When Supporting Characters Steal the Show

I was Stumbling through the Internet the other day and I found this site that takes the famous Jim Davis comic strip Garfield and edits the eponymous cat out of the frames. What you have left is the pathetic cat owner Jon Arbuckle made that much more sympathetic as he spends his days talking to himself or, more disturbingly, to no one at all.

The blurb introducing the site reads:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

Well, I don’t know if I can say that it’s necessarily a better comic, but it is an interesting new perspective. I’d always seen Jon as a quirky fellow, but seeing him shuffle around his empty home, coming up with inanities to amuse himself while he waits to die…I can’t help but see a little bit of me in him.