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No. 4842: Connect the Dots Through Jon's Eyes

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Connect the Dots Through Jon's Eyes

First | Previous | 2022-08-21 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=4842

Strip by: Michael Jacoby

{Note: Throughout this whole strip, Garfield remains silent and doesn't produce any thought bubbles whatsoever}
Jon: Never play this game.
Jon: Never play connect-the-dots.
Jon: It's more than that. It messed me up for life. Don't do it.
{Silent beat. Jon glares at us as Garfield just stands there not saying anything, as he is a cat}
Jon: Yeah, but there's so much more to it. You have to think.
Jon: It's not just connecting lines.
Jon: It's about trying to find order in them.
Jon: You have to think about where the lines go.
Jon: It's thinking. It's also about probability.
Jon: The line you choose in one spot has a chance to lead somewhere else.
Jon: There's also symmetry and logic.
Jon: If you draw a line from one dot to another, there's another line that goes back to the first one.
Jon: It has to have a right and a left, or it's not even right.
Jon: It has to make sense.
Jon: There's so much more than just connecting dots.
Jon: Don't do it.

The author writes:

I thought of this idea (and another edit the inspiration of which will probably be very obvious after reading this note) after seeing the original SRoMG the day it debuted. As I was reading it, my mind went to that old site for Garfield edits from the mid-to-late 2000s called Arbuckle, which took Garfield strips and removed the eponymous cat's thought bubbles, making Jon look much more pathetic by talking about his worries, hopes, and thoughts to his pets, who were ordinary animals in this version.

One such edit just had the original strip with Garfield's thought bubbles removed and that edit came to mind when seeing this SRoMG. By removing Garfield's thought bubbles (and in one of the earlier panels, removing his arm so he still seemed indifferent), I made the already wonderfully absurd original SRoMG even more so by having Jon have a serious discussion about connect-the-dots, of all things, to his indifferent cat.

Original Square Root of Minus Garfield strip: 2022-01-14.

Original strips: 1996-03-06, 1996-05-07, 1996-05-11, 1996-07-29, 1996-08-06, 1996-09-04, 1996-10-17, 1997-03-22, 1997-04-09, 1997-04-11, 1997-04-16.