After 48 years, there’s still plenty of love out there for Garfield. Plushes with suction cup paws can still be found in stores, a new cartoon is currently in production, we’re getting a Garfield video game this month, and the comic strip still runs daily in newspapers all over the world. Despite the love, however, I don’t think Garfield gets a lot of respect, in large part because his creator, Jim Davis, has been a little too honest about the fact that he intentionally created the character to be mainstream and marketable.
“I’d like to say it was some sort of a divine inspiration that created the strip. In fact, it wasn’t so much that as a conscious effort to come up with a good, marketable character,” Davis told The Washington Post in 1982, and he has since said similar things.
Because of Davis’ candor, many people online have taken that to delegitimize Garfield’s success, framing Davis as cynical and greedy. But it’s one thing to set out to make a marketable character, and it’s another to possess the artistic talent to actually do that. These opinions also fail to realize that Davis came up from humble origins and failed in comics for years before finding success. His creation before Garfield was “Gnorm Gnat,” a strip about a cartoon bug. It failed miserably, which motivated Davis to find a more appealing — and, yes, marketable — animal.
Garfield’s design is undeniably genius for how it’s become part of Americana, and his gluttonous, lazy personality is funny and relatable. Arriving in 1978, I’d even argue the character was a bit of a forerunner of the slacker culture of the 1990s. So in an attempt to show Garfield and Jim Davis the respect they deserve, I decided to do a bit of digging for the best-ever Garfield quote.
“I hate Mondays”
“I hate Mondays” is the obvious choice and probably the right one. The feeling of hating Mondays is a universal one and the fact that Davis was able to tap into that and make it synonymous with his character is a huge accomplishment. Everyone hates Mondays, but Garfield owns hating Mondays. It’s an even bigger deal once you realize that Garfield has literally no reason to hate Mondays. He’s a cat with no job, which means every day, Mondays included, is pretty much the same for him.
Then again, that phrase has appeared on countless Garfield mugs and t-shirts, which may undermine my case proving Davis’ talents as a writer, as opposed to just a cynical marketing savant.
Great writing in Garfield
The difficulty of this self-imposed challenge is that many of Garfield’s best-written gags are purely visual, like this shockingly dark comic.
Or this one, which is also surprisingly dark.
Both of these are incredibly well written, but not for what Garfield says. They’re great because they’re well-crafted visual jokes (which, of course, also require someone to write them).
The best-ever Garfield quote
The punchline in this joke is especially funny, and requires a bit of thought — more thought than people may associate with Garfield. Still, a snappy punchline is hardly the kind of thing people usually associate with profundity, so I’ll go in the complete opposite direction and choose what might be Garfield’s longest quote; one that’s insightful and surprisingly sincere for a cat usually consumed with how to fill his belly. It comes from March 18, 1979 and features Garfield sitting at a drawing board, writing a letter to the world.
“I think this world would be a nicer place in which to live: If countries could settle their differences without hurting anybody. If everyone smiled at even people they didn’t know. If nobody had to steal. If people laughed more. If everyone fed their cats all the lasagna they could eat. If we all took more pride in our homes and our neighborhoods. If we respected our senior citizens more. If there were no violence in movies and television. If everyone could read and write. If families talked more. If friends hugged more. If everyone stopped at least once a week to stroke a cat. After all, we’re all in this together.”
The quote is long and heartfelt, and perhaps even trite to a cynical reader, but I read it as a sincere plea for a kinder world coming from Davis through Garfield. It’s even quite funny, as Garfield prioritizes things like, “If everyone fed their cats all the lasagna they could eat,” and, “If everyone stopped at least once a week to stroke a cat,” along with everything else, which makes it not just a great quote, but a great Garfield quote.
Although, if you think it’s too much, well, you’ve still got “I hate Mondays,” which probably is Garfield’s greatest quote. Its presence on so many coffee mugs and t-shirts is proof of that.
