Ballantine is going to collect those bleak, nihilistic “Garfield Minus Garfield” strips by Dan Walsh. PR below:
The full-color book format will give readers the experience of having both the original and doctored Garfield strips together on the same page for comparison. Dublin, Ireland-based Garfield Minus Garfield creator Dan Walsh will provide the foreword to the book.
Garfield creator Jim Davis was intrigued by—and pleased with—the concept. “I think it’s an inspired thing to do,” Davis said. “I want to thank Dan for enabling me to see another side of Garfield. Some of the strips he chose were slappers: ‘Oh, I could have left that out.’ It would have been funnier.”
Garfield Minus Garfield site creator Dan Walsh says, “When I looked at Jon and laughed at his crazy antics I thought ‘He’s just like me.’ As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one saw myself in him: millions of visitors from all over the world visit Garfield Minus Garfield and tell me they think the same thing. Now, thanks to the awesome generosity and humor of Jim Davis, Garfield Minus Garfield is going to become a book and I’m absolutely honored to be part of it.”
Ballantine has already made a mint printing Garfield — 33 Garfield books have made the New York Times bestseller list. Will the strip minus the porky pussy fare as well?
I will definitely buy the book. When I first visited the site, I didn’t realize that Garfield had been digitally removed.
With the originals for comparison, it will be fascinating to analyze the storytelling.
I always assumed that this would end in a lawsuit or at the least a cease-and-desist warning. This is a wonderfully surprising and extremely welcome turn of events.
G – G is one of my favorite entertainment sites. It’s wonderful to see the originator of the idea will actually make some money for it, and that Mr. Davis is such a good sport. How rare to see everyone come out a winner for a change!
I always felt Garfield Minus Garfield too it a little too far. I always preferred the one that kept Garfield, but removed his thought balloons. That is more of an accurate portrayal of the madness of Jon Arbuckle.
-Steve!
This is great news -and yeah props to Jim Davis for seeing the merits of it. I really love these “new” strips.
I can see a followup volume entitled: Garfield minus Mr. Jon Arbuckle
Cool news, although I’ve always found the strips with Garfield but with his dialogue removed to be a lot funnier.
I’ve got G-G on my RSS feed… Me, I’m worried that the effect will be ruined by printing the regular strips along with the edited ones.
This kind of reminds me of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Album”, where she took a bunch of crazy covers of “Tom’s Diner” and released them as an officially-sanctioned record.
I am curious, is Dan Walsh getting anything out of this in a monetary sense? The strips are 100% derivative work, and so by copyright law he has no claim on them. I’m interested to see what the indicia will read in the book. If it attributes a copyright to him for the altered strips, would that set a precedent in interpretation of copyright laws regarding derivative work?
Unfortunately, Patrick et al, Dan Walsh is hardly the “the originator of the idea.”
A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.
I love Garfield Minus Garfield, but someone really took it to a new level. They took the whole Garfield Thanksgiving Special… and digitally removed Garfield. It’s insane. It’s called An Arbuckle Thanksgiving.
Looks like they did the same thing with the christmas special.
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