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No. 4035: "We're Bachelors, Baby", but every time Garfield says "bachelors" it gets progressively glitchier

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Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=4035

Strip by: KelpTheGreat

{A perfectly-normal Garfield strip}
Jon: Look at all the dead bugs in that ceiling lamp
Garfield: Yup
Jon: Huh
Garfield: Huh
Jon: I wonder what's on TV?
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{There is another strip below the perfectly-normal one, but it is noticeably grainier}
Jon: Oops... I dropped the guacamole
{beat panel}
Jon: Good thing that rug is green
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{There is another strip below that one, which is starting to look distorted and blurry}
Jon: I just checked...
Jon: All we have left for dinner are ramen noodles and chocolate pudding
Jon: Are we lucky or what?
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{There is another strip below; the color looks off and the panels are blurry}
{beat panel, Jon and Garfield looking at a massive pile of dirty dishes}
{second beat panel, Jon looks at Garfield}
Jon: We need new dishes
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{Another strip; the color looks washed-out and is bleeding into other areas, and a small portion of the top of the entire strip is disjointed from the rest}
Jon: I dried my socks in the microwave...
Jon: And now they smell like last night's macaroni and cheese!
Garfield: Sweet
Jon: Mmmmmm
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{Another strip; all color is gone except for Jon's shirt and hair, and Garfield's fur, and the strip is covered in visual artifacts}
{Jon sitting at a table with Garfield; flies are buzzing around Jon}
{Jon sniffs his armpit}
Jon: Laundry day
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{Another strip; even more color is gone now as only part of Jon's shirt and Garfield's fur are colored in, and it's getting very hard for me to come up with words to describe how weird the strip looks}
Jon: I've gotta admit...
Jon: That moosehead towel rack looks great in the bathroom
Jon: Really goes well with the snakeskin shower curtain
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{Another strip; it looks glitchy and bad; there are digital "dead areas" in the lower-right two-thirds of the strip; Garfield has lost 90% of his color and Jon's hair is greenish-brown}
Jon: Maybe Liz is right. Maybe this place could use a good cleaning...
{beat panel}
Jon: And maybe chickens say "moo"
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{Another strip; it's glitchy}
Liz: Jon, when was the last time you cleaned your oven?!
Jon: I didn't
Liz: -EVER?!
Jon: The manual said it was self-cleaning!
Garfield: We're bachelors, baby

{Another strip; most of the text is illegible and the pictures are covered in swaths of random, clashing colors}
Jon: I have no clean clothes to wear
Jon: I guess I'll just have to {the rest of the text is covered up}
Jon: Although I could make {the rest of the text is covered up}
Garfield {barely visible behind a veil of teal}: bachelors, baby

{Yet another strip; words fail me}
Jon: The tuna noodle casserole just burst into flames
{beat panel}
Jon: I'll hose it down {illegible} you get the catsup
Garfield: We're bachelors {illegible}

{One final strip; virtually none of the text or images can be made out, as they are lost, swimming in a sea of visual distortion and randomly-colored armies of renegade pixels. Part of the dialogue of the third panel has migrated to just beneath part of the dialogue in the first panel}
Liz?: I'd like to order a
Jon?: {illegible} like a {illegible} pressure gauge?
Liz?: {illegible} for my boyfriend

The author writes:

This one was fun to make, if difficult and time-consuming. I started off by repeatedly saving an original strip into different formats in Microsoft Paint, losing a bit of quality with each save, but that only took me so far before I needed some other way to degrade the image's quality. For most of the strips, I used this image glitch tool I found online.

I created the progressively glitchier strips with two criteria in mind. First, that it had to be just that - a progression - and second, that you had to be able to read the word "bachelors" in each strip (except for the last, because that's when the progression ends). After all, if you couldn't actually tell Garfield had said "bachelors", then I couldn't rightfully go on and make the next strip worse. I think I succeeded on both accounts.

Note that the strips are not progressively glitchier in the order they were originally published in. I set out intending to do that, but after certain combinations of image degradation led to certain strips being more obviously glitchy than another, I rearranged them to prioritize the progression.

Finally, you can't actually tell, but the very last strip used was a Sunday, which I cut down to just three panels: panels 3, 5, and 6.

Title and general idea inspired by SRoMG #2883, strips used followed the same links as in #989, for my own convenience.

Original strips: 2006-11-06, 2006-11-07, 2006-11-08, 2006-11-09, 2006-11-10, 2006-11-11, 2007-09-03, 2008-03-27, 2009-04-23, 2009-07-22, 2010-05-10, 2010-12-19.