Earlier today Mike Peterson presented us with the origins of The Great Pumpkin.
Linus and The Great Pumpkin was an annual event in the Peanuts comic strip that became a perennial favorite as an animated TV special.
And while Garfield’s Halloween Adventure tried to compete as a television tradition, it never rose to the beloved status of It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Just as a certain Garfield Halloween week never reached the Linus/Great Pumpkin level.
But among a certain group there is a Garfield comic strip continuity that has become a cult favorite and is remembered every year at this time. In 1989 Jim Davis took the lasagna loving cat down a different kind of alley. Appropriately it began on a hated Monday.
This darker vision didn’t become a regular tradition. As far as I know Jim Davis never repeated such a bizarre turn in the comic strip again. Which is not to say that twisted part of Jim’s brain doesn’t come to the fore on occasion.
That fantastical, horrorific creativity of Jim’s was most fully realized a few years before the above sequence. The 1985 book Garfield: His 9 Lives showed the scarred psyche:
“The Primal Self” written by Jim Davis, art by Jim Clements, Gary Barker, and Larry Fentz.
Honestly though the Garfield Halloween special had some seriously spooky moments.