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Survival Of The Fattest

What’s the most influential comic of all time? That’s easy - let me answer that in the form of a question, Jeopardy-style. What’s fat, orange and hates Mondays?

The brainchild of American cartoonist Jim Davis, the fuzzy bundle of sarcasm that is Garfield was created in 1978 by Davis with the intention to “come up with a good, marketable character”. After fluffing around with an unsuccessful bug-themed comic strip called Gnorm Gnat, Davis hit on the idea that perhaps cats would be more appealing than insects to the average reader, and history was made. Picked up by United Features Syndicate, the comic strip reading public was treated to a kaleidoscopic array of mild humour, continuing to the present day and presumably into the far future - the robo-assistants that churn out Davis’s strip on a daily basis can easily produce infinite variations of the Garfield themes of laziness, greed, diets and Mondays. Friends and I would often suggest that Jim Davis was actually a huge supercomputer - J.I.M. D.A.V.I.S. - coldly calculating the stripy furball’s sarcastic pronouncements with laser-like precision and market-tested accuracy to achieve mass-appeal. I see little evidence to the contrary - Garfield regularly pulls in between 750 million to 1 billion dollars per year in merchandising and the strip holds the Guinness world record for most syndicated strip cartoon, appearing in around 2580 publications.

These are just stats though - just because something’s huge, it doesn’t mean it’s influential. Okay, let’s talk about influence. Have you seen/ heard of The Simpsons? Have a look at Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s weekly strip Life In Hell sometime - it’s got Garfield written all over it (albeit in a deconstructed/postmodern form). While drawn - at least initially - in a scrappy, deliberately ratty-line style akin to artist Gary Panter, Life In Hell features the Davis trademarks of big bug eyes and super-minimalist set pieces (lifted in turn by Davis from Peanuts creator Charles Schultz) with the neuroses ramped up to the max. This stylistic similarity may be a contributing factor as to how the public came to accept the Simpsons so rapidly - it was visually familiar, but contained little droplets of hipster chic, keeping it fresh. To take another angle - when you were at primary school, did you know anyone who drew cartoons using the big Garfield/Simpsons-style eyes? Did you ever draw like that?

What’s the buzz? Why is Garfield popular? I’ll tell you why - he’s hip, he’s the cool shades-wearing, wise-cracking new-wave modern dude. He spanned the 70s/80s/90s divide like no other - in the chubby shadow of his omniscience, other talents shrivelled away, died, or simply gave up (I’m talking about acclaimed heavy hitters like The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes). He’s the Magnificat. So it’s kind of surprising that the main themes of the strip are generally his owner Jon’s (and by implicit extension, the reader’s) all-consuming neuroses and deep existential grief. This can be seen via the recent deconstructions of Garfield circulating on the internet. The most famous of these is Garfield Minus Garfield, a site featuring strips where Garfield and all other characters have been meticulously removed from the comic, leaving Jon to wander aimlessly, talking to himself and wallowing in ennui and self pity.

What I particularly enjoy about these strips are the panels where no characters are present, leaving pastel colour fields in the wake of narrative. A clever variation on this tactic is Garfield with no thought balloons, an experiment across a number of internet message boards with the aim to make Garfield “funnier” or simply “funny”. Taking the premise that Jon Arbuckle can’t hear his cat’s thoughts, Garfield with no thought balloons showcases life from Jon’s perspective with similar alienating/depressing results. There’s also the Garfield Randomiser, an algorithm that creates new strips by randomly rearranging panels from old ones. My personal fave, Lasagne Cats, takes a different tack - live action recreations of Garfield strips posted on YouTube, closely modelled on the originals with an accompanying laugh track (invariably emphasising the lameness of the punch lines), followed by a remix of the video with pop music over the top. Created as a “tribute” to Jim Davis, Lasagne Cats really carries across the weak humour of Garfield - the actor who plays Jon is hilariously bland.

It’s these kinds of fugitive, surprisingly formalist activities that are keeping Garfield fresh and interesting. A recent crappy feature film aside, Garfield keeps popping up in different contexts - he’s featured as a kind of spiritual totem in US art collective Paper Rad’s psychedelic comics and videos. I wonder if that’s all considered as part of the marketing plan: Davis’ operatives subtly positioning the lasagne-loving feline both at the centre and the periphery of what constitutes comics today. Garfield is both the definitive vacuum tube for cash and a groovy hipster icon of the counterculture. It’s interesting to note that the Garfield Randomiser was shut down for a period but is now back in action and a collection of Garfield Minus Garfield will soon be wending its way to a bookstore near you, with full Jim Davis thumbs up approval. A perfect money-making vehicle, as long as Garfield continues to be “good and marketable” anything goes - at this point production has even extended beyond Davis’ organisation, people are making the product (the icon) for free! It’s this kind of ambitious, world conquering attitude on behalf of its creator that makes Garfield the most influential comic of all time.*

Christopher J. Cudby

Well, what have we got here.

some mid eighties good all american propaganda!

qaddafi is to be laught at, he s this crazy african leader,yes i know from an arab country, so he s exposed here as a brute and a feral character.very settle i know.

CHECK OUT THE BOTTOM PAGE

Disturbing Reagen while he s playing croquet! no that is unsocialised, “we dont do things like that around here “explain the american leader.

oh really?ok then, back to the wilderness then.

would you like some more

check this place out

http://www.geocities.com/nenslo/wwcbm.html

bye for now!

there is something out there for everyone!

Yes there is, imagine you are mexican, prone to communism and you like to illustrate.

well this little gem here is the work of Rius, a mexican cartoonist, and is nothing else than the daily version of a doctrine that has seduced numerous people and served egomaniacs rightly.

Stalin would have probably be a DIFFERENT leader if he d read this, i can only imagine though.

hey folks, here is one of the first contribution to the fanzine by Toby morris, all the way from Amsterdam.

he shared with us his most influential comic, and funnily enough its a new zealand comic by Tim Bollinger called Absolute heroes

It was Absolute Heroes that sparked it all off for me.

Actually I think The Clean is a good comparison to make. Maybe Dylan Horrocks, for example, is Neil Finn – an undeniable master of the form – full of tender beauty – and Tim Bollinger is all The Clean rolled into one – kind of rambling, loose and shambolic but bursting with awesome ideas and wild energy, and just so uniquely and unashamedly New Zealand.

if you d like to know more about tim bollinger s absolute heroes go there

http://www.comics.org.nz/wiki/index.php?title=Absolute_Heroes

and here is toby s bio and links

http://www.comics.org.nz/wiki/index.php?title=Toby_Morris

more to come, sit tight!

here you go guys, the free fleet fm publication(once known as fanzine) is about to it the street.a brand new issue dedicated to comics and their creators.numerous fleet fm contributors and also the most interesting nz contributors have laid down for you a graphic smorgaasborg!so be ready for a nice surprise this spring.

i will post some of them as we go and keep those nice treats coming.

you lucky bunch!