Garfield's Judgment Day

A Bold and Unusual Garfield Adventure That Never Made It to Film

I grew up with Garfield. Like most kids at the time, I started with his comics in my local paper, but as his profile grew and he started appearing in more media, I was all aboard. That is why I collected his books, watched his TV specials, and even had a stuffed Garfield in my room. Ol’ Garfield was, like many comic characters, a great comfort to me. Each book I read was sort of amusingly interchangeable. Then, in the summer of 1990, I went to my local mall’s Waldenbooks and spotted the newest Garfield book, one with an unusual title that turned out to be the most unexpected story: Garfield's Judgment Day.

I opened the book expecting it to look like any comic strip-style book, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was a picture book with text on the left page and a full-page color illustration on the right. This felt like something special. I took it to the register and purchased it right away. With most comic strip books, I didn’t read them right away; instead, I would save them to relax while reading before bed. So I probably took it to my room when I got home and threw it on my end table, with plans to read it while falling asleep that night. But later, when I went to bed, I would learn that this wasn’t a normal Garfield book.

The plot is unusual, as you might gather from the title. Garfield wakes up in the morning and has a sense that something terrible is going to happen. He is not alone; the rest of the pets in town feel the same thing and are agitated. It turns out that Garfield and Odie attend a weekly pet meeting, and while there, the animals all confirm what they are feeling: a giant and dangerous storm is about to hit town.

After some arguing, they decide that they are going to need to warn their owners and somehow get them into a safer space. But how? It is Garfield who has the solution: they are going to have to tell them. That’s right, it turns out that all animals can speak; they just choose not to do so. If they do, it’s a violation of an oath they took. Ultimately, they agree they have no choice.

The humans all react differently and mostly comically. When Garfield’s owner Jon hears Garfield speak (of course, Odie can still only bark), he faints. But he believes Garfield, and they run to safety. The animals prove their worth and save the day, then they all go back to driving their owners crazy by not talking ever again.

Garfield creator Jim Davis wrote Garfield's Judgment Day during the ’80s when the orange cat’s popularity was at its height. His intention was to sell the story as an animated feature film. Weirdly, despite Garfield’s name recognition, they couldn’t find a studio interested in producing the film.

A lot of work was put into trying to get the film greenlit. The voice work was done, all the music was written and recorded, and it was thoroughly storyboarded. Davis even did multiple rewrites to try to win over studio execs, but nothing could gain traction for the project.

The movie was even mentioned by Davis in the CBS special Happy Birthday, Garfield!, which was released in 1988 to celebrate the comic strip’s 10th anniversary. In it, you get a great song that would have appeared in the film, sung by long-time collaborators Lou Rawls and Desirée Goyette. Supposedly, at this point, even some test animation was made for the film. These 15 minutes of animation are considered lost media and are often mentioned not just by fans of Garfield, but by people looking for lost media in general.

So what went wrong? Why wouldn’t this project get off the ground? From what I have read, it was the tone of the writing. The studio thought this was a more serious special with a feeling of peril that might not sit well with their target audience of kids. I am not so sure this is true. Garfield might seem like light entertainment, but it often managed to sneak in something that tugs at your heartstrings. If you want a good example, just remember Grandma.

I like that Davis was willing to take a chance with his popular creation rather than continuing to take the easy path. It demonstrates evolution that I respect. Hopefully we will one day get to see that “lost footage” but even if we don’t, I would love to see the storyboards and various drafts they made, before he gave up on trying to turn it into a feature. And he would need to give up, but as we know this story has a happy ending.

Rather than waste a good story, Davis decided to release the story in print as a storybook. An unusual choice, but one that makes the book stand out in the Garfield canon. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was one of the more popular books, and its availability has been limited because of it. Just a quick search will only show it available as “Used.” The good news, though, is that not a lot of people are currently trying to find a copy, so you can still find it at a pretty reasonable price.

For me, Garfield's Judgment Day remains a fascinating piece of the Garfield legacy. It’s a bold and unusual story that showcases Jim Davis's willingness to take creative risks, even if they didn’t always pay off in the way he hoped. While it might not be as widely remembered as the daily comic strips or TV specials, it stands out as a deeper, more emotional tale that highlights the versatility of these beloved characters. If you ever come across a copy, I’d recommend picking it up—it’s a unique slice of Garfield history that’s well worth exploring.