In other recently-shared-on-Facebook news, back at the end of last month I linked to 3eanuts, which tramps through Garfield Minus Garfield territory by removing Schulz’s final panels in order to wallow in the angst built in the first three.
Facebook friends—well, actual dear friends the Madej’s (say /MADGE-ee/)—leapt to Schulz’s defense, arguing that such a site as 3eanuts wasn’t just heretical, but neglected the way some of the full 4-panel strips equally wallowed in angst. I said “Good grief” and but look at the strip I read in the barbershop today, unfindable online and so rendered through always-exciting dialogue-only transcription:
PANEL ONE
(Linus is at the fridge while Lucy is at the table with some kind of food it’s impossible to make out.)
Linus: “What I think I’ll do today is take some money out of my college trust fund and go buy a dog.”PANEL TWO
Lucy (at table): “You don’t have a college trust fund.”
Linus (now possibly at table, too? or maybe still standing): “I don’t?”PANEL THREE
Linus (now, yes, definitely sitting next to her at the table): “Please pass the grape jelly.”
Lucy: “We’re all out of grape jelly.”PANEL FOUR
Linus (head resting dejectedly on palm, elbow on table, in that classic Schulzian pose): “How can anyone not have a dog, a college trust fund, and grape jelly?”
End of strip. Amazing, right?
Thanks Dave. Last week I mentally formed a long argument comparing/contrasting the bad 3eanuts with the good Garfield Minus Garfield, but I never wrote it up. Maybe I shall.
A friend of mine called 3eanuts “brilliant,” and it really irked me. How can snipping off the last 25% of a great work and reposting the remainder be in any way “brilliant?”
Well the issue is that GMG removes an absolute piece of odiousness (Garfield: perennially, tragically, urgently unfunny) and finds in its lack something strange if not new. There are ways in which Jon without Garfield is Charlie Brown without a break, which is to say Charlie Brown. The trouble with 3eanuts is that it removes what’s often a deft bit of joy and comic timing but still finds in this lack something also strange if not new.
Both sites stem from I think a pure love for their primary sources.