A while back, someone (or actually a lot of someones, independently of one another) discovered that “Garfield” — the lame, unfunny comic strip by Jim Davis — is actually much better if you remove all of Garfield’s thought balloons. It becomes surreal, sublime, sometimes odd like a Fellini film.
This thread at the Truth and Beauty Bombs message board has quite a few examples that various people have compiled, with Garfield’s thoughts Photoshopped out. There are some classics there.
On my own, I discovered these two strips and immediately recognized they’d be better if I got rid of Garfield’s contributions.
Original version: Garfield says, “Yeah … They’re your shirt, dummy.” I don’t even know what that means.
Original version: In the third panel, Garfield says, “Whoa! That loosened up some hair!” I like my version better, where he’s shedding intentionally and gleefully in response to Jon asking him to stop.
