MetaChat - Less is more:

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02 January 2008

Less is more: If you remove all of Garfield's speech balloons from a Garfield comic, the strip becomes funny. (Also, kind of melancholy, as Jon apparently has no humans to talk to.)→[More:] Link goes to a thread on a message board where people were making these strips and posting them, so they're scattered throughout the comments.

post by: BoringPostcards at: 08:32 | 5 comments

Hee! I always wanted to make a comic strip where there's nothing in the balloons OR there are only balloons, no people/characters. It's on my to do list before I die.

posted by chewatadistance 02 January | 11:05

Two thoughts:

-I tried to picture these without any word balloons because that was what I thought the point was (I feel a little slow) and liked the way that worked. Of course, I think stupid silent repetition gags are hilarious and have used them in my own work pretty frequently. (Ohhh... some of the later ones start doing this really well.)

-Then I realized that the balloon text had been altered; there are certainly some funny strips. Of course, the main problem with Garfield is that its half dozen jokes are tired at this point and there's nothing endearing about the characters to overcome how stale the strip is. So, adding fresh jokes and tweaking the characters should be expected to liven the strip up.

There're probably all kinds of lessons to be learned in there for cartoonists.

posted by pokermonk 02 January | 11:10

There was a thread about this over on Metafilter a while back. Much fun, as was the even earlier thread about the make-your-own Garfield generator, a thread which I totally won.

posted by mrmoonpie 02 January | 13:13

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by arse_hat 02 January | 15:04

My favorite group from the thread:

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by youngergirl44 02 January | 22:52

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