How This Cartoon Made Everybody Love Garfield Again

It's an impossible job, but Gale Galligan is up to the task.
How This Cartoon Made Everybody Love Garfield Again

Hot take alert: Garfield is not the world's most exciting newspaper comic. After all, the strip turned 40 a few days ago, and there are only so many times an orange cat can maul a lasagna before your audience begins contemplating the void. In fact, its only positive quality might be that cartoonist Jim Davis doesn't spend his days spewing conspiracy theories and incoherent psychobabble like the Dilbert guy. So it's all sorts of hilarious that when a good version of Garfield comes along, the internet goes gonzo for it -- which they did for this recent and wonderful fan comic by artist Gale Galligan.

So ORNEXT Tme ID UKE You TO BRING IN 1WO PENCILED PAGES. THEY CAN BE ABOUT ANYTHINO, BUIT YOU HAVE TO INCLDE ONG OF FACH KIND OF SHOT OKAY? AND UM. RE
Gale Galligan

What makes this comic -- which is the second part of a hopefully ongoing series -- so great is the fact that Galligan gives the character Jon some actual, well, character. He's not a whiny, apathetic, dog-semen-guzzling loser in this world -- he's an artist and teacher who, after a long spell in the artistic wilderness, gets drawn into the modern world of comics, one in which conventions, social media, and fandoms are king.

LIKE..I HAVEN'T DONE WHAT DOES IT A CONVENTION IN AGES. MEAN IE I DON'T ARE MY BOOKS ENOUGHR SELL ANYTHING?2 WiL 1 FIT IN2 WHAT ARE PEOPUE EVEN INTO?
Gale Galligan

SRE
Gale Galligan

It doesn't try to say anything clever or biting about the original comics. If anything, it's an ode to them -- a touching, emotional, adorably drawn ode, and by golly gosh, that's enough. See, if the internet loves to do anything, it's reinvent Garfield in new, weird, and interesting ways, from the absurdist nonsense that is Dan Walsh's Garfield Minus Garfield ...

I'M GOING TO THROW GOSH. HOCE 1 DON'T MVSELF A SURPRISE SUSFCT ANYTHING RARTY C 728
Dan Walsh

HA!HA!HA!HA! ELLEN LIKES MEN W/ho ARE HA! HA! HA! HA! ABLE TO LALGH AT THEMSELVES Ju DAVE 9.lb
Dan Walsh

... to Shawn Bowers and his Garfemon series ...

How This Cartoon Made Everybody Love Garfield Again
Shawn Bowers

How This Cartoon Made Everybody Love Garfield Again
Shawn Bowers

... to the sheer double-you-tee-effness of Lasagna Cat.

In a weird way, it's good that Jim Davis is so dedicated to his hustle. If he'd spent decades building a comic with richly nuanced characters and storylines, these artists wouldn't have had such a blank slate to work with. Garfield is basically the elemental feline ur-myth, not unlike Bast or the manticore, and the internet is out there building wonderful stuff from his Monday-hating mythos.

Seriously, check out all of Gale Galligan's work, and when you've finished that, take a look at her store and her Patreon. Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter about depressing history that you should definitely subscribe to.

Support Cracked's journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out The British Media Just Fell For The Dumbest Trolling Ever and This Mythical Creature Is Made Entirely Out Of Butts.

You can follow us on Facebook any day of the week.

Tags:

Scroll down for the next article
Forgot Password?