Thread by @figgityfigs

June 19, 1978, the day that started it all. The character design of Jon and Garfield was radically different from what it is today. Jon Arbuckle is clearly a stand-in for Davis himself, and they even share a birthday (July 28). Davis makes Jon five years younger than himself…

…indicating from the outset an apprehension about aging.

The strip also introduces two key themes at the outset (and hints at a third): Garfield's independence/dominance and Garfield's appetite (and Jon's obliviousness). The second panel shows Garfield inverting…

…Jon's introduction, asserting that though Jon claims to own Garfield, it is in fact Garfield who owns Jon. The third panel indicates simply an all-consuming need for food. The juxtaposition of this expression of hunger with Jon's more explicit statement that his…

…and Garfield's only thought is to entertain us, the reader, lets us know that things are not as Jon believes them to be, at least as regards Garfield.

Overall, I rate this a solid debut effort. It introduces us to the two key characters, and in remarkably little space…

…introduces us to themes that still echo through the strip to this day. Upon thinking, I'd say the final panel is even kind of funny. I'm going to rate this one a B+.

Garfield's indiscriminate gluttony is on full display in the second published strip. This gives an indication of the primacy with which Davis regarded that particular element of the comic. Garfield isn't Garfield without consuming everything in sight. But this Garfield is…

…even a bit more indiscriminate than we've come to expect in more recent years, I think.

We've seen Garfield consume tray after tray of lasagna (of indeterminate provenance, unless Jon is just making these things all the damn time), but I don't off the top of my head…

…remember Garfield eating something he was just explicitly told was not food. Does this indicate that Garfield started out not only gluttonous, but dumb?

We can view Jon two ways in this strip. First, if we regard this strip on its own, Jon's cluelessness is reinforced.

There is no indication that this is his first rodeo with Garfield. He has to know that Garfield has no interest in toys. Does this make Jon a sucker, or a profligate? Davis leaves that up to the reader to decide.

But I prefer to view it as a direct response to the last panel…

…of the previous strip. Garfield says (thinks?), "Feed me." In response, the next day, Jon feeds him a rubber mouse. FOR HIS BIRTHDAY. That's cold, Jon.

I give this one a C+. It's not very funny, and it's not really in keeping with Garfield always being hungry. That rubber mouse couldn’t have satisfied him. It still merits a C+ because I suspect depths of unfunniness left to plumb that will make this strip look like Oscar Wilde.

This strip was a landmark in the strip's young life, as the first Garfield strip daring enough to not picture Jon Arbuckle. Someone, whom we can only presume is Jon, yells from out of frame at Garfield in exasperation that he didn't catch a mouse. Is it Jon? Is it someone else…

…we have yet to meet? Whoever this person is, he or she is well acquainted enough with Garfield to know his name, but not well acquainted enough to know about Garfield's now-legendary penchant for laziness.

The laziness theme is obviously one that will be explored in…

…excruciating detail by Davis over the next 37 years, but what I find most interesting is that it doesn't appear that sloth is what motivates (or fails to motivate) Garfield in this strip. Rather, it's a concern about his breath. What motivates this concern? Is it vanity?

Who is Garfield trying to impress?

I'll give this one a B-. I think the surreal idea of Garfield being worried about his breath is slightly funnier than him eating a rubber mouse for no good reason.

This one's a piece of what I like to call "slice of life" Garfield. There's not really a joke in it, per se. Only Jon being put out by Garfield's admittedly terrible behavior and mugging at the...camera? Audience? Creator? I don't know.

Whichever it is, one thing's for sure: his eyes are disconcertingly close together.

I think this strip gets at some of the long-running themes of Garfield, and also starts to showcase some of the often-distracting quirks of its art. Jon, presumably out of good-natured concern…

…for Garfield, is putting him on a diet. Out of care for the reader, Davis presumably omits the zeroth frame, where Jon tearfully pleads with Garfield to get his weight under control. Instead, he jumps straight to the solution, without context. Thanks, Jim. Then…

…Garfield distracts Jon and steals his food. End of strip. Not a joke, just a thing that happened.

But let's dig a little into that art. Just what in the hell is going on there? First, are we to presume that Jon is feeding his cat at the dinner table with him? That's strange…

…but I can accept it. Animals are often anthropomorphized in strips and cartoons, so I can roll with that. This is the second instance (6/20/1978 was the first) of the main action of a strip taking place on some sort of counter or table or something. That's a thing…

…that happens in Garfield so often that I didn't even notice it enough to comment on it at first. But here at least it's meant, in context, to be a dinner table, presumably with a green tablecloth. I can deal with that too.

But the table seems to disappear in the second panel..

…and reappear in the third panel. WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN? Lest you think I'm overreading, you can see a little bit more of Jon's arm above the bottom of the frame in panel two than you can see of it above the table in panels one or three.

More, what's going on with that shadowy background? Are they clouds? Bushes? At least in the first and third panels. The fact that they change even between those panels would indicate that they're clouds, but there's no indication that they're outside. Plus, in panel two…

…it just becomes a solid shadow rectangle behind Jon and Garfield for some reason. And then, of course, we see Jon's shadow superimposed over this shadowy background in panel three. This makes us simultaneously realize that the background wasn't a shadow after all and that…

…JON DIDN'T HAVE A SHADOW IN PANELS ONE AND TWO, AND GARFIELD STILL DOESN'T.

Guys, what is even happening?

I give this one a solid B. It's not funny, but it's perplexing enough that I wrote almost 500 words about it, and that's got to count for something.