Disturbing Garfield Comic Strips From 1989

I feel quite lucky to have grown up in what I consider to be a golden age of modern newspaper comic strips. As a kid I was able to enjoy The Far Side, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and Bloom County in their prime- all brilliant and sadly, all currently defunct. Jim Davis' omnipresent Garfield (subject of a terrible film) was huge in my junior high school. But my peers and I quickly grew out of it when more sophisticated and twisted comic strips came onto the scene.

But I was recently made aware of a bizarre and depressing series of Garfield comic strips that actually ran in newspapers back in late October 1989. Speculation ran wild when this storyline was recently rediscovered. Some thought that perhaps Garfield was dead. Others postulated that Garfield was starving to death in an abandoned home and that the whole comic was just a figment of his imagination. Although some may secretly wish death upon this fat feline, creator Jim Davis has recently debunked the speculation and is reported to have "laughed loudly" when informed of the rumors. He stated that "during a writing session for Halloween week, I got the idea for this decidedly different series of strips. I wanted to scare people. And what do people fear most? Why, being alone. We carried out the concept to its logical conclusion and got a lot of responses from readers."

Still, its pretty creepy stuff from a normally light-hearted and tame comic. Alas, poor Garfield! I knew him, Horatio...

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For more Garfield fun, check out the Garfield Randomizer. 3 panels of Garfield, completely random, way more funny...