Doonesfield

I don't know about you, but I love Doonesbury. Probably because I'm mature. There are way too many people who like Garfield at my school, and I'm trying to change that. Doonesbury and Garfield are exact opposites. The only things they have in common are the fact that they are both American comic strips. From there, there’s practically nothing else.

For instance, the characters. Doonesbury is a very realistic strip that follows a group of four main characters through their lives, starting with their college years up until now, where they’re in their fifties. It’s a very realistic strip, almost never straying from things that could actually happen. The only exception is one of the minor characters, Uncle Duke, who has jumped out of planes and seized control of Iraqi cities for his whole life. Garfield, on the other hand, has three main characters. The interactions between them are incredibly silly, and could never happen in real life. Doonesbury, in all, has 68 characters. Garfield has six.

The most important factor of any comic strip is the storyline. Doonesbury, from the start, was a political satire strip so liberal that it was pulled from hundreds of main comics pages and moved to the editorials. Because it has always been relevant to current events, it has had an unusual ability to stay fresh for forty years. There’s always a congressman or president to satirize, and Doonesbury has never needed to rerun a strip. Garfield, on the other hand, doesn’t have the advantage of always being new. The same storyline is enacted every month: There’s a strip where Garfield kicks Odie, he eats a lot, sleeps, complains about Mondays, and repeats. Of course, the strip could add new characters to shake things up and make it more interesting, but that’s never happened. Because of this, it’s much harder for Jim Davis, Garfield’s creator, to think up new gags every day.

Last but not least, the target community. As a political strip, Doonesbury seems to always be rejected by younger people as ‘too complicated’. Even the characters are hard to keep track of. Garfield, of course, is probably the most simple cartoon on the entire comics landscape. While you might read Garfield for fun, it takes some real devotion to read Doonesbury. Garfield’s target, therefore, is the two most annoying groups in America: Kids who want to read a strip as simple as it, and old nostalgic people who are reminded of growing up when they read it.

In conclusion, let me say this: Garfield SUCKS.

Bye!