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No. 5984: Exploration #4 of the Arbuckle House

First | Previous | 2025-10-06 | Latest

Exploration #4 of the Arbuckle House

First | Previous | 2025-10-06 | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=5984

Strip by: eulersidentitycrisis

{The comic is composed of three segments. The left and right segments are full of footnotes, which will be transcribed when we get to them. The middle segment contains a spiral with various speech bubbles, spoken by seemingly nobody, arranged in a clockwise manner. The speech bubbles are as follows.}

???: Poor little guy's gonna starve [41]
???: The solitude, the companionship
???: And now, they're gone
???: Everyone has their breaking point
???: I wonder how long this one will last [43]
???: You've just made history, Jon [44]

{The footnotes are as follows}

[41]: The reader would do well to note Garfield's propensity for big eating. [42]

[42]: See footnote 23.

{Footnote 43 is in a different font altogether. Any instances of the word "Garfield" in the text are orange}

[43]: I'm wondering the same thing as well. I know the old man must have had a ridiculous amount of time on his hands if he could extend this strip to such an absurd length.

I tried to talk to Lude about Garfield today. He looked at me as if I asked him to swallow my foot. "Garfield? Like the comic strip with the fat cat?". I tried to explain to him that Garfield was never about the cat, never about Jon or Odie, but he wouldn't listen.

How could he listen? He's never felt the claws of the cat pierce his back, the smell of lasagna pervading the room. He's never woken up from an unseen nightmare with nothing but the harsh pain of being kicked off a table. He's never even heard of Gnorm Gnat.

I left Lude to his fickle pleasures of drugs and hedonism. They don't comfort me anymore. Of course, neither do these strips.

The more time passes, the more I'm convinced that Jim Davis never existed.

{Footnote 44 is red and struck out}

[44]: Engel, I.B (2019). Garfield the Cat as Icon and Beast.

The author writes:

Through animation and anthropomorphizing, Garfield is able to dismantle the consequences that the characters might cause, removing the stakes and allowing humor to be regarded unfettered. As the Christ-like figure, Garfield can exist comfortably in a perpetual grey area: too cat to be a human, too human to be a cat, and too unreal to exist. – Iris B. Engel, "It's Garfield's World, We Just Live in It: An Exploration of Garfield the Cat as Icon, Money Maker, and Beast"

As much as I'd love to call this a parody/tribute/whatever of House of Leaves, it doesn't have nearly enough footnotes for that title.

Original strips: 1987-12-06, 1996-06-09, 1999-06-23, 2010-02-13, 2011-01-31, 2011-03-02, 2023-01-15.