GARFIELD - 30 YEARS OF LAUGHS AND LASAGNA

This judicious selection from Garfield’s three-decade run well demonstrates why it’s the world’s most popular comic strip. Based on cultural knowledge TV has made universal as well as on elements of human-animal, man-woman, and cat-dog relations that have been milked for laughs since time immemorial, Davis’ gags are about as surefire as you can get. Cast down the middle, never deviating to the brainy left or the raunchy right (though note the outrageous double entendre on page 57), they reliably bowl over most, sometimes all of the readers who get in their way. Of course, comics cognoscenti seldom say anything good about Garfield, complaining that Davis doesn’t use the medium creatively. Such carpers could probably do with more from Davis like the wordless Sunday strips on pages 71, 75, 133, and 165, which possess an Ernie Kovacsian charm. They should also glom the handful of details from the strips that are enlarged to fill whole pages and wind up looking like outtakes from the once-vilified, now-reverenced Nancy. Is Jim Davis the Ernie Bushmiller of tomorrow?