Garfield minus Garfield
Garfield was a great comic in its day, but let's face it, it's a little too flatly tame and unsettlingly wholesome to make for good entertainment in the 21st century. I would never sit down and flip through a Garfield comic anywhere other than at my dentist's office (he still has a few), and that's only because the copies of National Geographic in his waiting room are all from the early nineties and I'd already read them all by the 8th grade. However, under the surface of Garfield, between the frames, lurks a dark bounty of hilarity, an almost unholy treasure that can be unlocked by making one teensy weensy alteration: get rid of the cat.
Enter: John Arbuckle, lonely, bipolar, beaten down by the world and slowly losing his mind as he succumbs to his intense depression. Once you read a few strips you'll wonder how Garfield was ever supposed to be the star of this comic. John is the best dark comic character on the web, and that's saying something. His days alternate between grand megalomaniacal hallucinations and deep depressive epiphanies. He fears and hates the rest of the world. Rejected by society, reviled by women, John spends his days alone pondering the deep questions of life, gradually realizing that he doesn't have any of the answers.
You can't begin to fathom how funny this is. Start at the beginning, read a few pages, and get an idea of where John Arbuckle is at without his side-cat Garfield. Hell, you might even find yourself liking the original Garfield strips again. You'll need some levity after John lets you into his dark, dark world. garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com
