I stumbled upon this whack bit about the week before Halloween in 1989, during which Garfield woke up in a dark house that had been abandoned for years...apparently, there is an academic strain that claims that "Garfield was either dead or starving to death in an abandoned house, imagining future strips in a state of denial."
I think that this short storyline was created, maybe accidentally, to show two separate realities, both equally possible. In Reality #1 (the commonly accepted reality), Garfield is alive. So whatever he experienced between October 23 and 28, 1989 was just imagined, and provided him with a life lesson regarding appreciation and not taking things for granted. In Reality #2 (the alternate reality), Garfield is dead, and perhaps was dead before October 23, 1989. Some of the strips prior to 1989 and all of them following that year have been imagined by Garfield out of desperation, in denial of his unfortunate circumstances. In Reality #2, Garfield is possibly haunting Jon's old house, moving around while acting out his imagined life.Hmm.
Seems a bit "deep" for a comic strip about a fat-ass cat who wants nothing but sleep and lasagna, n'est-pas? In Octiber of 1989 I was a high school senior, and I still read the comics every morning before heading off to school where I was King of the Fucking Beach, peeling outta my driveway in my '78 Ford Fiesta with thoughts of my medal-laden letter jacket and girlfriend keeping me warm, and I don't remember any Kafka-esque Garfield strips. I remember strips like this one.
Maybe Davis was just hoping to freak some dipshits out, maybe not - either way, it's still better than the cringe-inducing maudlin crap Funky Winkerbean has turned into over the last two decades. Ugh.
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