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No. 711: Orson's Farm Abridged (Final Episode)

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Orson's Farm Abridged (Final Episode)

First | Previous | 2023-07-13 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/itoons/?comic=711

Strip by: shiningpikablu252

{full-color scene where Orson walks up to a sign reading "The End is Near"}
{cut to a scene, now presented in black-and-white, with Orson and Bo by a telephone}
Orson: "Uh, what happened to the color?"
{cut to a vertically-shrunken scene where Orson, Booker, and Sheldon walking toward a sunset, with a TV on the right in the foreground depicting another Orson on it}
Walking Orson: "Better warn the Arbuckles and Lymans"
Orson on TV: "Th-tha-th-tha that's all folks!"
Message below Orson on TV: "Thanks! Jim Davis & Brett Koth"

The author writes:

Yep, readers, surely you thought "Uh-oh, what lame idea has he cooked up this time?" upon seeing my username. It came about looking through a collection of July 1988 U.S. Acres strips, and seeing one with a particular sign. Considering the strip was no longer running by that time the year afterward... Furthermore, I knew that one particular high-quality archive had stopped with the color—even on the Sunday ones—before getting close to the end, and indeed the color never resumed (the latter two panels came from the day the color vanished and the day the strip ended, respectively), granting a perfect story angle for a parody of abridged series! Of course...were the denizens of the farm ever aware of a certain disappearance from the Arbuckle household? (On the contrary, they may have never been aware the guy was even there in the first place, despite how I wrote the script out—that guy only made one single cameo appearance in Garfield during the entire run of U.S. Acres between both strip and television...)

Apologies to the makers of all those Abridged Series out there (yes, even the bad ones, even though even those are better than my lame output), I'm sure you now hate me for mocking your art form...Just don't take it out on iToons as a whole, OK? And even though I used "Final Episode" in the title, this is the only "episode" I've made and plan to make, so don't bother looking for others...

(Also, I opted to use the international title of Orson's Farm in this strip's title so as to not completely confuse international audiences who don't know what the heck U.S. Acres even is. American audiences are less likely to be confused from the use of the Orson's Farm title as opposed to the U.S. Acres title, as the Orson's Farm title has at least seen some circulation there, mainly via one line of region 1 DVD releases of Garfield and Friends based off the international prints, and many of the savvier fans around the world already know both titles—hence why the credits below include both titles...)

Original U.S. Acres (Orson's Farm) strips: 1988-07-29, 1989-02-01, 1989-05-07.