>>105420728They still make them sometimes. The comic started out without having the first set of Sunday panels at all, then they added that set and made it a fixed title card (pic related), then they gave the comic's logo a new font and put an additional gag into each title panel (like in the pic earlier ITT), and then they started making new art for both the panel and the logo in each strip.
I'm not sure when was the last time they made a Sunday strip with a speech bubble in the title panel, though. Those were a thing mostly between 1985-1990. Nowadays they seem to prefer simple shots of Garfield's face in some experimental/artsy style.
>>105421087Happens to Nermal too. Davis uses eyelashes as an indicator that a character is cute/young, while most other artists use them to indicate that the character is a female. Orson started out as the little baby runt of the litter and that's why he had those eyelashes for a long time in the comic.
http://www.platypuscomix.net/otherpeople2/usacres1.html 
