Garfield Minus Garfield cover courtesy of barnesandnoble.com.

Garfield, the long-running daily newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Jim Davis, celebrates its 30th birthday this year (having debuted on June 19, 1978).  Ballantine Books recently released two books to celebrate the occasion.  One is entitled Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs & Lasagna, a hardcover collection of Garfield comic strips, early sketches of the strip’s cast by Jim Davis and other items.

The second book collects what is described as an “Internet sensation,” something new to me.  Apparently, Dublin, Ireland-based artist and businessman, Dan Walsh, created a website he named www.garfieldminusgarfield.net.  There, Walsh posted episodes of the Garfield comic strip featuring both the sarcastic feline and his “owner,” Jon Arbuckle, in which Walsh removed Garfield and his thought balloons.  That created a strip featuring Jon and his word balloons.  Garfield Minus Garfield takes the famous gag strip featuring arguably the world’s most popular cat and transforms it into a webcomic about Jon Arbuckle, possibly the most necessary, extraneous character in modern comic strips.

Garfield Minus Garfield, the webcomic, has earned praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time magazine, and The Washington Post, but it does nothing for little old me.  Yes, having Jon talk to himself, entertain himself, and basically holler nonsense to no one in particular can sometimes pass as a commentary on boredom, depression, and loneliness, while also dealing with feelings of betrayal, but it’s no big deal.  Garfield Minus Garfield is a testament to the fact that on the Internet people will fall for anything.  [I will admit that a Garfield Minus Garfield strip about birthdays did hit home (hard) for me.]

Ultimately, Garfield Minus Garfield is mostly hits and misses, and perhaps, it’s best left as a webcomic, one that’s certainly not worthy of a book collection, even a book as small and insignificant as Garfield Minus Garfield.