Garfield
Garfield is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as Jon in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as Garfield, it chronicles the life of the title character, Garfield the cat; Jon Arbuckle, his human owner; and Odie, the dog. As of 2013, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip.
Though this is rarely mentioned in print, Garfield is set in Jim Davis' hometown of Muncie, Indiana, according to the television special Happy Birthday, Garfield. Common themes in the strip include Garfield's laziness, obsessive eating, love of coffee and lasagne, disdain of Mondays and diets. Garfield is also shown to manipulate people to get whatever he wants. The strip's focus is mostly on the interactions among Garfield, Jon, and Odie, but other recurring minor characters appearing as well. Originally created with the intentions to "come up with a good, marketable character", Garfield has spawned merchandise earning $750 million to $1 billion annually. In addition to the various merchandise and commercial tie-ins, the strip has spawned several animated television specials, two animated television series, two theatrical feature-length live-action/CGI animated films, and three fully CGI animated direct-to-video movies.
Part of the strip's broad pop cultural appeal is due to its lack of social or political commentary; though this was Davis's original intention, he also admitted that his "grasp of politics isn't strong", joking that, for many years, he thought "OPEC was a denture adhesive".
On August 6, 2019, New York City-based ViacomCBS announced that it would acquire Paws, Inc., including the rights to the Garfield franchise. Jim Davis will continue to make comics, and a new Garfield animated series is in production for ViacomCBS subsidiary Nickelodeon.
History
In 1973, while working as an assistant for T.K. Ryan's Tumbleweeds, Jim Davis created the comic strip Gnorm Gnat, which ran only in the Pendleton Times of Pendleton, Indiana from 1972 to 1975 and met with little success. One editor famously said " art was good, his gags were great, nobody can identify with bugs."Davis decided to take a long, hard look at current comic strips to determine what species of animal star characters might be more popular. He felt that dogs were doing well, but noticed no prominent cats. Davis figured he could create a cat star, having grown up on a farm with twenty-five cats. Thus was created the character of Garfield.
Garfield, the star, was based on the cats Davis grew up around; he took his name and personality from Davis' grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, who was—in Davis' words—"a large, cantankerous man." The name Jon Arbuckle came from a 1950s coffee commercial. Jon's roommate Lyman, added to give Jon someone to talk with, carried on the name of an earlier Gnorm Gnat character. The final character was Lyman's dog Spot, who was later renamed Odie. From 1976 to early 1978, these characters appeared in a strip called Jon which also ran in the Times. The early prototype strips were not generally well documented and were considered to be lost media until 2019 where a YouTube channel by the name of Quinton Reviews was able to retrieve several digital scans of the Jon publications from the Pendleton Community Library after gathering information via an obscure blogpost source within a lost media Wiki site. This strip first appeared in the Pendleton Times on January 8, 1976, just two weeks after Gnorm Gnat ended.
United Feature Syndicate accepted the strip for national distribution, which had been retitled Garfield on September 1, 1977, in March 1978 and made its nationwide debut in 41 newspapers on June 19 of that year.
The Garfield Sunday strip was launched on June 25, 1978; it was available only at a third-page size until March 22, 1981. A half-page debuted the following Sunday, March 29. The Sunday strips for March 14 and 21, 1982, tried out a unique nine-panel format, but UFS curtailed further use of it.
The strip underwent stylistic changes, evolving from the style of the 1976–83 strips, to a more cartoonish look from 1984 onward. This change has mainly affected Garfield's design, which underwent a "Darwinian evolution" in which he began walking on his hind legs, "slimmed down", and "stopped looking... through squinty little eyes" His evolution, according to Davis, was to make it easier to "push Odie off the table" or "reach for a piece of pie."
Garfield quickly became a commercial success. In 1981, less than three years after its nationwide launch, the strip appeared in 850 newspapers and accumulated over $15 million in merchandise. To manage the merchandise, Davis founded Paws, Inc. In 1982 the strip was appearing in more than 1,000 newspapers.
By 2002, Garfield became the world's most syndicated strip, appearing in 2,570 newspapers with 263 million readers worldwide; by 2004, Garfield appeared in nearly 2,600 newspapers and sold from $750 million to $1 billion worth of merchandise in 111 countries. In 1994, Davis's company, Paws, Inc., purchased all rights to the strips from 1978 to 1993 from United Feature. The strip is currently distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, while rights for the strip remain with Paws.
While retaining creative control and being the only signer, Davis now only writes and usually does the rough sketches. Since the late 1990s most of the work has been done by long-time assistants Brett Koth and Gary Barker. Inking and coloring work is done by other artists, while Davis spends most of the time supervising production and merchandising the characters.
Marketing
Garfield was originally created by Davis with the intention to come up with a "good, marketable character". Now the world's most syndicated comic strip, Garfield has spawned a "profusion" of merchandise including clothing, toys, games, books, Caribbean cruises, credit cards, dolls, DVDs of the movies or the TV series, and related media.Media
Internet
Garfield.com was the strip's official website, which contained archives of past strips along with games and an online store. Jim Davis had also collaborated with Ball State University and Pearson Digital Learning to create www.ProfessorGarfield.org, an educational website with interactive games focusing on math and reading skills, and with Children's Technology Group to create MindWalker, a web browser that allows parents to limit the websites their children can view to a pre-set list.A variety of edited Garfield strips had been made available on the Internet, some hosted on their own unofficial, dedicated sites. Dating from 2005, a site called the "Garfield Randomizer" created a three-panel strip using panels from previous Garfield strips. Another approach, known as "Silent Garfield", involved removing Garfield's thought balloons from the strips. Some examples date from 2006. A webcomic called Arbuckle does the above but also redraws the originals in a different art style. The Arbuckle website creator writes: "'Garfield' changes from being a comic about a sassy, corpulent feline, and becomes a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets. Consider that Jon, according to Garfield canon, cannot hear his cat's thoughts. This is the world as he sees it. This is his story". Another variation along the same lines, called "Realfield" or "Realistic Garfield", was to redraw Garfield as a real cat as well as removing his thought balloons. Still another approach to editing the strips involved removing Garfield and other main characters from the originals completely, leaving Jon talking to himself. While strips in this vein could be found online as early as 2006, the 2008 site Garfield Minus Garfield by Dan Walsh received enough online attention to be covered by news media. Reception was largely positive: at its peak, the site received as many as 300,000 hits per day. Fans connected with Jon's "loneliness and desperation" and found his "crazy antics" humorous; Jim Davis himself called Walsh's strips an "inspired thing to do" and said that "some of work better ". Ballantine Books, which publishes the Garfield books, released a volume of Garfield Minus Garfield strips on October 28, 2008. The volume retains Davis as author and features a foreword by Walsh.
On June 19, 2020, the website was shut down during the strip's 42nd anniversary, following Viacom's acquisition of Paws inc in August 2019. The website now redirects to Nick.com, with an alternative link to GoComics.
Television
Garfield's animation debut was on The Fantastic Funnies, which aired on CBS on May 15, 1980, voiced by actor Scott Beach. Garfield was one of the strips featured, introduced as a newcomer. From 1982 to 1991, twelve primetime Garfield cartoon specials and one hour-long primetime documentary celebrating the character's 10th anniversary were aired; Lorenzo Music voiced Garfield in all of them. A Saturday morning cartoon show, Garfield and Friends, aired for seven seasons from 1988 to 1994; this adaption also starred Music as the voice of Garfield. The Garfield Show, a CGI series, started development in 2007 to coincide with the strip's 30th anniversary the following year. It premiered in France in December 2008 and made its U.S. debut on Cartoon Network on November 2, 2009. A new series is currently in development at Nickelodeon after the rights were acquired from Nickelodeon's parent company ViacomCBS.TV series
Primetime specials
Films
' was released in theaters on June 11, 2004. Its sequel, ', was released on June 16, 2006. Garfield was voiced by actor Bill Murray in both films. Three direct-to-video films were released, Garfield Gets Real on August 9, 2007, Garfield's Fun Fest on August 5, 2008, and Garfield's Pet Force on June 16, 2009. On May 24, 2016, it was announced that Alcon Entertainment will develop a new CG animated Garfield movie with John Cohen and Steven P. Wegner ready to produce and to be directed by Mark Dindal, director of Cats Don't Dance, The Emperor's New Groove and Chicken Little. In August 2019, Viacom acquired the rights to Garfield, leaving the status of the movie uncertain.Video games
A Garfield video game was developed by Atari, Inc. for its Atari 2600 home video game system and appears in their 1984 catalog. However, after Atari's spinoff and sale of its home games and computers division, owner Jack Tramiel decided the character's royalties were too expensive given the declining state of the video game industry at the time, and the game was cancelled. A ROM image of the game was however released with Jim Davis' blessing.' is a 1987 video game for the Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and the Amiga based on the comic strip. Towa Chiki made A Week of Garfield for the Family Computer, released only in Japan in 1989. Sega also made video games based on Garfield for the Genesis and Windows 3.1 computers. Other companies made games, such as ' for the DS, published by Game Factory, Garfield's Nightmare for DS, Garfield's Funfest for DS, and Garfield Labyrinth for Game Boy. On PlayStation 2 were Garfield and Garfield 2. Garfield Lasagna World Tour was also made for PS2. And recent additions for mobile devices are "Garfield's Diner" and "Garfield's Zombie Defense".
Konami also released a Garfield Handheld electronic game titled Lasagnator in 1991, which met with mild success.
In 2012, a series of Garfield video games was launched by French publisher Anuman Interactive, including My Puzzles with Garfield!, Multiplication Tables with Garfield, Garfield Kart, and Garfield's Match Up.
Stage
, producer of A Chorus Line, discussed making a Garfield stage musical, but due to some complications, it never got off ground. A full-length stage musical, titled "Garfield Live", was planned to kick off its US tour in September 2010, but got moved to January 18, 2011, where it premiered in Muncie, Indiana. The book was written by Jim Davis, with music and lyrics by Michael Dansicker and Bill Meade, and it was booked by AWA Touring Services. The opening song, "Cattitude" can be heard on the national tour's website, along with two more, "On the Fence", and "Going Home!". When the North-American tour concluded in 2012, it toured throughout Asia.Comic book
In agreement with Paws, Boom! Studios launched in May 2012 a monthly Garfield comic book, with the first issue featuring a story written by Mark Evanier and illustrated by Davis's long-time assistant Gary Barker.Art book
In 2016, Hermes Press signed an agreement with Paws, Inc to publish an art book on the art of author Jim Davis, titled The Art of Jim Davis' Garfield. The book includes an essay by author R.C. Harvey and other original material, and was released in July 2016 for the San Diego Comic-Con.Restaurant
In 2018, a ghost restaurant themed after the franchise known as GarfieldEATS was opened in Dubai. The restaurant has been described by its founder and "Chief Entergage Officer" Nathen Mazri as a "quick mobile restaurant". Mazri claims that the restaurant is "entergaging", a portmanteau of the words "entertaining" and "engaging". Customers order food through the official mobile app, which also contains games and allows users to purchase episodes of Garfield and Friends. The restaurant serves lasagna, Garfield-shaped pizza, "Garfuccinos", and Garfield-shaped dark chocolate bars. A second location opened in Toronto in 2019.Main characters
Through the Garfield strips, there have been many additional characters, but the main ones are described here.Garfield
First appearance: June 19, 1978Garfield is an orange, fuzzy tabby cat born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant who immediately ate all the pasta and lasagna in sight, thus developing his love and obsession for lasagna and pizza.
Gags in the strips commonly deal with Garfield's obesity, and his disdain of any form of exertion or work. He is known for saying "breathing is exercise".
Though Garfield can be very cynical, he does have a soft side for his teddy bear, Pooky, food and sleep, and in one Christmas he says, "they say I have to get up early, be nice to people, skip breakfast... I wish it would never end."
However, in the feature film Garfield Gets Real and its sequels, Garfield is better behaved, friendlier towards Jon and Odie, less self-centered, and more sympathetic.
It has been wondered by many readers if Garfield can actually be understood by the human characters around him. Sometimes, it seems like Jon can hear him. However, it is mentioned in more than one strip that Jon cannot understand Garfield. However, in the feature film Garfield Gets Real and its sequels, Garfield and the other animals save for Odie are able to talk to, and be understood by, Jon and the other humans. In the April 1, 1997 strip drawn by the artists of Blondie as part of the comic strip switcheroo, Garfield, still with thought balloons, can be understood by Jon.
To break the fourth wall, June 19 is celebrated within the strip as Garfield's birthday. The appearance in 1979 claimed it to be his first birthday, although in the first appearance of the strip, he was portrayed as a fully-grown cat, implying that the birthday is of the strip itself.
Jon Arbuckle
First appearance: June 19, 1978Jon is Garfield's owner, usually depicted as an awkward clumsy geek who has trouble finding a date. Jon had a crush on Liz and is now dating her. Jon disapproves of Garfield's "don't care, not interested", attitude, and often encourages his pet to take an interest in the world around him, sometimes stating an interesting fact, or asking a philosophical question in an attempt to prompt Garfield into thought, Garfield tends to brush this off with a simple, yet logical remark, and despite the trouble Garfield causes, Jon has a heart of gold and is very tolerant of Garfield's shortcomings, a fact which Garfield often takes advantage of. In the December 23, 1980 strip, Jon states that he is thirty years old. His birthday is July 28.
Jon loves Garfield and all cats. Many gags focus on this; his inability to get a date is usually attributed to his lack of social skills, his poor taste in clothes, and his eccentric interests which range from stamp collecting to measuring the growth of his toenails to watching movies with "polka ninjas". Other strips portray him as lacking intelligence.
Jon was born on a farm that apparently contained few amenities; in one strip, his father, upon seeing indoor plumbing, remarks, "Woo-ha! Ain't science something?" Jon occasionally visits his parents, brother and grandmother at their farm. It was implied that Jon is inspired by a drawing of Davis himself when he was first drawing the strip. Jon was portrayed as a cartoonist in the first strip and occasional others in the early years; Davis stated his intent had been to express his own frustrations as a cartoonist. Ultimately, Jon's job has been referenced far more frequently in Garfield animated series than in the strip.
Odie
First appearance: August 8, 1978Odie is a yellow, long-eared beagle with a large, slobbering tongue, who walks on all four legs, though occasionally he will walk on two like Garfield. He was originally owned by Jon's friend Lyman, though Jon adopted him after Lyman was written out of the strip. The book Garfield: His 9 Lives retcons Odie's origin: there is no mention of Lyman, and Odie was a puppy when he was acquired by Jon as company for Garfield. Odie is younger than Garfield and usually portrayed as naïve, happy, affectionate and blissfully unaware of Garfield's cynical, sadistic nature, despite the physical abuse Garfield exhibits toward him, including regularly kicking him off the kitchen table or tricking him into going over the edge himself. On some occasions, however, he is depicted more intelligently, as one strip, in which he holds a heavy rock to prevent Garfield from doing this, and actually hurts Garfield's foot. In one strip when Garfield and Jon are out of the house, Odie is seen reading War and Peace and watching An Evening With Mozart on television. Odie has only talked once. In another strip, published on January 28, 2010, he is seen solving Jon's sudoku puzzle.
Dr. Liz Wilson
First appearance: June 26, 1979Dr. Liz Wilson is Garfield and Odie's sarcastic veterinarian and a long time crush of Jon Arbuckle. She has a somewhat deadpan, sardonic persona and almost always reacts negatively to Jon's outlandish and goofball behavior but can even find it endearing on occasion. Jon often attempted to ask her out on a date, but rarely succeeded; however, in an extended story arc from June 19 to July 29, 2006, Liz and Jon kiss, and have been a couple ever since.
Recurring subjects and themes
Many of the gags focus on Garfield's obsessive eating and obesity; his dislike of spiders; his hatred of Mondays, diets, and any form of exertion; his constant shedding ; and his abuse of Odie and Jon as well as his obsession with mailing Nermal to Abu Dhabi, or simply throwing him through the front door. Though he will eat nearly anything, Garfield is particularly fond of lasagna; he also enjoys eating Jon's houseplants and other pets. He also has odd relationships with household pests; Garfield generally spares mice, and even cooperates with them to cause mischief, but will readily swat or pound spiders flat. Other gags focus on Jon's poor social skills and inability to get a date; before he started dating Liz, he often tried to get dates, usually without success. When he does get a date, it usually goes awry; Jon's dates have slashed his tires, been tranquilized, and called the police when he stuck carrots in his ears. The storylines featuring Jon's dates rarely appear now. Before, he had dates with many odd characters, whereas now, he exclusively dates Liz.Garfield's world has specific locations that appear normally on the comic strips, like the Vet's office, a place he loathes. Irma's Diner is another occasional setting. Irma is a chirpy but slow-witted and unattractive waitress/manager, and one of Jon's few friends. The terrible food is the center of most of the jokes, along with the poor management. Jon periodically visits his parents and brother on the farm. This results in week-long comical displays of stupidity by Jon and his family, and their interactions. There is a comic strip where Jon's brother Doc Boy is watching two socks in the dryer spinning and Doc Boy calls it entertainment. On the farm, Jon's mother will cook huge dinners; Garfield hugs her for this. Jon has a grandmother who, in a strip, kicked Odie; Garfield subsequently hugged her. Jon's parents have twice visited Jon, Garfield, and Odie in the city. Jon's father drove into town on his tractor and brought a rooster to wake him up. As Garfield has a love for food, they will often eat out at restaurants. Most trips end up embarrassing because Garfield will pig out, or Jon will do something stupid, including wearing an ugly shirt, which happened one night when he took Liz on a date. When Jon takes Liz on a date, Garfield occasionally tags along—once, he ate the bread and other food at an Italian restaurant they went to. Frequently, the characters break the fourth wall, mostly to explain something to the readers, talk about a subject that often sets up the strip's punchline, or give a mere glare when a character is belittled or not impressed. Sometimes, this theme revolves around the conventions of the strip; for example, in one strip, Garfield catches a cold and complains about it, noting that his thoughts are stuffed up.
Short storylines
One particular semi-recurring storyline features Jon and Liz on a date in a restaurant. They sometimes are waited on by the Italian Armando, who is refined and sophisticated and shows a great loathing towards Jon, presumably for his immature and uncouth behavior at the prestigious eatery. On other occasions, the couple receives a different waiter, such as a large ogre-like man who intimidates Jon when he is about to report a complaint about the food.Another commonly recurring character, although hardly ever seen, is Jon's neighbor, Mrs. Feeny. Garfield seems to take both enormous pride and excess zeal in doing whatever it takes to harass her, to the point the she even erects an electric fence.
Other unique themes are things like "Garfield's Believe it or Don't", "Garfield's Law", "Garfield's History of Dogs", and "Garfield's History of Cats", which show science, history, and the world from Garfield's point of view. Another particular theme is "National Fat Week", where Garfield spends the week making fun of skinny people. Also, there was a storyline involving Garfield catching Odie eating his food and "kicking Odie into next week". Soon, Garfield realizes that "Lunch isn't the same without Odie. He always slips up behind me, barks loudly and makes me fall into my food". A few days after the storyline began, Garfield is lying in his bed with a "nagging feeling I'm forgetting something", with Odie landing on Garfield in the next panel. Jon and Liz began to go out more frequently, Jon has started hiring pet sitters to look after Garfield and Odie, though they do not always work out. Two particular examples are Lillian, an eccentric old lady with odd quirks, and Greta, a muscle bound woman who was hired to look after the pets during New Year's Eve. Most of December is spent preparing for Christmas, with a predictable focus on presents. Other Christmas themed strips include Jon's attempts at decorating the tree and house, or the attempt to buy the tree. Some years, the Christmas strips started as early as the end of November. Another example is "Splut Week", when Garfield tries to avoid pies that are thrown at him. For most of Garfield's history, being hit with a pie has inevitably resulted in the onomatopoeia "splut", hence the name.
Every week before June 19, the strip focuses on Garfield's birthday, which he dreads because of his fear of getting older. This started happening after his sixth birthday. However, before his 29th birthday, Liz put Garfield on a diet. On June 19, 2007, Garfield was given the greatest birthday present: "I'M OFF MY DIET!" Occasionally the strip celebrates Halloween as well with scary-themed jokes, such as mask gags. There are also seasonal jokes, with snow-related gags common in January or February and beach- or heat-themed jokes in the summer.
One storyline, which ran the week before Halloween in 1989, is unique among Garfield strips in that it is not meant to be humorous. It depicts Garfield awakening in a future in which the house is abandoned and he no longer exists. In Garfield's Twentieth Anniversary Collection, in which the strips are reprinted, Jim Davis discusses the genesis for this series:
One of the recurring storylines involves Garfield getting lost or running away. The longest one of these lasted for over a month ; it began with Jon telling Garfield to go get the newspaper. Garfield walks outside to get it, but speculates about what will happen if he wanders off – and decides to find out. Jon notices Garfield has been gone too long, so he sends Odie out to find him. He quickly realizes his mistake. Jon starts to get lonely, so he offers a reward for the return of Garfield and Odie. He is not descriptive, so animals including an elephant, monkeys, a seal, a snake, a kangaroo and joey, and turtles are brought to Jon's house for the reward. After a series of events, including Odie being adopted by a small girl, both pets meeting up at a circus that they briefly joined, and both going to a pet shop, Garfield and Odie make it back home.
Another story involved Jon going away on a business trip around Christmas time, leaving Garfield a week's worth of food, which he devoured instantly. Garfield then leaves the house and gets locked out. He then reunites with his mother, and eventually makes it back home in the snow on Christmas Eve. Part of this storyline was taken from the 1983 Emmy-winning special Garfield on the Town.