Jim Davis needs to call me.

The prolific creator of Garfield just announced that his other comic strip, U.S. Acres, is returning as a webcomic. U.S. Acres only ran in papers for three years but it was a big part of the popular Garfield and friends cartoon show. So if you’re my age, you probably know the characters very well. you just probably never knew it was a syndicated comic strip in some papers around the country.

And now it’s back. Davis recently announced during a USA Today interview that U.S. Acres is returning as a webcomic at Garfield.com.

Now this, potentially, could be huge. You have, ostensibly, the most popular living cartoonist who still produces (for the most part) his own work, launching a webcomic. That sounds big. Granted, most of Mr. Davis’ readers are probably unaware that you can even read comics on the web. But what an amazing opportunity to let them know this fact.

Unfortunately, the Garfield.com website is a huge mess. I looks like some female tween’s MySpace page. I guess a lot of shit is going down over at PAWS and they want us to know about all of it. Immediately. On the front page. With music. And Flash.

The U.S. Acres page is no better. The daily strip is competing for real estate with a logo, a search feature, and flash animated links to download AIM buddy icons that nobody uses anymore and the U.S. Acres Zazzle store. Wait. Zazzle!? Doesn’t this man control one of the largest comic strip merchandising entities on the planet? Why in the holy hell does Jim Davis have a Zazzle store? And why is the link to that store almost get more real estate above the fold than his comic strip.

Compare the U.S. Acres website to that of another syndicated comic strip that’s launched with a more digestible website: Oh Brother by Bob Weber Jr and Jay Stephens. The Oh brother website is cleanly laid out. The strip itself is easy to find and read. The archives are easy to navigate. In other words it’s navigable and encourages return viewing.

I don’t know. It’s frustrating to me. I think that Mr. Davis is in a remarkable position here and it frustrates me to see that maybe he’s just unaware of it. I know that he’s got at least one person in his organization that knows the score. And I know that person has bent Mr. Davis’ ear a couple times about the web. Certainly he knows it’s where his people are migrating to.

I just think that there’s so much more potential to the creator of Garfield launching a webcomic than a cluttered mess of a flash burdened website and a Zazzle store.

Jim, call me. We need to talk.