Garfield Minus Garfield’s existential angst and despair may have just been one-upped by a new parody cartoon: Hetfield The Cat. The creation of Chicago cartoonist/musician Jimmy Two Hands (who’s also responsible for Danziggy, a hybrid of Misfits lyrics and the loveable funny pages loser Ziggy), Hetfield The Cat grafts some of Metallica’s best-known lyrics, sentiments, and controversies onto slightly redrawn versions of the comic strip.
This Metallicized cartoon completely captures the nuances of both the original strip and the band: In one comic, someone in Abu Dhabi is accused of stealing Metallica’s music (guess who? It’s Nermal!) while in another, Hetfield mashes a spider and exclaims, “Seek and destroy!” Adding to the authenticity, the cat Hetfield bears a striking resemblance to Metallica frontman James Hetfield; in fact, he even sports a fur goatee that looks quite similar to the one the human Hetfield’s favored in recent years. (In an even subtler gesture, Jon Arbuckle’s receding hairline looks suspiciously like drummer Lars Ulrich’s own balding pate.) A few Hetfield The Cat comics are below, but the rest are well worth checking out via Tumblr or Facebook.