Groening Minus Groening

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The index to the Indie Comics vs. Context roundtable is here.
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Dan Walsh’s Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to creating Beckett-esque (or Schulz-esque) soliloquies by, yes, removing Garfield and his dialogue from Garfield strips.

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As great as this site is, its lack of originality comes not only from being based on appropriation, but also from a history of Garfield appropriation that I associate with Ben Jones et al. in the Paper Rad collaborative (anyone remember the old castlezzt.net?). I find it an instructive counterpoint to the incredible gulf of quality that exists between Matt Groening’s breathtakingly lame Life in Hell comics, and the towering cultural treasure that The Simpsons has become. Hiring writers is pretty important, obviously, since Groenig’s treacly, patronizing attempts at whimsical spontaneity has taken years to be diluted to a sufficiently non-toxic level. But there’s more to it than that.

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While it cashed in on the reliable appeal of self-pitying misogyny, the best part of Life in Hell was always visual, a frequently grid-based evocation of Winsor McCay, but, like Peanuts or Garfield, stripped of all miniscule Art Nouveau detail in order to preserve its readability when reduced to fill available space in the alternative weeklies that ran it, starting in the 1980s and ending last year. It would be hard to argue that it wasn’t at least a somewhat original strip— there were no wisecracking animals, nor clown-guided magical dream zeppelins, nor angst-filled six-year-olds, but, rather, angst-filled rabbits and fez-topped gay midgets, with non-punchlines designed to appeal more to New Yorker subscribers than the Sunday funnies crowd. Along with Jim Davis and Charles Schulz, contemporary work by Keith Haring and Gary Panter could certainly have been an influence, but Groening’s distinctive compositions and renderings made him instantly brand-able as a middlebrow cartoonist.

The non-punchline format is the same thing that makes Garfield Minus Garfield a success. That was not Groening’s problem. I think probably his problem was that he was an artist and not a writer. Some people are multi-talented, but the stigma of collaboration in “fine art” after the rise of the auteur, ironically a byproduct of professional-industrial schemes of specialization, has made for no end of unsatisfying products from those who fall short of being polymath dilettante geniuses (cough, George Lucas, cough). But of course the reason “art by committee” has such a strong negative connotation is owing to the lack of freedom imposed in professional-industrial institutions of modern culture, be they commercial or educational.

Conversely, the victory of the professional-industrial auteur is her autonomy. This autonomy managed somehow to carry over into the collaborative production ethos of The Simpsons, and Matt Groening, either directly or indirectly, is probably very much to be given credit for that. When Lisa was inspired by an ultra-authentic old black sax player (“Bleeding Gums” Murphy) and Dustin Hoffman as an enlightened substitute teacher in the first and second seasons respectively, Groening’s saccharine-sticky fingerprints were all over it.

But in season thirteen, Lisa, portraying Joan of Arc, gets burned at the stake after a trial in which God Himself folds under cross-examination. In season sixteen, Lisa wins an “American Idol”-style singing championship; Homer becomes Lisa’s tour manager, and they have the following exchange.

Homer (angrily): Oh, you LOVE sausage, but you HATE to see it
getting made!
Lisa: I don’t love sausage!
Homer (meekly): Then would you like to see it getting made?
Lisa: NO!

At this point, Matt Groening’s leaden wit was nowhere in sight (not the case, unfortunately, with Futurama). Like any master artist of old (and a few superstar artists today), the apprentices do all the real work. In olden times, though, there was much less of a middlebrow (or perhaps protruding upper lip) to speak of, and so Matt Groening should perhaps be worthy of gratitude for having the relative originality to write himself out of the picture.

29 thoughts on “Groening Minus Groening”

  3. Even as someone who grew up reading and enjoying Life in Hell, I can see your point about Groening’s talents lying in his art, not his writing. That said, I feel like you’re criticizing Groening’s work as if it were meant to be something other than what it is.

  4. I agree that The Simpsons is superior to Groening comic work and that the best stuff arises from the collaboration in the former, but I think choosing that “9 Types of Girlfriend” thing is choosing his worst to compare to the best. . . Perhaps a better point of comparison would have been the rawer Simpsons shorts from the Tracy Ullman show.

    Some of the best Life in Hell strips were ones that reproduced childhood jokes and kids relations to them. The “Freeshow” one sticks out in my mind.

  6. I just wanted to point out how utterly brilliant Garfield Minus Garfield is. That strip up there, with Jon hyperbolically reacting to nothing — that’s Kafka-level funny.

  12. No, garfield without garfield is better. Among other things, the strip is a lot more visually interesting when there’s all that blank space. It really looks unique and weird for a comic strip. Put Garfield back in and you’re just back to normal mediocre comic strip art.

  19. Definite vote for Garfield Minus Garfield.

    Leaving Garfield in is funny, but its not absurd.

    Garfield Minus Garfield is comic gold.

  20. Leaving Garfield in basically maintains the original dynamic of the comic. Garfield without Garfield fundamentally alters it, for me.

  21. Garfield without dialog is amusing, but Garfield Without Garfield was shocking in how many times I saw myself staring back at myself.

    Fundamentally altered, indeed. Garfield Without Garfield wins, IMO.

  22. Garfield minus dialogue and Garfield minus Garfield are good, but Lasagna Cat is the best Garfield remix of them all.

  24. There’s something more heartbreaking and strange about Jon reacting to absolutely nothing in such a sad defeated manner whereas when you keep Garfield in, the strip’s original intent is basically retained, only you don’t get Garfield’s unfunny fourth wall breaking snark/reaction shots. No, it’s much better when Jon talks about going on a date or the like and then spontaneously bursts out crying in an empty room.

  25. I don’t know what the rest of Life in Hell is like, but there’s a punchline in every panel of the “9 types of girlfriends” page, no?

    Especially the last panel, which after a bunch of jokes at the expense of the women, essentially flips it all around and puts the joke on the writer/reader. Self-deprecation is the most classic form of cartooning humor.

    Anyway I thought the 9 panels on the sample page were well-written and funny.

  26. Indeed. The fact that women take pity on men who pity themselves has certainly been a boon to many men, including me.

    But I can’t frankly see that self-awareness is Groening’s strong point. More like a pathetic display of faux-feminist sensitivity, featuring not very sublimated hostility toward women.

  27. Oh, it’s hostile and faux-sensitive for sure. I just think there’s just enough awareness there, and just enough of a sense of timing, to make it funny too.

  28. I can’t speak for the merits of Life in Hell from the 90s on (I remember an old Evan Dorkin strip with “Life in Hell pre-1989” on the shortlist of comics-related things that didn’t suck) but “saccharine-sticky” and “leaden” aren’t terms I would associate with the strip in its prime. R. Fiore described it circa 1984 as so blackly comic it was ultraviolet. Yes, it often wallowed in self-pity but if that were an aesthetic crime 90 percent of comics of all stripes (not to mention pop music) would be indicted. At its best (School is Hell and Childhood is Hell) it was like Fassbinder with cartoon rabbits, minus the camp melodrama but with a similar knack for detailing everyday cruelties and the deadening effect they have on their victims (Bongo’s mere physical appearance causes a child to burst into tears and the child’s mother to admonish Bongo; after several panels of silent staring at his one-eared in a store window he flatly utters “I’m sorry”). And sometimes it was just wonderfully goofy, as with the cartoon of innocuous phrases kids find hilarious (Lake Titicaca! Rocky Bottom!).
    As for self-pandering misogyny, you conveniently ignored the companion strip to The 9 Types of Girlfriends:
    http://tinyurl.com/k2k8tsp
    I like how The Dreamer is destined to turn into Old Man Grumpus.

  29. There’s no lack of posturing even-handedness, to be sure. Isn’t it nice how “Mr. Right” is rich? Every one of those “boyfriends” strikes me as a dig at women, just as much as the “girlfriends.” Women love guys who give them money and have no spine, ha ha, how enlightened!

    Thank you, though, for helping me realize how much of a companion piece this is to my other HU kvetch-fest about Chris Ware. I should have made that connection more clearly, had I but noticed it. Tiny squares with minimalist repetitions of depressed dudes not saying things. I feel perfectly okay liking equally empty but genuinely weird altered Garfield strips, not to mention plenty of pop music involving sadness, and not liking the maudlin lack of aesthetic effort in emo comics by narcissistic dudes,

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