Dilbert and Garfield have a lot of things in common. They’re both massively successful comic strips. They’ve both been turned into animated series. They both have hugely profitable merchandising arms. They both found success through offering safe, relatively innocuous and uncontroversial humor keyed to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible.

So, really, there’s no need for newspapers to run both of them. There has to be a way to free up space in funny pages for something newer and more adventurous without alienating people who just want something to clip out and stick on their cubicle white-board. Which got me thinking…what if the cast of Dilbert were lazy, food-obsessed cats owned by a nerd?

Eh, that sort of works…but it still feels like there’s something missing from this equation…

I started to suspect that the bad blood between various story-book characters would eventually turn into gladiatorial combat when The Little Engine That Could ran over the Saggy Baggy Elephant…

• “I’m sorry Kara, but according to the Techno-Priests of Rao, Kryptonian life begins 0.000287828 seconds after conception. If it makes you feel any better, we can put the baby in a rocket and send it into space after it’s born.”

• “And I know, from personal experience, that children who aren’t raised by a mother and a father grow up with deep emotional problems. That’s why the Wayne Foundation is proud to donate $5,000,00 dollars to outlaw gay adoption in this state.”
  “But Mr. Wayne, you yourself have adopted a number of teenage boys. Who all look remarkably simi-”
  “This interview is over!”

• “I’m surprised, Mr. Osborn, that a successful businessman such as yourself doesn’t see how it’s vital that the nation return to the gold standard for it’s currency.”
  “You know I’m banging your girl-friend while you’re at your ‘Paul in 08′ meetings, right Parker? You think maybe there’s a connection there you’re not seeing?”

• “Whazzat? How did Stark Industries get awarded a no-bid reconshtruchtion contract in Iraq or Iran or where ever it is? Chertainly not by getting the President druhnk.”

• “What makes you believe you have sufficent foreign policy experience to be Vice-President Ms. Prince?”
  “I can see Cuba from Themyscira.”

• “But, why do we have to move to San Francisco, Professor? Won’t FEMA rebuild the mansion after this latest Shi’Ar attack?”
  “I’m sorry, Scott, but George Bush doesn’t care about mutants.”

• “Doctor Blake…I’m a little confused. You say you want our school district to adopt geology textbooks that claim that earthquakes are ‘the shaking of the Midgard serpent’?”
  “Ja. I vøuld like før yøu tø teach der cøntrøversy.”

Please address all complaints to Mr. M. Sterling

Without that little bit of completely uncontested factual information, I may not have been able to make it through my day…