garfield lightened up everything. It's disturbingly sad without him. Very much so with the proper background music.
- A Date with Rosie Palms: Some of the strips have Jon staring at his crotch, then suddenly deciding to leave.
- Deconstructive Parody: The series as a whole is a deconstruction of its source material, but it's a Deconstructive Parody because it's played for laughs and is a parody of the original. Seeing as though Word Of God apparently stated that Garfield never talked in the comic, both that and this show just how much of a wreck Jon really is.
- Don't Explain the Joke: The comic's humor often comes from getting rid of Garfield's commentary on Jon's pathetic life and eccentric behavior. This makes the strip funnier, because Jon is already funny without Garfield's observations.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin
- Follow the Leader: Series Minus Series Core.
- Genre Shift: It's amazing how deleting Garfield from the strip immediately changes a comedy into a commentary of one man's losing battle with isolation and depression in suburban America.
- Live-Action Adaptation: College Humor edited clips from the actual Garfield movie into this adapted trailer.
- Minimalist Cast: Jon is literally the only character, with Garfield, Odie and Liz removed. Other minor characters appear occasionally, however.
- Mood Swinger: Jon. And how!
- Parody Assistance: Jim Davis not only approved of GMG, but has even produced several new strips himself.
- Remix Comic
- Sanity Slippage: Some of the comics in the video compilation linked in the YMMV tab show that Jon is slowly going mad. Examples include smushing ice cream cones into his face, dressing up for a date... that's in three weeks, jumping in the streets dressed as a pink clown, chasing cars in the manner of dogs, breaking down sobbing at the most random times, Madness Speak, and, finally, being sent to a Mental Hospital.
- Series Minus Series Core: Either the first, or at least most well-known of its type. Possibly the Trope Maker.
- Shout Out: In Pearls Before Swine here and here.
- Take That: Some of the more...high-brow comics aficionados out there initially (and approvingly) viewed the strip as being this to Jim Davis, who often gets dismissed as "uncouth" and as a sell-out in such circles. Then, the author clarified that he loves the original comics, which made said aficionados shut up for the most part.
- Jim Davis himself incidentally loves these remakes enough to have allowed them to be printed in a book form.
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