The Circle of Garfield

Garfield was far and away my favorite comic growing up. I couldn't get enough of it. I had every single one of those little books, like "Garfield Rounds Out" and "Garfield Loses His Feet." I probably stopped at issue 20-something.

Well, now there's going to be a Garfield movie (trailer here). Garfield will be CG, and voiced by Bill Murray.

The choice of Bill Murray is interesting, as most males my age should recognize upon a little reflection. See, besides Garfield, one of the other big cultural influences growing up was Ghostbusters. Although we couldn't understand much of the humor, we all thought that movie was really, really cool. Lazers, ghosts, Stay Puff, Slimer, you name it. As you know, Bill Murray was one of Ghostbusters' stars, playing the scarcastic Dr. Peter Venkman.

But what made us even happier was the derivative cartoon, The Real Ghostbusters. Now we could watch Ghostbusters every week! But of course people like Bill Murray didn't have time to voice a weekly cartoon, so they brought in new people, including Lorenzo Music to do Venkman. Music had this great manner of speech which I can only describe as "sarcastic and lazy." It's quite memorable - even if you didn't watch the cartoon, you'd probably recognize his voice you heard it.

But Venkman wasn't Music's only job. What was Music's other cartoon voice-over claim to fame? Why Garfield of course!

Unfortunately, Music died of cancer in 2001. Thus, Murray is now stepping-in as Garfield, just as Music did for Murray with Ghostbusters. And now life feels complete.