YES. Nick needs more original ideas. I *love* Garfield, but Nick can do better.
Actually, I love Garfield circa 1978-2000. The strips were funny, uniquely-drawn, and nobody could replace Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield. I love Bill Murray, but the live-action/CGI Garfield movies were pretty terrible (not Murray's fault by any means, he just did the voice and collected his money).
An issue I have is how the news articles on this acquisition assure fans that Jim Davis will continue to "produce" the Garfield comic strip. That's a very apt term, because I've read that he hasn't put ink to paper in over a decade - and it shows. For years he's had a small workshop of employees "drawing" his strip, writing his jokes, and handling the myriad of licensing that has made Garfield a veritable media empire. I still read the Garfield comic strip for nostalgia's sake, but the art is sterile and the jokes have really fallen off. I'm not a huge comic connoisseur, but all you have to do is read 1980's-era Garfield (or 1950's era Peanuts, or any Calvin & Hobbes) to see the marked difference in quality and effort.
I'm not knocking Jim Davis' right to make a buck; I just hope that fans of the strip aren't still making him out to be some lone artist, staying true to his art despite the changing years. Far from it. He's no Bill Watterson, who has famously shunned nearly all licensing of his work outside collections of his strips. He's no Charles Schulz, who certainly licensed the heck out of his characters, but who nevertheless inked every line of Peanuts for 50 years, right up until the week he died.
Beyond a known-quantity - brand recognition, if you will - I don't quite know what Nick/Viacom is really going to get out of this.
