Comic Strip Review: Garfield

Yo, here's a strip from the vault of time - the first Garfield from June 19, 1978. Click it to enlarge it if you want.


Now I'll admit to being a fan of the fat cat for decades. But in all those years, I had no freakin' idea Jon was supposed to be a cartoonist! When I recently came across this debut strip, I was floored by this fact. My only knowledge of the blue shirt-wearing lame-o is that he sat around drinking coffee, reading the paper, calling potential dates and talking to his cat. Sometimes I even wondered how he made a living as he never seemed to go to work. Real life cartoonist, Jim Davis musta decided to drop that from the comic or it was rarely mentioned. A cartoonist, who wudda thunk it?

I love those early drawings of Garfield before he became more cute. He sure was fat and lazy back then. See how his belly just weighs him down? Ha ha ha!

One more thing, is this comic supposed to be a joke? I mean, is "feed me" really the zinger? It was the first comic strip to pick up on cat humor so maybe all you cat people love it. I don't own a cat (I'm a bird after all) so maybe I just don't get it.

Did you know Jon was a cartoonist? Have you ever seen him draw anything?