Garfield by Jim Davis for February 21, 2010

Temper temper there Fido.

Just barely less dumb than Odie…and a lot louder.

Gotta love the opening gag, too.

The cat paw emblem!! Or kitty!!

Oops… Wrong deck of cards. The right one must be in my other coat?

I’m thinking it was the three of clubs and Garfield is just messing with the dog’s mind.

Good thing he doesn’t have a Houdini act that works.

Red & Rover does the same thing FishStix, but it is still fun to read.

My thoughts exactly, FishStix. Also, it’s always seemed inconsistent. Sometimes Jon can read his thoughts and sometimes not.

At the risk of offending those who follow Garfield because he is a cartoon institution, how is this funny? My experience in reading this is the same as eating a cold piece of stale toast without butter. It’s very blah.

Does anyone else get the same feeling?

Garfield has been messing with that magician-like dog’s mind all the time. He was looking at the card and he doesn’t tell what the card is.

This can’t be happening to Garfield. It’s very bad. :(

Garfield’s most loyal followers are children. The writing in Garfield has always been simplistic and non threatening. As an adult reading Garfield, it may well seem like eating cold toast. But I don’t believe adults are the target audience here.

Hmm? I wonder how David Copperfield would answer your question eardroppings?

WaitingMan said, about 10 hours ago

I’m thinking it was the three of clubs and Garfield is just messing with the dog’s mind.

I think this idea nails it.

Three of clubs — Penn and Teller, anyone??!!

I think it’s funny. You suspend your disbelief so that you can accept the dog is smart enough to do card tricks… then just like that he’s back to being a plain old dog, just barking at a cat he can’t get.

And @FishStix, we all know cats and dogs don’t talk to each other, in English or any other human language. But how do we know they can’t read each other’s thoughts? Personally I think Jim is on to something…

Garfield- simple and child-friendly? It looks like that could be true with some of the newer strips.

But try saying that with the older ones. Some of them even feature Jon smoking a pipe- not really PC, is it?

Then there are ones that deal with inflation (“…a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee.”) and Labor Day (“To hire some jerk, then send him away…”).

Heck, there’s even one where the fat cat directly says “The Mondays sucked” (not one of the worst words you could use, but still…) when looking back on 1990 during the end of the year with “313 pretty good days.”

Watch a Garfield episode in which Garfield predicts the three of clubs out of a deck of 52

I know what it is, it’s the reference card of the deck

This Is The Second Time Garfield Has Said That

Beware of the low self-esteem dog

Dragon roasted sausage? I believe TVTropes calls that Mundane Utility.