Today's "Family Circus" is alarming. . .

. . . if only because I worry these Gargantu-ants won't get their "DEVOUR DEVOUR DEVOUR" pheromones keyed up quickly enough.

Book Review: "Garfield Minus Garfield"

From the outset, Garfield Minus Garfield seems like an odd choice for a book. The year-old webcomic based around the concept of the complete removal of Garfield from Jon Arbuckle's life represents some of the most creative extremes of independent online thought. In fact, the practice dates back to message board collaboration (such as this) started years before Dan Walsh created a site around it and started getting famous.

In fact, I created this one long before Walsh's site debuted, during the "remove Garfield's dialogue" phase of the idea:


The concept of removing Garfield and his dialogue from the strip is, in a way, a sublime criticism of a fairly bland, obvious comic strip. "Garfield" has the makings of a fine comic within it, but all-too-often overdoes the punchline by giving Garfield some vapid one-liner. Removing him altogether improves the humor immeasurably, making it relevant and surreal, and drawing attention to Jon's neurosis and misery:


So one would wonder: what could be the appeal of a book based on a webcomic created by somebody who appropriated a great idea from a bunch of nobodies, a book which is published by the same group which publishes Garfield books and even gives Jim Davis a chance to participate in what should be a condemnation of his own work? Yes, one would wonder that.

But now I have the book, and it is glorious.

Whatever the genesis of the underlying idea, the one behind Garfield Minus Garfield is a great one, and having so many of these comics reproduced in book form is extremely satisfying. It's easy enough to ignore the original Garfield comics printed alongside the minus versions above (smaller and sans color) that they don't become distracting. I would have liked to see two columns of Garfield-free comics instead, as they're funnier without their context, but the book's appeal remains untainted.

And allowing Jim Davis twenty pages near the end to try his own minus comics serves as a wonderful condemnation of his own strip, even better than if he had rejected the idea and tried to have the site shut down. Because he completely misunderstands the point, ignoring the wonderous non sequiturs and darker punchlines the format provides by selecting strips that already have a fully-formed Jon joke. Jim Davis appears fully convinced that removing Garfield merely underscores Jon's loneliness, rather than improving the pacing and subtlety of the comic. Poor guy. But I recommend the book.

Links/Reading:

Garfield Minus Garfield
A full explanation of the concept with links
Dilbert mashups bring in the fun

Fundamentalist nutjob cartoonist Jack Chick explains the error of fictional holiday figures in a gripping tale of murder and spiraling insanity

Most Jack Chick tracts exhibit a slow-burning incivility, a quiet offensiveness and absurd overstatement that makes them unsuitable as a subject of anger. The parsing of small, out-of-context snippets of Biblical verse into the text to emphasize whatever evangelical talking point Jack had in mind at the moment - coupled with text added to the verses whenever the Bible didn't make the same point Jack wanted - absurd consequences for sin ("Charlie smoked marijuana against his parents' wishes and was run over by a car!") and outlandish, subtlety-free writing hardly elevate it above, say, Mary Worth as a subject of religious education or parody.

Nevertheless I've been reading a couple of his online tracts this afternoon with the cynicism I reserve for irony-free douchebaggery, neither offended nor particularly amused. Until on the third strike I ran into his tract "Fairy Tales," which hit comedy gold. For those without the desire to read the story I'll summarize the gripping tale of self-destruction below:


We witness a veritable mural of emotion, a group of protesters - murderous, obese trolls on the left side (including the rather amusing goblin near the edge of the panel mumbling "Kill, Kill!"), bespectacled religious conservatives on the right. Harry's parents insist that this can't be happening!; their son was always a "sweet little boy." The answers are simpler than reasonable people would imagine, and only require a brief trip into Harry's past:


Harry's parents unfortunately fall into the trap of other well-meaning, but ultimately Satanic and hellbound parents - they begin to indoctrinate Harry with the lies of secular society, teaching him about the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (and, no doubt, about the moon landing and flouridated water). Obviously deeply disturbed, Harry gathers these fictional creatures up until they form the core of his very identity, until one fateful day. Oh, let's watch:


This is when things start to get awesome. Just so you know, the wide-eyed little Edward Scissorhands in the story really does kill a kid in the schoolyard. And this kid's murdering spree isn't over, you'll be happy to know:


Keen observers will notice that this story is a little devoid of warm-hearted religious significance at this point, so this is when Jack ramps up the story; Harry's cellmate learns about and accepts Jesus. Harry, uh, doesn't:


After all of this carefully-constructed buildup Harry's end seems almost a little too abrupt:


Other ironic fans of Jack Chick may enjoy the thrilling twist at the end of "Oops!" or the story where Satan kills a bunch of teenagers with a chainsaw.

Other tales of the kookiest side of religion:

Why Santa Claus is the Devil
The Philippines' [Voluntary] Good Friday Crucifixions
A Jack Chick parody with quotes from the Necronomicon (PDF)

Medium Large nails the Tinsey/Carroll Crossover

Today's Medium Large is only an April Fool's joke, but this wonderful absurdity is one of the funniest strip in weeks.

Forest For the Trees Banners

I've created the following banners for Forest For the Trees, . They're not really intended for use (seeing as they don't even have any HTML), but I think they look pretty nice.

Webcomic Goodness

Wow, talk about a standard to shoot for. It's nerd humor to be sure, but the intricacy and creativity involved intimidates and awes me. Good job, Creebobby.

In related news, I've posted my new comic. It's. . . thrilling.

Obama and the Ring

(click the image to enlarge)

Well, I already wrote about the news involved, but this cartoon by Terrence Nowicki, Jr. makes its point far more quickly and dramatically than any analysis. Hint: Read the writing on the ring.

A gross stomach ruined the internet

Please save the web, interweb p.i.

The political cartoon that wasn't

I found this on my hard drive. I don't remember saving it. Maybe my past self knew that February Fourth Me would think it was funny.

Harness the Bush hatred

And in honor of the Bush legacy, this classic Achewood (click to enlarge):



Another golden Achewood: The power of sentences

Mark Trail Goodness

I don't really read Mark Trail regularly (unless Josh Fruhlinger showcases it), but it's hard to ignore this masterpiece:

More carthartic humor

As long as I've given up any semblance of impartiality regarding Blackwater, here's an excellent political cartoon that pretty much sums up my philosophy on mercenary contractors:

Cartoon by Jeff Danziger
(Click the image to enlarge or follow the link)

And as long as we're linking Dinosaur Comics: The Midas Touch

The text and metatext of this one were just too good not to transcribe for easy reading, with a few edits to fit the new format. I wish I'd thought of the following story. The least I could do was ham up the following image in tribute:



The Myth of King Midas

Midas was a king who was nice to a friend of the God of Wine, and so he gets a wish from the God of Wine! NICE! And so Midas wishes that everything he touched would turn to gold. Instantly the ground he's standing on transforms to gold!

The gold change races across the planet's surface and down into the mantle like a shockwave, transmuting it instantly. In seconds, the Earth's iron-nickel core becomes pure non-ferrous gold, and the planet's magnetic field is lost. Unshielded from solar wind, every living creature begins to absorb fatal levels of radiation. The soft gold of the planetary crust, unable to sustain the weight placed upon it, begins to buckle and distort.

Midas watches in horror as his planet dies a golden death.

He's soon overcome by the terrible sensation of drowning on dry land: any air that touches his lungs is being transmuted on contact into tiny flecks of gold. He suffocates and dies as his lungs fill with the precious metal. Air that touches his cooling body continues to transmute, and he's soon covered in a fine golden layer of ash.

Later, aliens discover Midas' body and use him as a highly unstable source of gold, keeping him in vacuum suspension with magnetic fields. But their ship soon suffers a power failure, Midas hits the floor, and the ship is transmuted. The ship drifts until drawn in by the gravitational field of a backwater planet, where it crashes and causes the planet to suffer the same fate as Earth. We join our story centuries later as our heroes, bounty hunters seeking the near-mythic Midas Flesh, successfully break quarantine and get past the defences erected around the planet. they are the first to land on the Second Golden Planet.

. . . The End?


(As long as I'm stealing Mr. North's stuff and editing it I'm going to go ahead and recommend the incredible Dinosaur Comics collection for your Christmas shopping needs.)

Fascinating, Futile, Recursive Party Games

Here's one for the metamath crowd.

Basic Instructions

Scott Adams has been hyping the half-webcomic Basic Instructions for some time now, and it definitely echoes the wit of some of the earlier Dilbert books like the amazing Clues For the Clueless.

It's pretty consistently goofy, but as soon as I read this strip I ran right to Blogger. You can thank me later.

You Crazy, Francesco

I don't think I've ever seen something like this before - a cartoonist doing a parody of his own strip on his webcomic. The possibility of a sweartastic Sally Forth just got that much closer.

Why I love Dinosaur Comics. . .

If there's a better mashup of the silly and sublime I don't know what it is. (From Tuesday. The day before's was pretty great as well.)

Garfield Minus Garfield and Related Surrealism

I've been hip to the whole "minus Garfield" phenomenon for some time now, but every time I come back to it I find a new wealth of humor and resonant comedy. And I'm being serious.

The deal is that Garfield (the comic strip) can be immensely improved by removing the titular character (Garfield himself) entirely. As far as I know, the whole thing began a couple of years ago, on the goofy message board Truth and Beauty Bombs, where an idea proposed by MackJ spiralled into a netwide phenomenon.

Mack proposed that removing Garfield's often-redundant dialogue would improve the strip, and by gum he was right. The strip took an odd, surreal tone that made it much more readable:


But with Garfield acting as the straight man to Jon's depressed madness the strip still didn't have the schadenfreude, the madness, the isolation that it needed to become truly great. Later in the thread, people got the idea to remove Garfield entirely, and the idea took off.

Earlier this year, GarfieldMinusGarfield.net was born, and achieved a modest level of success. The idea is hardly original at this point, and some of the strips featured on the site are direct copies from early samples on the TruthAndBeautyBombs thread, but it's such a convenient place to read Minus Garfield strips that I still feel inclined to celebrate it. If these examples don't compel you to check out the site's archives, feel free to read more of my cynical political ramblings.

Mary Worth Awesomeness

I'm not a regular reader of Mary Worth, by any means, but I couldn't help but enjoy the awesomeness in the second panel of the following strip:


I tried several sendups of this line myself, first with a Samuel L. Jackson sort of delivery ("EDUCATECHOSELF!") that didn't really come across in print. I've since revised to the following wonderful image, suitable for framing:

You tell her, Mary.

We Meta-Love XKCD

Like so many similarly-inclined folk, I found this XKCD strip pretty touching, in a nostalgic sort of way. It's a celebration of geek culture as something more than mere geekery, praise of giddy ambition and optimistic camaraderie. (I hesitate to mention that it's also a bit of a downer as my own attempt at a webcomic was far too introverted and scattershot to resonate with so many people*. XKCD has a way of constantly reminding me why it's king.)

Well, a group of happy geeks has gone ahead and made homage to the strip (which itself is an homage to this delightful Discovery Channel clip) by acting it out verbatim, and they've done a remarkable job:




* It's interesting that it's been more than three months since my last Forest For the Trees update, yet a goodly number of you folk continue to visit it daily. In response, I'll be continuing that little adventure in webcomicry this fall, hopefully for good.)