From Wikipedia: "Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, approved of the project, and an official Garfield book (also called Garfield Minus Garfield) was published by his company. It was mainly edited comics by Walsh, with some comics contributed by Davis."
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/private/61669516/fSymsOGXO...
Though that's not as strange as talking to your plants that seems to help the plants somehow.
[1] let's call it super rare because one in a trillion trillion is still not zero
[2] smarter birds too, can't say much about reptiles beyond a pond turtle really bonded with my brother
Or the one in "Garfield: his 9 lives" where a different incarnation of Garfield goes suddenly feral and kills the elderly woman owning him. Jim Davis didn't draw it, but he did script it!
[1] Garfield was originally created by Davis with the intention to come up with a 'good, marketable character' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield
I'd say there are things which suggest he's not entirely sincere about that.
Newspaper comic artists aren't working for free. They all want money. That's why they work.
My family were huge Garfield fans growing up and had a bunch of the books (one in German). The side characters were fun Odie, Lyman, the overly adorable kitten (Nermal), some relatives that came from a farm or something.
The “worst” thing was at some point it did seem like Davis was cranking them out for the newspaper without some of the care (though it might be I overdosed and became kind of sick of them). The other characters disappeared or became infrequent.
I don’t begrudge him though.
I think he kept his slot more out of nostalgia and risk adversion from the papers than anything else.
That Davis did it for the money is just "meh". Most people work for money.
I don't think anybody is arguing comic authors shouldn't make money out of their work.
The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics. You can dismiss this as some ridiculous search for "purity", but wouldn't you say most people imagine Watterson, Schultz, etc. went through a process more or less "I liked these other cartoons, and wouldn't it be cool to make something about <idea>/<childhood memories>/<something that inspired me>/<something that worries me>" vs "hey, let's make money, what kind of character would make me the most money?".
Davis is not the only one, of course.
Jim Davis has consistently said this, but really, take a look at strip #1. It's not funny, it's not cute. It's a cruel joke at his own expense - I don't think it's overanalyzing it to say that the cartoonist loser Jon is a stand-in for Jim. If this was a product of market research, it was the worst market research ever!
As an aside, over here (Argentina) we have an extremely marketing-oriented and bad comics author, Nik, who "invented" a cartoon cat vaguely similar to Garfield called "Gaturro", which started as a copy of Garfield with a slightly more political bent. It's as bad and bland as Garfield, without any trace of originality.
As Fight Club would have it, "a copy of a copy of a copy...".
I'm sure some of my vitriol against Garfield is influenced by my dislike of Nik and his Gaturro.
99% of everything commercially produced is somewhere between these and, if made by a person, part of a cannon, a body of work that grows and changes as the person does.
Just because an artist invites us into their mind does not mean we don’t owe them the respect we’d give a stranger. At least that’s how I look at it.
In the scale you're describing, he leans heavily towards making money and away from the art part. It's OK to feel scorn for this. It's also OK to respect it, but that's not me.
> Art without money is madness
This isn't what my comment was about, but I cannot refrain from answering: art can exist perfectly well without money. I'd say the vast majority of art humanity produces is not related to money at all. It is definitely not madness without money.
> Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
Sadly, I don't think the former is true, and I don't think the latter matters enough.
I used to binge read those meaningless colorful flip books to put myself to sleep.
Benadryl without the side effects.
Is it art? It felt like the smear of endless days I couldn’t escape and it was comforting. It didn’t challenge me, but I treasure it.
Like a child’s fairy tale that never ends and every day was just… ever after
... wha?
... huh?
I've created so much art in my spare time, for the sheer love and joy of it. It's done for me, but I've shared it with friends and family and they've also greatly appreciated it, and sometimes participated in it with me with splendid results. Money has never entered the equation.
Am I missing something, or am I correct in my reading of that statement? If I'm correct, I don't mean to be judgemental, but that's a horribly disappointing view of art, whatever the medium, and I'm sorry that you feel that way.
We are social animals. Art is storytelling. It has many utilities, but it is primarily education and entertainment.
A modern version of the cave painting is to distill complex and uncomfortable truths about the world for those who wish to thrive in a society built on lies.
If you want to go dig shiny rocks from the mountain at great personal risk to your mental and physical health for no benefit to society you are probably sick. If it heals you, that's its utility.
But if you find you're good at it and you want to use this skill for its intended purpose, you aught to be getting paid for it.
*Your mileage may vary. Just my take.
If that all makes me "sick", then fuck yeah, proud to be mentally ill. It's truly sad that doing something for pleasure, education, love, fascination and reverence (like being fascinated about how our planet shaped itself, or learning to play the guitar because you love music and think it's fun) is viewed as "mad" or "sick" if there isn't some kind of monetary return. YMMV indeed, but money is not everything.
What's sick, in my eyes, is only being able to view things through the lens of monetary value.
I appreciate your perspective, but I hope you appreciate that mine is just aligned with a more social view of the world.
Getting together with your friends and playing/creating music together, with/for yourselves, and for no financial gain is of tremendous value, for instance.
I find lots of joy in life without money entering directly into the equation (other than "without money I wouldn't be able to live").
When I start doing something I enjoy -- a hobby, an activity, a craft -- the first thought into my mind is definitely NOT "how can I monetize this?".
It can be, but it's not the only one.
> mine is just aligned with a more social view of the world
I wouldn't say this, no. It's just a money-oriented worldview, not a more social one.
In any case, I didn't say anything about art in my comment immediately above. I was disagreeing with your worldview.
I also didn't say anything about arts being less deserving of compensation.
Could you try addressing what other people actually say?
Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
I'm sure it impugns many of the classics (and later), not only Garfield! In my mind, it does impugn He-Man, G.I. Joe, etc. YMMV, of course.
> Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
There was a lot of artistry in the Looney Toons, the artists were both doing it for the money (of course) but also out of love for cartoons and they had ideas about them. It wasn't pure cold hearted market research. They didn't go "what would sell more stuffed toys, a pig or a rabbit?".
There must have been some of this too, of course, but have you read memories or articles about Tex Avery and other people involved? They truly cared about their craft. They had ideas about what they wanted to achieve, and it wasn't just "make money".
My point is, it changed, yes, but "The Internet" was always shit, and you can also always find good fun, as always. You can turn off the doom, and enjoy a good never-ending scroll of a myriad of fantastic hobbies and people sharing their human experience. It takes effort, just like it did back then.
We had "Altavista" and for a very short time it was OK, but then quickly decended into a ad-ridden "portal" This was 1997 or so.
The web was full of popups, and then popunders. It was not uncommon to close your browser in the computer-room, then have to close 20 popups that kept coming back. Some of which showing straight out porn. At least scams like viagra, "buy gold online" or "download more memory" malware.
Before Google, it was merely undoable to find anything useful between all the banners, gifs, "only readable in netscape" search-engines.
Before Mozilla/Firefox, popups made it almost impossible to browse the web for longer than half an hour before the browser crashed or the computer locked up.
Chat was insecure, scammers, groomers, malware injection, mitm was everywhere. There was no privacy.
Forums, BBSes and NNTP were full of "trolls" before this term was even known. Flamewars, flamebait, and again, scammers, groomers and malware everywhere.
I do have fond memories of this time. But also know these memories are distorted. It was a dark forest already.
The main difference, I believe, was that the majority of internet users back then were smart - mostly western - educated or young people. I.e. the "tech literate" folks. Those who know how to deal with malware, scams, groomers, privacy, hackers. Those who know how to navigate around popup-bombs, redirect-loops, illegal-content and criminals. But the bad stuff was there from the early days. Today, the "bad stuff" has shifted, from criminals into monopolized big-tech tapping our attention and data, but it has always been there, this dark side.
I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.
You prefer the corporate, censored, ad-ridden site that reddit is now? That is bizarre.
The internet of old was better, in my opinion. It took work to be there; now it takes work to not be there.
That is to say the trend predates the 2008 launch of the site.
Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope.
Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.
Getting malware just for existing? Early software firewalls that burned CPU cycles/crashed your PC? That were the only option because hardware firewalls were stupid expensive and not at all practical for residential use? Nope.
Norton Antivirus? ABSOLUTELY NOPE.
Blue screens when you looked at IE or Navigator the wrong way? Nope.
Flash? Lol, nope.
WAP? The 2004 kind? Lol, hell nope.
"This page is best viewed on Internet Explorer", i.e. IE4/5/6 or it's basically unusable? Nope.
Having to actually go seven or eight o's into the Gooooooooooooooooooooooogle footer to find what you were looking for? Def nope.
Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform.
You have to work hard to get hit with a virus these days, especially on iOS/macOS or Linux, though it's much harder on Android these days too. Also, I loved wasting my life on /., but Reddit is so much better, even after the API-pocalyse.
I definitely miss open messaging platforms though. AIM for life.
You just don't connect with people the same way on giant message boards or platforms like Reddit where you're one user out of a billion.
It was just... Smaller and personal, I guess?
It feels like everything today is optimized for monetization, ads, tracking, etc.
I guess I could summarize it as saying the internet went mainstream and changed its audience and charm.
Napster was good because it was new. And the music was yours when you got it.
Never used NAV. Never cared to. Linux didn't need it.
Hated Flash too, and never used it. Internet was still great without it.
WAP was new, too. But Ethernet existed, and we wired our house.
Used Firefox/Netscape Navigator. Avoided IE pages like the plague.
I do malware research. You're grossly underestimating how common malware is today. Ever hear of ransomware?
Not everything on the Internet is better today. Some things are, but many are not.
And don't even get me started on the cesspool that Reddit is.
smash like and subscribe, code blitz50 for 0.5% off sea of legends
> Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.
I was there too, and realized that these sort of reductions in speed made one far more mindful of what one was doing
> Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform
This too is particularly debatable. Applications are thin wrappers around web browsers, there are constant annoyances (want to receive notifications for this webpage? Not now? We’ll ask you later.) I bet if I pulled someone from 2005 they’d look at a lot of things on a current website and see malware. And is it really more cross platform when we’ve achieved that by having less platforms?
I first accessed the internet in 1998 through school. I still like it more how it was in those days. Most people didn't care about the Internet so the people lurking the Internet had a particular interest in it or were technically inclined.
Once some guys discovered they can make tons of money through the Internet, those good times are over.
It's like you travel to a beautiful place which is not popular. Once it starts becoming a major tourist attraction, it will be ruined for good in 20 years.
It was a whole era, folks. And I don't mean "does anyone else" Reddit crap that is absurdly naive. This was way more before and way more naive than that. You didn't have any expectation that you were normal (even if you were weird). You just did it to gauge how fucking weird you were.
It is surprisingly good.
I want to see Rogan Minus Rogan and Lex Minus Lex podcasts where all the host's speaking parts are cut out and you only hear the guest's replies.
Thanks in advance.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buD2RM0xChM Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juts9IlrixQ
After discovering Dwarkesh, Lex and Rogan have struck me as tragic waste. At worst a laundromat for psychopathic distortions, and at best a lazy unguided exhibition of the guest’s choosing.
https://qlymwesmrj.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/joe_without_joe.mp3
“Huhuhuhuhh.” “Wow.” “You wrote that?” “Who?” “Where is that from? What show is that from?”
Very interesting listening material I am sure
Super Eyepatch Wolf actually did a really interesting analysis about how Garfield entered the horror genera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE. I click on the video randomly out of curiosity, but I got really sucked in.
Remember, Jon is already talking to a cat who he assumes can't understand him & knows can't talk back. He might as well be talking into the abyss. Only we can read Garfield's inner monologue. Jon's actions are sometimes presupposed by Garfield's whims. This premise is already the basis of some horror or otherwise unsetting fiction.
If Garfield is there or not, if we focus on Jon as the main character of the strip, we might have to do some introspection, whether it's about expecting to have a conversation with cat as if he were your son, that our lives are as boring as his, etc. These are scary thoughts! Garfield's presence serves as a humorous distraction and allows us to forget these thoughts and laugh at Jon, even if briefly. In the same way, Freddy Krueger delivers funny one liners to break up the dread of realizing we're in some sort of living nightmare like people of Elm Street...
https://www.reddit.com/r/GarfieldMinusJon/
And if you want to get weird:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AlzheimersGroup/top/?t=year
Full list:
https://www.reddit.com/r/garfieldminusgarfield/comments/gxl2...
Did not think I would be relating to Jon on a Thursday morning.
There was a small YouTube documentary about finding the old comics in libraries and scanning them in. I the description of the video there is links to scans of all the ones they were able to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxiwjaUSYJM
or took soem movies and made all the villains super-attractive and the heroes ugly and dressed in black.
https://youtu.be/jKS3MGriZcs?si=RRlSVL0jwi5sDl3f
Removing the laugh track from the big bang theory
It feels slower and more natural. It also helps because I wouldn't have laughed at any of those spots with it without laugh track.
This is what's interesting about G-G. The tragedy was always there. We kinda knew the tragedy was always there, but we'd rather laugh at Jon with Garfield than commiserate with Jon.
Taking superheroes out of a random movie would lead to silliness, yes, but nothing poignant.
I used to have one stuck to the door of my doom room. No one laughed. :(
and an example I just made with the 'hold' feature: https://www.bgreco.net/garfield/?panel0=1984840901&panel1=19...
https://screenrant.com/15-dark-garfield-minus-strips-jon-dep...
HN has a gentle enough design that I can enjoy it without it sucking me in, but I make a conscious choice to avoid Reddit, twitter, et al.
You're right that this kind of novelty-seeking content has a profound impact on the brain. It's really interesting to see finally see longitudinal research, plus research on screens/novelty on child development (search for $thing + "psychosocial development").
One of the most encouraging thing I've taken away is that neutral pathways are still quite plastic well into adulthood.
For example, here's an experiment to try if you wake up and scroll in bed. After you do your morning routine, jot down a mood score (-1 feeling crummy, 0 meh neutral, +1 feeling good). You can do this for a week or two if you want to collect control data. Then, force yourself to get out of bed without looking at your phone (buy an alarm if you have too). You should see changes in your mood log within a week. Sleep regulates/replenishes dopamine levels, and scrolling through a dopamine wonderland first thing in the AM can result in dopamine dysregulation for the rest of the day. Try it!
TikTok's algorithm is based entirely on when you click the Like button and when you linger on a video, exactly like StumbleUpon's algorithm. StumbleUpon even had a video product, StumbleVideo, that was basically just TikTok.
But, in 2018, when StumbleUpon shut down and sold their assets to Mix, the prevailing wisdom was that people didn't want to use StumbleUpon because they wanted to use Reddit and Facebook, to follow curated feeds of links, instead of random links that other people like.
If that wisdom were true, TikTok should have failed too, because TikTok just gives you "random stuff that similar people like," just like StumbleUpon.
I guess it just goes to show that there's no accounting for the rise and fall of social media apps/networks.
(Maybe it's the swiping gesture? Maybe the gesture is more comfortable in portrait?? But it's hard to see why that would make or break a video app like this…)
Pretty interesting timeline of events in their Wikipedia article:
Kagi has brought it back (kind of): https://kagi.com/smallweb has a random button (Next Post in the top left corner)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/05/kevin-rose-and-alexis-ohan...
it seems like a few social media sites took over from the random delight of finding someone’s little weblog or side project.
I hear they’re trying to buy it back and restart with their uber gains
E.g. here's a quirky image effect: https://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=13
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/19400379301/i-made-a-...
Garfield minus Garfield is still just as eerie and depressing despite knowing the "source material". I love it.
https://boingboing.net/2014/03/09/garfield-without-garfields...
And if you like "garfield minus garfield" then perhaps I can also introduce you to Chief O'Brien at Work https://chiefobrienatwork.com/
I didn't know I needed this, but now that you shared it—I NEEDED IT!
So to me, G-G is absolute gold.
A. Why are there 2 comics per day? B. Why are the dates seemingly random?
So, at least for the vast majority of these: manual.
(It probably also isn't particularly difficult in many cases, considering the monochrome backgrounds.)
Edit: if you want to ruin your day, check out this C&H fan art https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6vwll2/is_...
It's not reality. Hobbes it's not unambiguously stated to be a figment of Calvin's imagination either.
That's a fine interpretation but it's not canonical. Watterson wanted the ambiguity, as Wikipedia mentions (sorry, I don't have the interview with the direct quote where Watterson states this):
> "[Watteron] gave an example of this in discussing his opposition to a Hobbes plush toy: that if the essence of Hobbes' nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic."
Similarly creep and unsettling.
Really changes the tone, though in that case it doesn't ruin it, just makes it different.
Obviously it still wasn't as darkly observant as the movie, but it did have a edge.
Reflexive dismissals of shows with laugh tracks are lazy.
I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.
