1978: 0th Birthday Special

From SRoMG Explained
Jump to navigationJump to search
0th Birthday Special
0th Birthday Special.png
Made by: David Morgan-Mar


Explanation[edit | edit source]

This takes the very first Garfield strip and changes Jon's dialogue to remark on the belief that Garfield was born on June 19, 1978 - and thus, that the first comic shows him as an inexplicably large newborn.

The author writes:[edit | edit source]

Jim Davis launched Garfield on the 19th of June, 1978. Every year since, on the anniversary of that date, Davis has drawn a special birthday themed strip, on the premise that the date was Garfield's birthday. Beginning from the first anniversary in 1979, these strips would use the conceit that Garfield's age was the same as the age of the comic strip. The only logical conclusion we can make from this is that Garfield was born on the original date of publication of the first strip.

This strip is the first in a series inspired by the fact that SRoMG has now reached the milestone of 1978 strips. Comic contributor Lubaf suggested in the forums almost exactly a year ago: "For each SRoMG strip from 1978-2014, we do a strip from that year (since 2014 is when strip 2014 would come out)." After some discussion, Sausagefanclub suggested using the birthday strip for each year. Appropriate submissions were solicited in the forums, and I am pleased that we have a full set of birthday strips, which will appear over the next 36 days.

Original strip: 1978-06-19.

Transcript[edit | edit source]

Jon: Hi, there... I'm Jon Arbuckle. I'm a cartoonist, and this is my cat, Garfield.
Jon: Believe it or not, he was born just today.
Jon: If he's this big now, imagine how big he'll get in a few years.
Garfield: Feed me.

Trivia[edit | edit source]

  • When it was originally published, the hyperlink for "Sausagefanclub" erroneously linked to Lubaf's page instead.