Garfield: His Nine Lives

by Jim Davis

Garfield lives his life to the fullest . . . 9 times!
Cave Cat -- the first cat crawled out of the sea 10 million years ago. He was happy to be out of the water -- until he met Big Bob!
The Vikings -- he was big, he was mean, he was a Viking. Garfield the Orange had looted a lot of cities, but none like St. Paul, Minnesota.
Babes and Bullets -- Sam Spayed wasn't the best private investigator in the world, but he did have one terrific thing going for him -- a secretary who made a great cup of coffee.
The Exterminators -- no mouse was safe from the exterminators. Catching mice was their life. It wasn't a pretty job -- especially the way they did it.
Lab Animal -- specimen 19-GB was not happy at the prospect of being dissected, so he did something about it. What happened set the federal government on its ear.
The Garden -- life was a carefree romp among hovering harmonicas for Cloey and the orange kitten . . . until they confronted the crystal box.
Primal Self -- he was an ordinary house cat leading an ordinary existence. A shadowy memory from another time changed all that.
Garfield -- the marvelous cat we all know and love. This is his life in a nutshell.
Space Cat -- he was lost in space with a computer built by the lowest bidder. And, he was not about to let his life slip away that easily.

Genres: Comics, Humor, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Animals, Comedy, Cats

Paperback

First published October 12, 1984

About the author

James Robert "Jim" Davis is an American cartoonist who created the popular comic strip Garfield. Other comics that he has worked on are Tumbleweeds, Gnorm Gnat, Slapstick, and a strip about Mr. Potato Head.

Jim Davis was born in Fairmount, Indiana, near Marion, where he grew up on a small farm with his father James William Davis, mother Anna Catherine (Carter) Davis, brother Dave, and 25 cats. Davis' childhood on a farm parallels the life of his cartoon character Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, who was also raised on a farm with his parents and a brother, Doc Boy. Jon, too, is a cartoonist, and also celebrates his birthday on July 28. Davis attended Ball State University. While attending Ball State, he became a member of the Theta Xi fraternity. He earned the dubious honor of earning one of the lowest cumulative grade point averages in the history of the university, an honor incidentally shared with Late Show host David Letterman.

Davis as of 2007 resides in Muncie, Indiana, where he and his staff produce Garfield under his company, Paws, Inc., begun in 1981. He was married to Carolyn, a singer and elementary teacher whom he met while both were attending college, and has a son named James with her. However, the couple divorced, and Davis since 2000 has been married to Jill, Paws' senior vice president of licensing, who has worked there approximately 25 years.

Ironically, Davis did not own cats when he started Garfield because of Carolyn's allergies, but they owned a Labrador retriever named Molly. With Jill, the family has expanded to include children Ashley and Chris; three grandchildren, Chloe, Carly and Cody; cats, Spunky and Nermal; and a dog, Pooky.

Reviews

[Aaron Burman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this one many times, and I love it (and it freaks me out) every single time. My last read-through was maybe 10-15 years ago, and it still holds up (with the exception of "The Garden", the weakest story in the book). This is the best Garfield book, and well worth a read, whether you're a fan or not.

[Matthew Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was alerted to this book by "Family Guy", and then discovered my wife had it in her extensive collection of comics.

It really is something of an opus, stretching from comedy to drama to horror, and is hard to explain without spoiling the pleasure of reading it cover-to-cover.

[ClevTrev:D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peak Garfield! This book is some of the best and most unusual official Garfield media available.

[Holden · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garfield literally murders an old woman in a past life...

[BookishWriter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book in the whole wide world!!!

[Mayda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This graphic novel will definitely appeal to adults, especially to Garfield fans. And it might explain why Garfield is the way he is. No, he does not kill his owner in one of his lives. He doesn’t have a knife or gun - he has teeth and claws! What cat carer (I hesitate to use the term “owner”) has not been scratched and/or bitten by a cat? It doesn’t result in death! My favorite life was life number six. (It was also Garfield’s favorite.). I liked it because Garfield finally does the right thing! It’s an entertaining novel, pure fun with lots of Garfield inspired humor.

[Rachel Van Amburgh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Demented AF for a kid’s book…debatable you can even call it that…but a very fun read nonetheless.

[Big Chungus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is deeply philisophical. One could study its religious overtones, creation myth and vast lore that is presented. Garfield is not only a cartoon cat, he is a manifestation of Jim Davis' personal philosphy and beliefs. The orange cat is an avatar to us all. He is a messiah figure in this book, to be reborn, to free the world from the sin of Odie. Garfield is our salvation. Garfield is our comfort in this unprecedented time. Garfield is the light in this dark sea of chaos.

A high level knowledge of theology, religious studies and world experience is needed to fully understand this abstract masterpiece brought forth by the almighty Jim Davis. This is the gospel of Garf, and anyone who listens I guarantee will be a changed soul. THIS MESSAGE IS WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS RIGHT NOW

Im going to end this review with a quote from the mastermind Jim Davis, explaining his philosophy. "We live in a time where we are made to feel guilty for not exercising and oversleeping and overeating, but Garfield's cool with that. He likes it all and he is not apologetic about it. He just lays it out there the way it is. I think that is what people really appreciate about him because he kind of holds the mirror back to the reader. He throws it back with a humorous twist."

[Daniel Frazier · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child, I loved Garfield. I had all the comic strip collections. I had two framed prints in my room. And, yes, I had Garfield and Odie stuffed dolls (my wife still has the Odie). As an adult, I cannot fathom how I found these funny. Maybe my soul died a little? No idea, but I just find them shallow and not very inventive.

Then you get to Garfield: His 9 Lives.

Holy $&@?!

This book takes Garfield from the comic strip and reimagines him nine ways, only one being the Garfield every knows. The others range from noir to fable to outright horror (Life #7 scared the hell out of me as a kid). This book did what good pop art is supposed to do: take the familiar and flip it on its head. What’s amazing is that this wasn’t a reinterpretation from a different company or artist. Davis was the driving force behind this amazing experiment using his gravy train to create something that risked making fans say, “What the serious $&@(? Is this?!?!” And I am a sucker for anytime an established artist/writer twists an audience’s expectations with abandon and this entire book is exactly that. Check it out.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

It still seems incredible to me that the same guy who has churned out 30 years of a by-the-book, middle-of-the-road daily comic, which long ago sold its soul to the licensing gods, could have ever put out a mainstream graphic novel/comic collection as bizarre and perverse as this. This collection of nine short stories, each illustrated by a different artist, was a late childhood favorite of mine. The stories run the gamut from Argones style adventure comedy, to film noir parodies, psychedelic head-trips, and Tales of the Crypt style horror stories. The art is as diverse as the story telling and veers from traditional panel style strips to lush pencil drawings, airbrushed pop style art, and several other distinctive styles.

For any fan of graphic story telling, this is a weird little detour I recommend. Don't let the Garfield name fool you.

[Fyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what to say about this that hasn't already been said. This book is a brilliant combination of storytelling styles and is a fascinating, slightly bent look at a character we all grew up reading in the funnies. For me, probably because I am also slightly bent, the best part was "Lab Animal" and a possible callback in "Garfield." "Primal Self" is indeed terrifying. All together, it's a weird book with both incredibly dark stories contrasting with the goofy cartoon hijinks we expect from Garfield. My only real complaint was it's so short, though that may be for the best, considering what makes "Self" and "Animal" so creepy is in part their abruptness and open-endedness.

...What makes this really... creepy? is that Jim Davis wrote almost all of these, including "Primal Self" and "Lab Animal." Is there something in the water down there in Muncie?

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book scarred me as a child. It is not a funny Garfield book. It is a book where Garfield alternately gets experimented on as a lab animal, skulks around in a noir underworld, and savagely attacks and kills an old woman. I am not kidding. Most of the stories are in a more serious/realistic art style - the only nod to Garfield being the interstitial commentary and that they are about orange cats.

I forgot completely about this book until about a month ago when the Sam Spayed story popped into my head for no reason at all and the trauma and fascination all came rushing back. It is weird. And disturbing. And my parents gave it to me as a present at age 7 because they knew I loved Garfield, and thought it was another cute Garfield book. It isn't. Do not give it to your kids.

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up on Garfield comics, I loved this - but it is not for children.

[Dylan Gilder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny orange cat is not so funny anymore…

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Upon unearthing this collection from my parents' attic, I decided to give it an ol' nostalgic read...but first I watched the TV special based on this collection. It was quite the fever dream. The book, however, offers more in the way of creativity and range. For example, the book has a much wider range of illudtration styles. It also offers a wider variety of genres and tones.

It starts with Cave Cat, whose misadventures in prehistoric life are cut short by Big Bob. Next comes three stories in a row that are not in the TV special: The Vikings (in which an iceberg melts, releasing Vikings into modern society and forved to assimilate...probably cut because Garfield isn't front a center), Babes and Bullets (a noir detective story and standout in the collection...later made into a freestanding Garfield TV special), and The Exterminators (a slapstick romp that reimagines the Three Stooges as cats who run an exterminator business...offers what is probably the best punchline in the book, but not really in line with the Garfield throughout time theme of the TV special). The Lab Animal segment in the book is a rare instance of the TV special getting it right where the comic does not. The Garden is the most bizarre (though least enjoyed) of both book and TV special, straddling a bibilical fable with surreal, Wonderland-esque visuals. The book then moves onto Primal Self, a quite unexpected dip into horror. The book wraps up as the TV special does with: Garfield's first and last days (in which we meet Garfield's mom, witness his early life in an Italian restaurant, adoption by Jon, his bonding with Odie, and a jump to late-stage grandpa Garfield spinning a yarn) as well as Space Cat (which is given a mostly faithful adaptation in the TV special, except for the arcade game ending).

The sequences not featured in the book that were later included in the TV special are: King Cat (in which Garfield is the pharoah's cat, reigning over slave dogs...until tables are turned and Garfield becomes a slave himself), Court Musician (in which an execution-happy orders a concerto from Handel...only to have the piece transported into new musical terrain--blues, apparently--by his cat), Stunt Cat (a quick, slapstick punchline that references early animation), and Diana's Piano (a sequence I wasn't impressed by in my youth, but found an almost tear jerker in adulthood).

[Amy Gentry · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was a kid my Dallas cousin had all the Garfield books and whenever we visited, I hid out on his top bunk and read them all straight through multiple times. I first encountered this graphic anthology in his stash on a family vacation when I was 7 years old, and quickly barricaded myself in a dark room with it, more than a little disturbed and totally obsessed. I puzzled over the noir story (I didn't get the "Sam Spayed" joke and nobody would explain it to me), felt guilty for laughing at the Mad Magazine-style Viking story with sexist jokes and boobs, and read the Tales from the Crypt-style horror vignette through my fingers. Like everyone else, I was traumatized by Lab Animal and Primal Cat, but until flipping through it just now I had forgotten the unsettling exhilaration of the suggestion that God was an anthropomorphized cat. It's easy to see this 1984 anthology as Jim Davis straining at the walls of the golden cage he built for himself, and perhaps finding this one last burst of unbridled creative expression before settling down into self-imposed mass-produced apathy. I'm sure his skilled collaborators were also grateful for the chance to break free of the three-panel mold. And I'm grateful I got to encounter a pretty delightful Dashiell Hammett pastiche at the tender age of 7.

[Emmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this as a kid and didn't like it, so I thought I'd pick it up again years later and see if I could get more invested in it. I still didn't like it much as an adult. Most of the stories were really basic, which made them hard to get invested in, and many of the stories were either gimmicky or somewhat dark, which definitely takes away from the usual brand of hijinks that one comes to expect from a Garfield comic.

To me, this screams of trying to rebrand a series to make it new and fun, when in reality, it just feels tired and contrived. I like Garfield, but this was not a good look for it.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

My partner reminded me that we found this one on the street when we lived in a New York in a time and place where you could just find a book like this on the curb and take it home. The writing is pretty decent and it's a nice time capsule of cartooning attitudes of the time. Leaves something to be desired as a one off. I get the nine lives framing device but this would be much better as a continuing sort of anthology project.

[Micah Glus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intro: good, cool art, funny
Cave cat: fine, art is fine, regular Garfield shenanigans
Viking cat: fun, cooler art, better jokes
Detective cat: cool art, more of a short story than a comic. Fun enough, really bad but good jokes
Exterminator cat: good punchline, three stooges bit, regular art
Lab cat: cool art, dog?
Garden cat: cool art, hard to read words
Primal cat: cool art, scary
Garfield cat: classic Garfield 😁
Space cat: interesting art, good punchline

[fabby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS BOOK!

lab animal one is very very sad:( i hate it sm when garfield suffered with their cruelty. and causing a trauma for test tubes, injections, etc. ugh! well-written garfield book😩📙

will reread again and again! super nice

[Kaelin Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book as well as the others. It is another work of fine comedy and children will love it. It is a great book .

[Matthew Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very fun and inventive. The quirky stories and variety of art styles make this book interesting for any fan.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never thought I'd give a Garfield book five stars, but this is it.

[Madi ~☆TheBookNerdDiaries☆~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Fun but a little unbelievable at times.

[Ransom · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more creative Garfield endeavors, full of character, sass, and expertise artwork to show off.

[LSoriano · Rating 3 out of 5]

guay

[Queen-Patricia Chiddix · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a generally great book especially because i love Garfield!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Garfield as you've never seen him before! The main premise of the story is that each of Garfield's previous lives shaped something about his personality. This collection of Garfield tales re-interprets the well-loved feline and showcases a variety of styles, genres, and iterations. Consequently, Jim Davis and his team had more freedom to play with the character; things happen here that could not be done in a typical installment of Garfield's established timeline. See?
Jim Davis was reimagining his characters before it was cool!

The storytelling AND artwork vary dramatically between the tales, one of which is even in prose and not comics; and this works well, as each of the nine lives stands apart from every other one. The tone changes, too, with some slapstick, some gentle fun, some horror, and even some noir. The stories can't even be said to take place in the typical Garfield universe, as one might be set on a more magical or even spiritual plane, and one takes place in a city run entirely by humanish cats who wear clothes and have humanoid forms. Since this book pushes the boundaries of Garfield's character, it involves some things that maybe are a bit . . . unorthodox. One of the stories involves a scantily-clad woman and a man who spanks Garfield with a paddle (a possible fraternity hazing?) while another tale implies some romance for Garfield involving a lady cat, alcohol, and a convenient couch. The tone is in many places darker than in other Garfield stories, and sometimes things even border on the macabre. There is, for example, a tale in which a homeless cat (not Garfield) asks for someone to bury him, and another story involving people experimenting on and then dissecting animals. Not for the faint of heart!

These stories are, on the whole, very well-crafted, and the creativity involved is just astounding. Shining through all of it, of course, is a love for Garfield and a desire to play with his character a little bit, to try him out in different circumstances and styles, and (as Jim Davis put it), to stretch him to the limits of the imagination.

[Lady Lioness · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's like Jim Davis got his staff together and said, "hey, draw me some fanart, will ya?" I read a review of this somewhere online. Hijinks Ensue, perhaps? In any case, I thought it looked interesting and I got it from my local library. The premise is simple: Garfield in nine different genres, each representing a different 'life,' arranged in loose chronological order. The book was published in 1984 so some of the stories are a little dated at this point.

Two of them stand out. 'Lab Animal' reads like an early precursor to Grant Morrison's We3. 'Primal Self' is disturbing in its open-ending-ness. It makes me think of the TV procedural cliche of cats munching on corpses. The representation of Garfield in this stories are so far beyond how we would characterize the orange fat cat of newspaper fame. However, the craftiness and voracious hunger we associate with Garfield today is readily apparent in those stories, which is why they are so interesting.

I'd recommend this book for Garfield fans with an interest in psychology.

[Korynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, I dug this out of my kids books and re-read it and really appraised it as something ahead of its time. What this volume is is nine stories about the cartoon Garfield the cat without being explicitly in Garfield's style. Each story is very short but while many are silly, some are downright scary - such as the one about the cat vs primal nature or one about the cat that escapes from the experimental lab. My personal favorites are the Sam Spayed prose story (pulpy noir) and the Vikings (a very MAD magazine type of story). This book reminds me of the Bizarro volumes that DC made in which artists were encouraged to use DC's characters in new ways.