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No. 5463: There Goes the Neighborhood

First | Previous | 2024-05-03 | Next | Latest

There Goes the Neighborhood

First | Previous | 2024-05-03 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=5463

Strip by: Colin

SFX: DING-DONG
{The doorbell rings. Garfield, a cat walking bipedally, is going to answer the door}
{Jon is outside wearing only a pair of floral-patterned boxer shorts, watering an off-green bush with the garden hose. For some reason, the blender is glued to his face again. Perhaps Jon is pulling stunts like gluing small kitchen appliances to his face, performing yard work in his underwear, and playing ding-dong-ditch with his geriatric cat in order to stave off the existential ennui of being an adult man-child who sees the world moving on without him, yet makes few substantive changes to his life. Despite his career as a cartoonist giving him the rare chance to make an indelible mark on human history and culture, he still chooses to let his profession wither on the vine. We should be thankful he's only acting out. Perhaps Jon saw how Lyman, his former best friend, let drugs and alcohol destroy his life; that alone may be why Jon gave up pipe smoking, and why Liz tolerates this sort of behavior from a long-term partner. Or maybe it's just a goddamn comic strip and I'm projecting. Regardless of how blatantly the certainty of aging, death, and eventual nonexistence is presented in this penultimate panel, we the readers should be more impressed that Garfield successfully operated a doorknob}
{Inside, Garfield bluntly tells a fully-clothed and de-blendered Jon, the man's overt surprise at odds with the audience's suspension of disbelief:}
Garfield: You're why Hubert and Reba moved away

The author writes:

We haven't seen Jon's elderly neighbors, Hubert and Reba, in quite a long time. Did they die? I'd prefer to think they got sick of the shenanigans and moved to a more peaceful neighborhood. Maybe they live next door to Cathy now. I bet she never glues a blender to her face — at least not on purpose.

Original Square Root of Minus Garfield strip: 2024-02-24.

Original strips: 1999-07-04, 2000-11-02, 2008-04-26.