4442: Wrong Side of Website.
| Wrong Side of Website. |
 Made by: The Dall of Ahvertising |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
This strip lampoons the fact that Viacom's takedown of the garfield.com website, and with it the primary archive Square Root of Minus Garfield contributors once used for high-quality Garfield strip material, happened in conjunction with the 42nd anniversary of Garfield's debut on the national scene and thus on the date a birthday strip ran. The strip is a shot of the GoComics interface with the 2020-06-19 Garfield strip loaded, advertisements and all, with the third panel of the Garfield strip having edited dialogue hinting something was wrong.
"There goes the US Acres archive" reflects the fact that, by that point in time, GoComics had stopped offering U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm amongst their strip archives. Even if the garfield.com website hadn't been lost when it was, however, the Flash games would have ended up going away not too long after that point in time anyway, as Flash support ended at the end of 2020.
It is unknown what the author meant by the HD comics being "purchased and printed", due to multiple meanings of the words involved. The "use only main Garfield website rule" reflected a rule Square Root of Minus Garfield had in place prior to the garfield.com takedown in an effort to increase the quality of its remixes by encouraging the usage of the high-quality strips garfield.com had offered. As a result of the broken links that ensued, Square Root of Minus Garfield initially rerouted the original strip credits to the "images.ucomics.com" domain of strips half the size of those from garfield.com ("images.ucomics.com" was the unsecured counterpart of the secure-domain "picayune.uclick.com" domain, the latter of which is still active); when that domain broke, original strip credits rerouted to the GoComics interface.
The Professor Garfield website was the dedicated children's section of the former garfield.com site, offering age-appropriate activities.
The editor's note details developments between when the strip was submitted and when it first ran.
Since this strip first ran, the garfield.com domain once again redirects to a dedicated Garfield section of the Nickelodeon website, but this time with no linkback to the GoComics Garfield archive. The official Garfield Twitter account still lists garfield.com as its homepage as of this writing.
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
On Garfield's birthday... Viacom decided to shut the Garfield website (there goes the US Acres archive and Flash games). Since it updated, it redirects to either the new Garfield Nickelodeon page (which is kinda bland) thru the countdown, or you can just click through to Garfield's GoComics page. For some reason the HD comics had to be purchased and printed... Geez! It may affect the "use only main Garfield website" rule... However: the Professor Garfield website is still up for some reason... I got nothing else to say.
[Since this strip was submitted... the garfield.com domain has changed to redirect to the general Nickelodeon homepage, and there doesn't appear to be any Garfield-specific section... Oddly, the official Garfield Twitter account still considers garfield.com its homepage... The Professor Garfield site also appears to now be defunct... -Ed...]
Original strip: 2020-06-19.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
{The whole comic is in the Garfield GoComics page with some random ads}
Garfield: This is my best birthday ever!
{Garfield sees the icons near the 3 panels}
Garfield: Wait! Something's not right...
