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popculturebuffet · 2 months ago

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HCG: Garfield His 9 Lives Retrospective: The Book (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Happy Halloween all you happy people! Yes at long last and after lots of work on these title images i'ts time to talk about Garfield His 9 Lives in this three part retrospective. And yes there's a third one. I'm doing this during spooky season for a few reasons: I already covered garifield's halloween adventure, the lab cat segments in all three versions and primal self in the book are horror and the exploration of diffrent identities garfields had just felt right for a season about putting on costume and being something or someone else for a night.

For those who haven't heard of it Garfield His 9 Lives was a 1984 graphic novel, with two prose pieces, anthology. It has a very simple, brilliant concept: Garfield reflecting on his 9 lives, with each having it's own style ranging from realistic to sketchy to pretty standard stuff for garfield and each story being a different tone. While about a third of the stories are pretty standard for garfield, if putting him in cave settings and space for two of them for some added flair, the bulk do whatever the hell they want: we've got a full on noir story with realistic cats, a stephen king feeling horror story, a sci fi horror escape from a testing lab, a goofy modern fable with vikings, a sugary sweet children's fairy tail and even an out and out three stooges homage.

9 Lives is a great book, and well worth picking up or reading on the internet archive (which is down at the time of this article). It's a gloriously creative concept and I wish garfield was allowed to experiment more like this. What makes it even more specail, besides getting i'ts own tv special we'll talk about next time is that Jim Davis wrote 2/3 of the book himself, likely still collabing with is artists with only Babes and Bullets, The Garden, and Space Cat not being written by Davis. It shows off an incredible creative flexibility you wouldn't expect from someone whose always come off extremley corprate in how he built his strip, with said strip all but confirmed to be ghostwritten these days. It's a strange, unique bolt of creative lightning.

This retrospective will cover this and the other two versions: The 1988 Special adapting some segments (with Babes and Bullets getting it's own special in 89 i've already covered) and switching out a few. There was also a third take on this concept at the end of Boom's 2010's Garfield Comic Book that i'll be capping off this trilogy which isn't as well known and I hadn't read till getting ready for this trilogy. So if all this sounds intresting then join me under the cut as we see that when you've got 9 lives baby you've got 9 ways to loose

As a heads up all of these photos are taken from my phone as Internet Archive is down as i'm writing this and I had no other way to get scans.

Written by Jim Davis, illustrated by Paws, Inc. staff

Yup your seeing this right the book begins with a short bit portraying Jim Davis as God

Yeah.. that's how this book begins. The special uses a similar gag, we'll get to that next time but in the book paws inc itself is used for the creation myth of cats.. including whoever this lady is in a bill lives sweater

This is a refrence to comic strip Bloom County, which had previously killed off one of i'ts biggest stars bill the cat. Bill was created as the most unmarkatable version of garfield imaginable

Naturally as it tends to when you write a strip that's a haven for snarky dorks, Bill became a success and the strip rolled with it: he's been a movie star, dead, a three time presidential canditate, an evanlecial preacher, a rockstar, Donald Trump, the consort of presidential cat Socks Clinton, a brainwashed pawn of Micheal Eisner, and many, many more I don't have time to get into. He was also in Bloom County's revivial revealed to be Garfield's actual son

Fun fact I pulled that from one of my own posts, a review of a wish for wings that work. I will refrence the fact garfield is a deadbeat dad any time I get the chance. The best part about this joke is it's entirely in character for Garfield to be a horrible parent. Though I bet arelene at least acknowledges her kid.

Anyways I just love this nod as it shows Jim didn't take the mockery of Garfield being merchandised to hell personally and it's a cute nod.

Everyone complains when God Emperor Jim Davis decrees cats get 9 lives when everyone else gets one. He has a good reason for it though.

It's that that makes the joke work, this weird wonderful image of Jim Davis as a cat god man cat. It's a cute opener that gets us into our proper 9 lives, each introduced by garfield himself and I like how each bit does inform a bit about his personality.

Written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Davis, Mike Fentz, and Larry Fentz

Our first segment takes us back to Caveman times, and is drawn by Mike Fentz and Larry Fentz. The Fentz' worked at Paws Inc, working in the liscensing division doing airbrushed art for story books, comics and what not and thus do a bulk of the art here. They do a great job perfectly aping jim's style with the watercolors and air brush giving them an extra pop, a nice break from the flat coloring most comic strips get.

Cave Cat on it's own.. is fine. I'm not a fan of caveman times set stories, or ones where characters get stranded in a lost world type place. I love a good dinosaur, dinosaurs are the best, but cavemen...

It's exactly what you'd expect from "Garfield in Cavemen times" minus Jon being his cave owner. Which is something I do like and carries throughout the book and the special: While we see Odie twice as a bookened, here as Big Bob a giant dinosaur that kills cave cat with the worlds first and last frap tree playing fetch, we don't see a reincarnated Jon. It allows the lives to breathe and be there own thing. Jon isn't getting reincarnated through time and Odie's two counterparts can be chalked up to "genetic ancestor" and "coincidence". I wouldn't mind using counterparts entirely, but I do like trying to do something diffrent, break out of the mold and see what garfiled would be like divorced from his supporting cast and life.

Cave Cat exists, it has one or two good gags, and that's about all I have. Next

written by Jim Davis and Mike Fentz; illustrated by Fentz

The vikings is fucking weird and I love that. So one of Garfield's past lives was a viking, just like Ralph Wiggum, and got frozen in present day. The vikings try to pillage, get beaten down by modern society, get normal jobs and it's .. honestly kinda funny. And i'ts even funnier seeing them break out of their mundane lives and disappear into the mists after Garfield The Orange finds their sacred otter. It's not among my faviorites here, but as I write about it I can't help but admire it's weird style, realistic beautifully drawn characters, and bonkers nature. Does it make sense as a reincarnation? not really. Is it fun... yes.

written by Ron Tuthill, illustrated by Kevin Campbell

I can't find much on Ron Tuthill but Babes and Bullets is a pretty solid short detective story that sneaks in some great jokes while it's ad it from the name Sam Spayed itself, to the obligtory thug roughing him up being his landlord. If any of that sounds familiar, you too have clearly seen the full animated special, which I reviewed previously and might still be my faviorite garfield thing. The story is about the same: A widow with instant chemistry with Sam shows up, he solves the mystery of her husbands death and his secretary turns out to have been in love with the victim but innocent. A lot of the jokes, plot beats and what not are the same and I was shocked on this read by just.. how much was done beat for beat and how much it fit, having enough goofy stuff for garfield but still feeling like a decent detective story, if one where you don't get all the clues as you go which blows but I get it being hard to do that. This is the longest story in the collection but it's still fairly short.

There are a few changes from the special: the big one is that everyone in this version.. is a cat, a realistically drawn one at that.

I"m also proud to say this is the first corpse in garfield history! Hooray! But yeah for the specail everyone else is a human for some reason likely because they didnt' want everyone to be garfield sized. The realistic part is likely budget as it was likely faster to do the garfield house style than this. This style is also mildly offputting. Later furry detective work blacksad got the ballance down better between human and animal, being realistic but not so much it's weird.

The other is that it's a battle for a reverened position here rather than academia. The change.. dosen't affect the story for the most part with only the ending, the culprit praying for forgivness, having a touch more impact in this version. All in all a pretty good time.

written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Davis, Mike Fentz, and Larry Fentz

The Exterminators is fun and one of my faviorites. I'll rank all of these at the end, but this is a highlight.

The Exterminators is a Three Stooges parody, and while I've never watched the Three Stooges, I still get the gist enough: Three idiots, one smarter than the others, do slapstick. It's simple, it works and it fits Jim Davis penchant for slapstick like a glove. I adore the opening

And there client lady in general is a LOT of fun, from this scene to her "oh boy here we go" reaction to the exterminators to her reaction when garfield waves around a shot gun

This.. this is a true gift. Garfield's first corpse and now his first shotgun. Shotgunfield.

The ending is also fun as the cats argue over who has to eat the mouse, only for them to make the client eat it.. and she realizes mice tastes pretty good and adorably goes off with her new best pals. It's a weirdly heartwarming ending to this delightful slapstick nonsense.

written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Gary Barker and Larry Fentz

This ones' a bit of a tonal shift, notable not only for making it to the specail with only one bit of censorship but for being a Stephen King kind of horror/sci fi goverment conspiracy story. I mean he dosen't do them often but you get that vibe. A cat is tested on and tries to escape disection. It's simple, harrowing and beautifully drawn

As you can guess this is the part that didn't make it to air and I feel makes it more effective. The twist ending, that the experiments turn the poor cat into a dog who easily evades protectoin is fatnastic. I'ts short, harrowing , has lots of nice shading to really set the grim tone of this one. It's excellent stuff and i'm shocked they went with something like this for this anthology. And in any other garfield product it'd easily be the most experimental, unsettling thing here, while still being pretty mild.. but well... you likely know what's coming. Before that though

written and illustrated by Dave Kühn

The Garden is a trippy , 3d modeled surreal fairy tail.. sandwitched inbetween two of the darkest stories in garfield history. Why Jim Davis decided to put it here I have no idea and it's instead put between the more jokey "King Cat" and "Court Musician" in the special, where it fits a lot better. It's a silly goofy fairy tale about a little girl named chloe who has a great design, I love the big scarf and bigger hat, her Orange Kitten who never grew up, and the surreal wonderland her uncle todd built. It's a cutesy story and not entriely for me, but I admire it's story book sense of wonder, unqiue visual style and it's ending where after being warned to not open a box on a checkered toadstool they get real close.. thend on't, deciding Uncle Todd's trust is more important. There's no big dark twist like you'd think, Uncle Todd didn't make this world using the blood of the fraggles and the bones of the care bears. It's just a cute story about a child and her best friend who happens to be garfield.

written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Jim Clements, Gary Barker, and Larry Fentz

So we're finally here: Primal Self. The only one of these 9 lives people talk about often. Which makes sense I mean... the ending of this one is horrifying, shocking and well done horror. It works well yet still feels horrifically jarring in a Garfield collection which previously had him as Moe or palling around with a child in a fantasy world. I'ts not entirely out of step but I can see how seeing garfield like this

Is going to be a lot. Primal Self is awesome though.. a tense simple horror story about a cat being confronted by the spirit of it's primal instincts, the domesticated meets the horrifying reality of nature.

The results.. are not pretty

That last shot is just chilling.. this poor animal about to kill it's person simply because some horrifying primal.. force awakened something dark and terrible inside it. It's a well done bit of horror. Is it the best fit for this book... probably not. But on it's own merits i'ts excellent and chilling, with a scratchy unfomortable yet raelistic style that fits the horrifying tone.

written by Jim Davis; illustrated by Gary Barker and Valette Hildebrand; color by Doc Davis

I love this: it makes perfect sense that in a book about garfield.. his own current life would pop up and I like that Davis used the format to tell a story that would be possible in the comic strip but take months of panels up.

So we get what's essnetially Garfield: Year One. We see his origins being born in the back of an itallian restraunt hinted at by the arc with his mom, as well as WHY they were seprated: he would've eaten everything otherwise and they share a fairly tender goodbye.

He then ends up in the pet shop where we meet my faviorite one off garfield character old eli

It used to be that lady what attacked Garfield, Jon, Odie and Some Guy when they were all stuck in a curtain

but come on.. how can you not want to take him home and bury him. He's a sweetheart. He's the snoopy's awkward teenage nephew of Garfield Characters and like Snoopy's Awkard Teenage Nephew he'll never be far from my heart

Thankfully Jon walks in to take garifled home, and Garfield clinging to his face gets Jon to accept his new cat overlord. Here they retcon Odie's origin to streamline it instead of being brought in by Jon's best friend Lyman who either was killed by garfield's clearly insastiable blood lust and kept in the basement or went off into the wilderness to take photos of wild life depending on who you ask.

He trains his new brother well, and we get Odie saving garfield from an ice cream truck which makes Garfiled greatful.. but not so greatful he won't spin it for his grandkits a decade later.

Garfield is a charming segment that's got some great jokes, a solid story and a nice bit of worldbuilding. I'll even take the lyman erasure as it's telling only 5 years into the strip he was already being erased from history. I mean it's so easy to do you can just take out that first panel and that that about sums up Odie's origins and Garfield's thoughts on his new pal.

written and illustrated by Jim Clements

Our finale.. is kind of a weak one to go out on. Garfield's in space and deals with a lite vgersion of red dwarf. We get a good gag or two: his defenses are a cat paw.. that's literally declawed, his computer is a computrized odie, and the vending machine dosen't even work. With this one , like Cave Cat in hindsight but more on that next time, the special version doing this but better soured me on it. It's not bad , it's nciely drawn and I really like the ending

But said ending dosen't quite feel like a proper climax for the anthology the way the ending of the film version is. STill it's not horrible or anythign it's just kinda... there.

RANKING

Since a certain someone will ask me to do this if I don't and because it'll be fun, i'll be ranking the stories for each version, then for the final BOOM studio version ranking the stories from all three versions in one big pile.

Primal Self: The short run time, sheer brutality and gorgeous art put it up top.

The Exterminators: it's wacky good fun with a great guest character and garfield with a shotgun.

Lab Animal: Tense and gorgeously drawn. An easy pick.

In the Beginning: A cute way to start the book

Babes and Bullets: A solid detective story, the adaptatoin simply does it better

The Vikings: Didn't think this one would be so high but it's just goofy fun

The Garden: Nothing I hate, just not really for me.

Garfield: I like it a lot it's just the other stuffs a touch more creative

Cave Cat: I'M NOT GOOD WITH PREHISTORIC STUFF OKAY?

Space Cat: A bit of a whimper to end on

So with that we can close the book.. and turn on the tv as next time I look at garfield's OTHER 9 lives, seeing what they replaced, what they changed about the segments they kept, and why this specail is so damn well loved. Spoilers: I'ts because i'ts really good. Thanks for reading.

#garfield his 9 lives #garfield #comics #jim davis #odie #jon arbuckle #halloween #the 80s #babes and bullets

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popculturebuffet · 2 months ago

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HCG: Garfield His 9 Lives Retrospective: The Special (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello all you blues cats paying your dues and welcome back to my look at the three faces of Garfield His 9 Lives. Last time we covered the book which was excellent for the most part from some good comedy to excellent horror.

So now we're onto the second part of this unintentional trilogy. The book was clearly either a success or a good enough idea that not only did Film Roman make a special out of it but unlike the others this big chonky boy is an hour long. It's something I forgot but you yourself can experince as the specials are all on Peacock and Tubi, and I highly recommend this one off the bat.

9 Lives takes the basic premise of the book and adapts it decently for animation: There is still a good chunk of segmetns that use the regular garfield style, but some vary it up a bit in ways similar to the book if not as radical to keep the budget down.

The bigger change is that 4/9 of the segments are replaced. Only Cave Cat, the Garden, Lab Animal, Garfield and Space Cat remain, largely unchanged. Babes and Bullets is gone but was made into it's own excellent special, while The Vikings, the Exterminators, and Primal Self are just gone.

If I had to guess why, the Vikings might of been hard to replicate on a bduget with it's fantasy style illustrations, hence the much cheaper King Cat in it's place. The Exterminators coudl've been a rights thing, since some stooges shorts were under copyright, but it could've just as easily been a time thing as the special exclusive stunt cat is only a minute long. Finally we have primal self, the only one where it's damn obvious WHY it didn't happen

This version is the most popular, likely because while the book is clearly known and loved, it hasn't been reprinted. it was printed enough that thankfully it's cheap to get and the Internet Archive makes it avaliable, but far as I can tell it hasn't been reprinted in decades. The special on the other hand has 80's nostalgia for the kids who were there at the time, got a release on the garfield fantasies dvd (Alongside babes and bullets of course.. and a indiana jones spoof with a dash of james bond that is far more foregatable but fits the astetic), and is as I mentioned currently avaliable for free under garfield and friends on tubi or on it's own on peacock. It's way easier to see the specail and for it to get more word of mouth. I even saw it first before the book thanks to said dvd. So the question is how does this more popular adaptation hold up to the OG? Let's find out under the cut and once again learn when you've got 9 lives you've got nine ways to loose.

Directed by Phil Roman, who Co-Directs all other segments

I love the title cards in this version too. And it starts the same way: Jim Davis is god

And orders the creation of cat. It looses a bit of luster as oversaturated footage of paws inc isn't as fun, but I do like the booming voice of god, played by C. Lindsay Workman who played the old man in the halloween special and Garfield's Grandpa in Garfield on the Town. The punchilne's also not as strong as rather than revealing him as a cat he just says "It'd make for an intresting story". This is understandable as they save this for the ending. More on that when we get there. For now this segment is alright and workman makes it fun, but it's the only segment I feel got a downgrade between versions.

We next get our opening number, which for once isn't tied into the story thus technically giving us 11 segments this time. Garfield wails on the harmonica while we get another great Lou Rawls opening, a blues song underlying how rough it is to have 9 lives "You've got 9 ways to loose" and the genre fits the man like a glove. Truly awesome stuff and a song that's been in my head this whole retrospective and while making the cover arts.

Directed by George Singer

Watching this one I figured out WHY I didn't like the Book version as much: I saw this one first and Cave Cat has one thing this one dosen't: narration. The hammy narrator really sells the documentary feel of things better than text boxes can. I love comics as a medium but there's some hard limits, and this is a bit that just works better when you have what I suspect to be Thom Huge giving nature doctumentary style narration. It makes even the cornier jokes hilaroius and Cave Cat feels more distinct ironically with Lorenzo Music's iconic voice, with him doing a good job making this cat still have the garfield voice but feel primitive. It's good stuff and just a few touches take a pretty decent if done before bit into something fun.

Directed by John Sparey

Yeah I don't like this one. Before reading the boom comics version, this was easily my bottom life across all versions.

King Cat DOES have an interesting hook: Garfield is the pet of a dim witted pharoah and thus worshipped. The problem is as basically vice pharoah.. garfield has slaves

For starters a past version of Odie is one of them and Garfield spends the short fighting to not be killed.. but you don't care as King Garfield enslaves a bunch of dogs and hassles the slaves at the period. Karma does bite him as despite his best efforts his owner dies and he becomes a slave to odie after odie saves his life but it's hard to see that as a good "the oppressed has become the opresser"

So not only do you have slave master garfield and this ending.. you also have no real jokes. The only one that makes me chuckle a bit is that the pharoah's evil brother who eventuallyt akes the throne is named prince black bart. It's sto stupid it works. This segment.. is so bland and weirdly fucked up at the same time it just dosen't work.

Directed by Ruth Kissane

The garden is kept the same plot wise, but does feel like an equilveant exchange. The animation looses the weird 3d style and while they try to make it slightly puffier to match the book, it mostly comes across as the standard garfield. That said what we loose in the trippy 3d, we gain in the narration, done by what seems to be Nermals voice actor which comes off as Chloe herself narrating it, which adds a nice bit of whimsy that papers over what was lost. The segment's still not entirely for me, but I appricate it for what it is.

Directed by Bob Scott

Court Musician has my faviorite look out of the shorts, being one of the few to get more of a visual identity in the adpatation, having a nice very blocky style to the charcters. I love it. And it's no suprise that director Bob Scott would go on to have a healthy career doing a lot of work for disney and some design work. He even designed the characters for the threre best segments in this one, also doing the designs for Diana's Piano and Lab Animal.

The short is a fun romb as we follow famous composer Fredrick Handel whose cat is a nicely deisgned blue cat.

I really wish bob had gotten to direct more, this is great stuff as Freddy , as bluefield calls him, finds out he has to make a concerto overnight... which his boss the king never commuincated to him. So to do so he has his cat write half. The first half is a slow well done fuege as the Jester, history's greatest monster, taunts Freddy with his death should he fail... only for a rousing jazz number the cat wrote to be a big hit. It's fun as hell, well written and even caps off the special in lieu of blues cat. Which i'd object if this peice weren't so great.

Directed by Bill LIttlejohn and Bob Nester

Stunt Kat is a quick fun segment likely done as while the special was given extra room it didn't have room for 9 full segments. So instead we get a fun bit of comics history as this garfield was a stunt double for the legendary 30's comic strip Krazy Kat. Krazy Cat was a fairly simple but influental strip with surreal backgrounds. The basics boil down to this

Krazy loves Ignatz, Ignatz throws bricks a tthem, and the local cop tries to put Ignatz away and loves Krazy. It's a zany love trinagle, a tragicomedy and magistically drawn. I haven't gotten super into it, but I do respect it and it's influence on later cartoonits with both Bill Watterston and Berkely Brethead citing this one as an influence.

So here Garfield fills in when Krazy gets a bunch of bricks dropped on them while Officer Pupp runs the camera... and dies pretty quickly. A brutal fun gag and a nice way to give a cameo to a legend... if I'd remembered this I would've done the same in the first entry but hey, thems the breaks. Or the bricks I guess

Directed by Doug Frankel

Diana's Piano might be my faviorite segment here and it's the simpliest, a tale about a woman reflecting on her life to her cat patches, and the life of her previous cat Diana, a cat she got as a child, and kept for most of her life, into marriage right out of college, through the birth of her child and to Diana's sad end. It's got the most gorgeous animation of the special, this nice fuzzy style as if it was painted. The animations very limited for the most part, but it works well, making it feel like a painting come to life. It's a simple realistic tale. It could face issues with not feeling very garfield like.. but with some of the more experimental segments from the comic gone, it nicely fills the place of stretching the concept of "it's a cat" to as far as you can take it. Diana isn't garfield yet has pieces of him: her not wanting her owner to marry, issues with kids, there's pieces of garfield in his past self. I also think it's neat they acknowledge that past lives don't have to be exact matches for their future lives. This is reincarnation after all. Part of the books charm was that the various garfields were so diffrent from one another yet had some part of who he'd be in his 8th life.

Diana's piano is a moving, wonderfully done piece, a short heartbreaking story of life that uses the medium well.

Directed by Doug Frankel

Lab Animal is the special's most memorable segments for the same reasons it was in His 9 Lives: It's the darkest segment here with Primal Self gone, and it's a striknig diffrence:While Diana's piano gives us another grounded segment, instead of a sentimental story of a cat's life, we get a cat desperately breaking free. Rather than go full realistic, they go more with a don bluth style: cartoony yet stylish. I checked director doug frankel's imdb but he shockingly only worked on one bluth film AFTER this, Ferngully, like most people on this special going on to disney or early dreamworks.

Lab Animal really is a straight adapatation of the book the only big changes being a sequence with the dogs chasing the Lab Cat up a tree, and the MP just.. glaring at the cat instead of shooting at it. Which is less effective but.. I get it. Late 80's cartoon standards and all that. Everything else is largely the same, and I feel both versions are equally good: The original has nice shades and detailed artwork, while this has gorgeous animation, a really tense score, and both have the effective twist at the end. It's fantastic and easily the best adaptation of the bunch, adapting the story perfectly while changing it just enough.

Directed by Bob Nisler and John Sparey

I really.. don't have much to say about this one. It's not bad at all: given this was one of Film Roman's later specials, they've perfected doing garfield at this point, so it's not suprising the garfield section still looks great.

The thing is this segment is the straghtest adaptation out of the bunch. It's almost word for word panel for panel with only the slightest changes. One of those changes bothers me as they censor old eli's line

The bury me is why it works. It'd be like shoretning Snoopy's Awkard Teenage Nephew's neck. It's fucked up and it's funny. And you could say "Well they censored other stuff for kids".. but they still had garfied and odie own slaves. I can understand editing out the gunfire from Lab Animal as it was the 80's and guns in kids shows was, and still is, if for more understandable reasons, a touchy subject. But this is just a bit of black comedy and I refuse to belivie garfield owning slaves is more acceptable than Old Eli wanting people to take him home and bury him.

Otherwise it's a solid adaptation, it just dosen't stand out as much both due to having no real changes for better or equal like the others, or being that diffrent from the other specials or garfield and friends. It's a reason King Kat also limped along for me I forgot to get to in that section: It feels like one of those historical episodes garfield and friends would do. Every so often they'd have jon and garfield play their own ancestors. It feels lazy in comparison to the book and other segments here. This dosen't because it shares the whole origin story thing, but does fade into the background a bit.

Directed by Bob Nessler and John Sparrey

Like cave cat I like this one more than the book, but even more as the animated version is vastly experimented. The federation planning to murder garfield in space is given more personality, counting down to his death and skipping one because he was in the bathroom, and the count down gives things a sense of pressure, as does the fact that rather than be a game this is all real and garfiled is sent out to survivie as this is his last life. So it adds tension: we know it, they know it and thus we WANT Spacefield to survivie. We also get a bunch of clone odies who hilarously get thrown back from attacking in drone ships by a fire hydrant. It keeps the best stuff from the short but expands it to be way funnier.

The ending also helps. Garfield.. still dies.. this time for real as does Odie.. and god cat calls him before them.. and due to a seeming clerical error asks garfield what life he's on. And in a touching bit of clearly remembering his eight life some how, or just kindness.. garfield gets odie 8 lives too. IT's a reminder that while Odie may anoy him.. garfield loves his brother and gladly saves him. And the ending does use the god cat twist well. We don't see a full furry face just the eyes.. btu we get the sense god was just lying his ass off and willingly let both get 9 lives as they deserved it. Garfield's argument is also.. valid. Unlike his other deaths, he didn't volunteer for this one. he was just shot up into space and died horribly. IT's a cute ending and really ties it all together well and feels like a better much more concise one than the book.

The Ranking Diana's Piano: It's schmaltzy but damn if it dosen't work on me every time, with gorgeous animation and a truly lovely story. Court Musician: I"m shocked this one ended up as high as it did but I just love the blocky, gorgeous art, that fun ending number and the jester being a hilaroiusly cruel shithead the whole segment Lab Animal: Tense, well done and gorgeous Space Cat: HIlarious and the best garfield style segment of the bunch Cave Cat: Music's performance and the great narration really sell this one Blues Cat: A catchy as hell number from lou motherfucking rawls. Stunt Cat: Only this low because it's so short but it's so damn funny and dark. In the Beginning: It's fine Garfield: Ditto The Garden: Thirded King Cat: We need a sequel where Jon is moses and frees the slaves from odie.

Next Time: We end this look with a hit and miss comics anthology that came decades later. No one really talks about.

#garfield #garfield his 9 lives #john arbuckle #odie #comics #animation #halloween #lou rawls #garfield and friends #comic strips

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