Garfield the love for coffee is legendary; Although the orange tabby sipping a pint of Joe – or two, or twelve, or twenty – started out as taboo, it soon became one of the beloved comic book character’s most recognizable attributes.. Over the years, Jim Davis’ comic strip was routinely an ode to coffee drinkers, becoming perhaps pop culture’s defining depiction of too much caffeine.
Jon Arbuckle sometimes expressed concern about Garfield’s caffeine consumption, but as he did with most things, he eventually came to terms with it. In truth, however, sharing breakfast was Jon and Garfield’s greatest common interest, giving them an opportunity to bond where the joke didn’t always fall on Arbuckle.
Readers will discover that Garfield The coffee humor hits a nerve, deftly satirizing hardcore coffee drinkers and their excesses – while also making it clear that Jim Davis himself must have been a caffeine addict.
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Garfield’s first coffee strip established caffeine consumption as an essential feature at the beginning of the strip
First published: June 29, 1978
On June 19, 1978, Garfield it entered national newspaper syndication, and it was in the first few weeks of the strip that Jim Davis introduced Garfield’s love of coffee. “You can’t drink coffee, Garfield, it’ll mess up your, uh…“Jon Arbuckle says: taking the tabby mug from his paw – before stopping for a moment, handing it back and asking “one lump or two?“
Especially in the early comics, Garfield’s weight was a central source of humor, and so it’s fitting that his love of coffee grew out of it. While this could have been a one-off joke, Davis recognized the potential of an over-caffeinated cat as an ongoing source of comedy. As a result, this strip started one of the Garfield longest-running jokes and led to some of his funniest moments.
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Early Garfield Comics Worried About a Cat Drinking Coffee – and Made It Into His Joke
First published: December 10, 1979
Part of Garfield The initial development was the way Jim Davis navigated the overlapping – and not always necessarily consistent – cat and human qualities of the title character. Coffee is a perfect example of this; At the beginning of the strip, Jon Arbuckle realized that his pet shouldn’t drink coffee, especially not that much, as is the case in this comic strip, which makes him say resignedly: “It’s time to talk about your coffee addiction, Garfield.”
In the first panel, Garfield enters the frame shaking, desperately needing his morning cup, which he drinks desperately in the second panel, leading to Jon’s comment. As Garfield evolved, however, it was increasingly taken for granted that the character drank coffee – causing the focus of the strip’s caffeine humor to shift to the effects of increasingly excessive consumption.
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Garfield occasionally tested the limits of good taste – especially when it came to coffee
First published: February 3, 1980
That Garfield the panel shows the character reacting to a particularly cold morning, testing the limits of warming with a good cup of coffee; he splashes the hot liquid on his face, pours it down his throat, gargles and finally enters the mug as if it were a hot tub.
“You really like your coffee, don’t you, Garfield?” Jon Arbuckle asks, narrowing his eyes at the feline – probably grateful that it wasn’t his coffee that the cat threw himself into. Some of the hilarity of Garfield’s human behavior is on display here – as his true nature as a cat parallels Garfield often being downright rude and uncivil in his actions, to consistently great comedic effect.
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As a coffee drinker, Garfield was more concerned with quantity than quality
First published: November 30, 1987
In essence, there are two types of coffee lovers: those who love one cup of good coffee and those who love many cups of bad coffee. Garfield is famously in the latter camp, as shown here in this strip, where the cat agrees”cut“with your caffeine, agreeing to just take it”half cup” – while holding a ridiculously large mugone that is bigger than him and almost as big as Jon.
Once again, Jon Arbuckle is concerned about Garfield drinking coffee here – but unlike previous cartoons, this is the setup rather than the punchline of the joke. Additionally, Garfield expresses a common refrain for coffee drinkers here, thinking that “there isn’t much coffee” in response to Jon Arbuckle’s concerns.
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Jim Davis’ Garfield Comic About Caffeine Was A Complete Vibe
First published: December 2, 1987
Heavy caffeine users are familiar with the jitters — as well as that level beyond the jitters where it feels like they’re vibrating at such a frequency that they’re going to enter an entirely different plane of existence. Few works of art or fiction capture that feeling as accurately as this one. Garfield comics, in which Garfield is depicted shaking uncontrollably after “lots of coffee.“
There have been many coffee-crazy characters in popular culture, but the true feeling of having had too much coffee is difficult to convey in live-action or prose – but with the medium of comics, Jim Davis has found the perfect way to encapsulate this experience, elevating Garfield coffee comics to a level of artistic achievement that few creators can truly claim.
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Garfield’s constant desire for one more cup made him highly trusted by coffee drinkers
First published: April 17, 1990
In this Garfield strip, Jon Arbuckle, still sleepy and in his pajamas, says: “Good morning, Garfield“, but instead of a grumble, he gets his greeting shouted back to him, with a smile and a wave, making it clear that Garfield has started drinking coffee during the day.. “You have to reduce”, says Jon, without even needing to know exactly how much his cat consumed – something that the tabby immediately confirms, spontaneously, a moment later, saying “yes, thank you! I’m going to have the 11th cup of coffee!”
Coffee aficionados will appreciate this comic for the way it playfully satirizes the constant desire for just one more cup, or even another sip, no matter the time of day, or how much they’ve drunk up to that point.
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Garfield Calls Coffee “The Next Best Thing” to Literally Being Young Forever
First published: November 25, 1991
“Have you heard of the ‘fountain of youth’,“a distraught, pre-first-drink Garfield thinks about the first panel of this strip – and Then, after taking the first sip in panel two, the final frame shows him beaming, holding his cup aloft and enthusiastically declaring “meet the next best thing!”
In other words, in Garfield’s estimation, although the possibility of actually restoring youth and potential immortality may be fanciful hopes, caffeine offers a very real alternative. Although some people feel like they are reborn every morning, heavy coffee drinkers are the opposite: they wake up feeling dead and need to be brought back to life. Fans who know the feeling of stumbling across the coffee maker right out of bed every morning will recognize how Jim Davis perfectly captures the transformation of the first sip here, making this an all-time great moment. Garfield coffee cartoon.
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‘Bean Me!’: Over time, Garfield’s coffee consumption became excessive
First published: March 26, 1993
Jon Arbuckle rarely had moments of quiet rest, and the first panel of this Garfield strip shows him briefly enjoying one, lazily sipping a cup of coffee – before he is, of course, Iinterrupted by Garfield, who slams his mug next to Jon and shouts, “BEAN ME!” with a positively unbalanced smile and teeth clenched in his face.
“Something tells me this isn’t your first cup today,’ Jon says sarcastically; Nearly twenty-five years after Garfield’s love of coffee was first established, it has become entirely enmeshed in comic book lore, with Jon’s apparent total lack of concern about how far Garfield has turned eighty since his initial hesitation. .
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Garfield embodies the perennial quest for an ever-stronger cup of coffee
First published: May 11, 1998
Still in his trademark red and white pajamas, Jon Arbuckle evidently rolled out of bed to start the day in this strip thinking he could trust Garfield to make breakfast. After a sip – or, more accurately, a “sip,“- his eyes bulge out of their sockets, prompting him to ask “how many spoons did you use?“ “Spoons?” Garfield thinks, unconcerned with the strength of the coffee, as the empty can of grounds sits on its side on the counter next to him.
Readers who have dabbled in espresso, cold brew, caffeine pouches, and other methods of increasingly intense caffeine intake will have a hard time not laughing at this. Garfield cartoon, which confirms that the infamous cat is on the same quest for an increasingly strong cup of coffee.
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“A Little Espresso”: In the new millennium, Garfield needed more than just a regular coffee to get his fix
First published: July 1, 2001
This oversized Sunday edition of Garfield features a hilarious sequence of panels, in which the eponymous tabby cat takes a shot of espresso – and then has a progressively more intense reaction as the caffeine hits your system, causing you to notice that “a little espresso goes a long way.”
This cartoon emphasizes that even decades later Garfield premiered, Jim Davis was still able to extract a lot of comedy from simple, effective visual gags like this. By this point, fans were familiar with Garfield’s love of caffeine, and so it became a matter of continuing to illustrate this in a way that connected with readers. For anyone who has ever felt that tingling sensation in their brain after a new shot of espresso, this Garfield the cartoon is as memorable and relatable a strip as Davis has ever produced.