Breaking News - Garfield Dies in Los Angeles!

A long time ago, I thought I might be a comic strip artist/writer. I've always appreciated the medium and was lucky enough to grow up in (what I view as) the golden age of newspaper comics. Bloom County, the Far Side and, of course, Calvin & Hobbes all took the medium to the next level and provided myself and others of like minds with bathroom reading for years still to come.

One comic I never liked was Garfield. Actually, that's not true. As a young child I actually did like Garfield for that couple of years where you order books out of catalogs at school. I think I was six. It didn't take long to grow out of it. After all, there's only so many lasagna Mondays you can take. I came to forget about it rather quickly and moved onto the strips above.

Later in life, I heard an interview with Jim Davis, Garfield's creator. It made me sad to find out that the whole merchandising angle of Garfield was really the entire reason for his inception, that Jim was really an advertising guy out to make a buck (of which he's made more than a few). Slate put out a great article that goes into detail on Paws, Inc. right around the time the inspid movie came out.

So my comic strip loving heart soared this morning when I found that the Los Angeles Times (my hometown paper nonetheless) made the decision to cut Garfield from it's roster. I hate to cheer the end of something that's gone on so long but perhaps it's a step in the right direction.

posted by Gavin Purcell @ 6:57 AM