For a few months back around '99 me and the drummer in my band were kind of obsessed with the idea of having some kind of custom fabricated plastic shell that would turn a drum kit into a giant Garfield, with the rack toms in his ears, the floor tom in his tail and his face on the resonant head of the bass drum, which would be inside of a big plastic head of course. I can't remember exactly where the snare would go and it's kind of moot because none of us had that kind of money and/or engineering skill anyway.

Point is I'm pro Garfield.

Garfield kind of taught me how to read. I was a middle kid so I'd steal (borrow) all of my older brother's Garfield anthologies, as they had a newb when I was 3. I owe that cat a lot, even if he did sleep through an entire strip one time.

I saw the Garfield's 10th Birthday special this was from, but I actually forgot about this part.

I'm still pro-Garfield as well, or, at the very least, pro-"primetime CBS special with Lorenzo Music and music by Lou Rawls" Garfield.

I'm kind of pro new Garfield in a different way (defining "news" as around 1999-2001, which was probably the last time I actually read it in a paper). There were all of these Sunday strips where every frame s basically the same drawing with a different Photoshop gradient in the background, and by then I just assumed Jim Davis was like the John Williams of newspaper cartoons (i.e. he's a team of people who do all of the actual creative work based on a handful of fragments devised by the person whose name they're working under).

I don't think Jim Davis has drawn a Garfield strip in decades. It's something PAWS, INC. more or less openly admits, he's more of a businessman handling the license at this point.

Jim Davis not drawing Garfield is about as much of a secret as SIMPSONS promotional images bearing Matt Groening's signature not actually being drawn by Groening.

I actually hate Garfield.

I vaguely remember this from a TV special about comic strips. It was right around the time "Garfield" debuted. I preferred this voice, too, at least for the early version of Garfield when he was was more of a crabass.

Cool. I didn't know Garfield had much of an impact in the East, mostly because of Doraemon, Sanrio, and countless other cartoon felines.

(then again, I'm forgetting about the best scene from Ninja Terminator. I don't think I've ever seen a Garfield phone used in Western cinema, especially not in a film dealing with such sensitive subject matter.)

The bestness of that scene goes far beyond the bounds of Ninja Terminator alone.