4336: What we hate 2

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What we hate 2
4336.png
Made by: KelpTheGreat


Explanation[edit | edit source]

The author writes:[edit | edit source]

I have to concur with Mr B Natural. This is among the laziest edits I've submitted.

And yet, even with how little was changed, my edit allows for two alternate interpretations, both of which are arguably funnier than the original:

  1. Garfield, having come to understand how Jon thinks over years of co-habitation, sarcastically predicts that Jon is going to poke fun at him. When Jon confirms that, yes, he has grown to despise Garfield's presence, Garfield, with sarcastic enthusiasm, exclaims, "Me too!" This is akin to a marital relationship, when one spouse will ask the other, "Am I as beautiful as I was on the day you married me?", knowing full well that the honest answer will be "no", and the question is asked in jest; the other is expected to respond "of course you are, honey," and both of them will feel content in their relationship. But then the spouse actually responds, "Heck, you aren't even as beautiful as your mom was on the day I married you," and gets a pillow upside the kisser. Note that in this interpretation, Garfield's pose in the second panel becomes not one of him putting his finger to his chin in thought, but rather him pointing his finger at himself, as a visual aid for an example of "cats".
  2. After decades of walking upright, eating human food, and telepathically communicating with humans, Garfield no longer thinks of himself as a cat. When Jon starts to express how much he's grown to detest felines - the veiled meaning being "I hate you" - this sails over Garfield's head, and he expresses a legitimate shared disdain for cats. He is surprised by this shared hatred, because Jon has, in the past, been quite welcoming towards cats (specifically, Nermal), but Garfield is glad that he and Jon have one more thing in common. This is akin to someone making a passive-aggressive comment intended to elicit a more desirable behavior in someone else, but that someone else is just too dense to get that they're what the first person is talking about.

That was probably too thorough of an explanation. Don't you hate it when someone comes up with a perfectly serviceable, concise comic that doesn't rely on a ton of words, and then ruins it by blabbing on and on about the subtlest intricacies of its humor, instead of just shutting up and letting people enjoy the joke? Yeah, me too.

Original Square Root of Minus Garfield: 2017-11-28.

Original strip: 2003-05-06.

Transcript[edit | edit source]

Jon: You know what I hate?
Garfield: Cats?
Jon: Cats
Garfield {with a surprised expression, his arms outflung}: Me too!