Garfield Minus Garfield consistently makes me do a literal LOL (as opposed to the false LOL where we are actually laughing inside or LI). Underneath the humor, however, is a mixture of sadder emotions. View at least several strips and you may notice it becomes an intensely surreal experience, like the act of removing Garfield peels back a bright and happy layer exposing the intensely lonely life of a desparate, bi-polar middle-aged bachelor.

Dan Walsh has revealed the deeper side of Jim Davis’ art, a side that not even Davis himself realized knew was coming through his work. Walsh has shown us it’s not always about a silly hedonistic cat making a straight man of his owner. It’s about the human condition.

I am reminded of a powerfully insightful quote by the great Robert Anson Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land; one that makes me tear up almost every time I recall it:

I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much… because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.

Garfield Minus Garfield makes us laugh because the loneliness and strangeness of Jon Arbuckle’s life hurts us, and may even strike something personal in our own lives.

It’s funny and it’s brilliant, and you should go read some the next time you have a spare moment.