5544: Mysterious Floating Spider

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Mysterious Floating Spider

Made by: Daboi491

Explanation

In the original, the spider's floating was due to air from a heating vent. Here, the vent and air gusts have been removed, leaving the spider's ability to fly unexplained. The author's note throws out a couple of explanations.

• The spider is actually a fly in disguise.
• The spider has a Vertical Take Off and Landing device, which is usually a component of some airplanes that allows it to fly upwards or descend slowly, enabling it to take off or land in places where a regular airplane could not, due to needing space to get up to speed or slow to a stop.

In the original, Garfield batted the spider away. This, along with many other occasions, proves that Garfield is no less likely to swat a spider than a fly, and thus, that a fly would not be disguised as a spider to make Garfield not want to swat it. Perhaps it wished to hide its ability to fly so as to render Garfield unprepared to land a blow on a flying pest. Or perhaps it just wanted to confuse Garfield.

This also proves that solely being able to fly wouldn't make an arthropod safe from being hit, especially if it's just going to hover there. If it is just a spider with VTOL, its purpose must just be to confuse Garfield.

Other explanations are not offered by the author.

As evidenced by the date, the lack of Jim's signature, and the wall color not having gone back to the first panel's color as it had in the original, the third panel was made by replicating, then editing, the second panel. Garfield's muzzle is a flip of first-panel Garfield's.

The author writes:

Could it be a fly masquerading as a spider? Does the spider have VTOL? We may never know...

Original strip: 1989-03-14.

Transcript

{Garfield gets ready to hit a spider with a newspaper}
{The spider starts floating}
{Garfield watches it float in shock}