3932: The End of Garfield

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The End of Garfield

Made by: Commenter of Comments

Explanation

This strip and its corresponding author's notes are a prediction of a potential ending to the Garfield strip, with the core strip hypothetically taking place in the middle parts of 2027. Most of the author's notes take the form of a faux-biography, portraying events leading up to the strip as well as the aftermath. The whole premise of this submission runs counter to other predictions of the Garfield strip's future, such as the "Garfield in 2053" series, and thus runs on hypotheticals much like that running gag; unlike that running gag, this strip implies Garfield does not become a franchise zombie and ends during Jim Davis's lifetime, although it does predict Jim's death to happen around the 2039-40 timeframe (by specifying a specific age), a pitfall even "Garfield in 2053" avoided by not placing Jim's death in a certain timeframe, only establishing that it had happened by 2053 (contrast the later 5362: Pooffield, which does not predict any sort of window for Jim's death).

The author's notes, unfortunately, have already fallen into the Failed Future Forecast trope. Two parts of the faux-biography deal with the garfield.com website remaining operational decades after this Square Root of Minus Garfield strip was first published, one quip dealing with a three-hour server overload in 2027 in response to the in-universe version of this strip, and another quip revealing the site to have become a shrine to Jim Davis's entire body of work; the plug was pulled on garfield.com on 2020-06-19, not even four months after this strip first ran on Square Root of Minus Garfield, thus barring a sudden reactivation, several parts of the faux-biography have already been proven not to happen even though the course of history has yet to reach the faux-biography's timeframe. Interestingly enough, this strip may not even be the possible worst offender of the Failed Future Forecast trope as far as garfield.com is concerned; the later 4933: Garfield in 2053: Consume may have fallen victim to that trope while still in the strip queue.

The author writes:

Back in December 2018, one of my friends sent me something that was very similar to this idea.

I decided to finally bring this idea to life.

I custom made this entire strip, pulling character poses from other comics and doing the rest myself. I ran everything through Waifu2x so I could crop things out easier. If you notice they look off, that's due to a mix of them being upscaled and then poorly cropped out.

Here's a mini-novel about how Garfield ends, and the story that surrounds this strip:

It's almost 2027. Jim Davis realizes he's not going to last much longer. He decides to end the Garfield comic, as he doesn't want his creation to be left without him and possibly lose the charm it had.

For the entire year of 2027, Jon and Liz are increasingly getting worse in their relationship. At first, it's simply Liz getting annoyed at times, and it eventually escalates to any strips with them together having a very negative vibe, with Jon trying to salvage any happiness while Liz simply wishes she wasn't there. She's even meaner than the original Liz was to Jon.

The previous 10 strips before this one revolve around Liz breaking up with Jon, and him not knowing what to do with himself. Garfield doesn't take anything seriously, only thinking about the fact that Jon is too depressed to feed him. Odie doesn't notice anything.

This strip is published on June 19th, 2027. News articles pop up everywhere. Wyatt Duncan, the creator of the @GarfieldFanArt Twitter, tweets out nothing that day except for "Alrighty then". Garfield is the top trending topic on Twitter. Wikipedia staff locks all Garfield related pages due to massive edit waves. Garfield.com has a 3 hour outage due to server overload.

The next 5 strips, all in black and white, revolve around Garfield and Odie trying to figure out what to do with themselves. Liz comes back on the 22nd. The first panel has no dialogue, and is simply Garf and Odie staring at the floor. The second panel, Liz comes into the house out of view (still having a key) saying "Jon, are you here? Can we talk?" in the first panel, as Garf and Odie's eyes widen. They look at each other still wide eyed in the third panel, and Liz says "...Jon?"

The very last comic was on June 25th. The banner art usually seen in Sunday comics at the top is a series of images of Garfield walking with a gloomy expression, with each image becoming more and more transparent from left to right, and the usual Garfield text does not appear. Garfield and Odie accept that they can't survive in the house any longer, being completely abandoned by Liz and anyone else who came into the house. They both agree that their best option is to go become strays. They look around a bit, pack up some things, walk out of the house, and down the road. The first hint of color since the reveal of Jon's death is seen, with the sky above them in the very last panel being slightly tinted blue. This is believed to be hinting that Jon brought color to Garfield's life, and now his color is in a place beyond.

This ending was extremely controversial. Some said that Jim touched a much too serious topic for a family-friendly strip, while others praised him for giving the strip a very emotional ending which people would never forget. Many people in defense of the ending cited the series of comics from 1989-10-23 to 1989-10-28, which were much more serious than every other Garfield comic. Some theorized that this ending was planned from the very beginning, and that series of comics is actually taking place many years after the ending as Garfield comes back to the house and loses his mind.

Jim Davis lives the rest of his life happily, spending time with his family, and occasionally still writing personal comic strips that aren't Garfield. He dies naturally at the age of 94, leaving a note by his bed thanking his family, friends, and fans for giving him a life he could've never imagined would've happened when he was young. His grave has a specially-made Garfield sculpture that resembles the original 1978 Garfield. All Garfield media production has ceased as of Jim's wishes, including any sort of brand deals, movies, or apps. Garfield.com is left running as a archive of Jim's legacy, including all strips he's ever published (including Gnorm Gnat), and listings of all Garfield games, movies, TV shows, etc. Eventually, Paws Inc is shut down due to a lack of money, Garfield.com officially shuts down, and Garfield enters the public domain a few years later.

Original strips: 1979-10-21, 2018-06-19, 2018-12-02, 2019-01-17, 2019-04-04.

Transcript

{Garfield is walking around with a blank expression}
Garfield: I wonder where Jon is...
{Garf walks in to Odie standing completely still, staring upwards at something which is casting a Jon's-body-shaped shadow on the wall}
Garfield: Odie, what are you-
{Everything instantly turns black and white, Odie looks at Garfield, and Garfield looks at the camera with a shocked expression as he realizes what's going on}