Hello everyone!

I am a lithographic (print imagery) historian who specialises in Garfield. Today I wanted to share part of what I and many others in academia consider to be the intellectual height of the cartoon, even if it's popularly considered "a serious diversion" or even "blasphemous".

Created between 1982-1985, The Passion was the pinnacle of Jim Davis' "Psychosis" phase. Mr. Davis was deeply troubled by the material success of Garfield, and considering him tainted decided to redeem him by making one representation of Garfield as Christ for every day since his death in 33 CE. The roughly 711,300 comics were submitted to newspapers sometimes several dozen times per day, variously covered in bodily fluids from the artist. These either replaced those of Christ or were accidentally placed on the paper at random.

While nobody saw or spoke to Jim Davis during this three year period, in which he only responded to inquiries with "I am only the harbinger to the messiah", it is believed that this era of deep religious mania consumed every waking hour. Many depictions lack facial features- especially eyes. This one, #28,581 "Lama Sabachthani", is one of the rare Garfield comics to feature nipples prominently. Later asked about this, Davis stated "I depict Garfield as a man, not as god. He is of god but he is of the flesh. He was sent here to die, you understand."

A bit of fun trivia! In this comic strip you'll notice that Garfield is missing the spear wound to his stomach as Jesus of Nazareth suffered. When drawing the comic Mr. Davis claimed to have a new revelation of the Passion of the Christ in which the true nature of his wounds were shown only to Mr. Davis. This makes the Garfield crucifixion scenes the only known authentic representations and challenges centuries of crucifix design in the Catholic church.