How Was Garfield Created?
Can you imagine life without Garfield? I mean, he goes so far back and is such a famous character today that things just wouldn’t be right about him. What made him so popular were his personality traits. He was lazy, loved to eat, drink coffee, hated Mondays and diets. He was also great at manipulating others to get what he wants. Does that sound familiar? Similar to Roseanne, people love him because he was relatable and didn’t get tied up in politics.
Cats are also the second most popular pet, so something had to be created around their personalities. It may not be as popular as the iconic dog figures, but there are LOTS of cat people out there. So the question here is, where did this all start? How was Garfield created?
How Garfield was Created
Garfield was created by cartoonist Jim Davis in 1978. This is the first comic book strip we’re talking here, not the TV show yet. Although that came out on September 17, 1988. So he first started his comic career in 1973 as an assistant for T.K. Ryan’s Tumbleweeds. He also created Gnorm Gnat which only displayed in the Pendleton Times of Pendleton, IN from 1972 – 75. But he wasn’t too successful because he was writing about bugs. There are some crazy people out there but not enough people in Pendleton, IN like bugs.
That was when Davis got the hint that he should be drawing something more popular. Even in the 70s, it was already figured out that dogs were popular as Scooby Doo and Astro from The Jetsons dominated the red carpet. So at the time, cats were popular but weren’t brought into fame just yet. This was Davis’ in to success.
In addition to his idea of starting a comic strip about a cat, he also grew up on a farm with 25 of them (fun fact). So he knew a thing or two about them! And wallah! Garfield was created.
More Details
Getting more into detail about how Garfield was created, his character was based on the personalities of the cats with which David grew up. He grabbed the name and personality from his grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, whom he liked to call a “large, cantankerous man.” Garfield’s owner’s name, Jon Arbuckle, was taken from a 1950s coffee commercial. The final character, Odie, was based off of Jon’s roommate’s dog. Although since Spot was already another character in Boner’s Ark, he was renamed Odie to avoid any confusion.
Fun fact: The Garfield comic strip was originally named Jon from 1976 to 1978, which ran in the Times.
Until 2019, the first prototype of the comics were not documented well and were even considered to be lost media. But the YouTube channel Quinton Reviews was able to retrieve the original Jon publications through digital scans from the Pendleton Community Library and Indiana State Library after gathering the info from a blog post. Just two weeks after Gnorm Gnat ended, Jon first appeared in the Pendleton Times on January 8, 1976.
The Evolution of Garfield
Launched on June 25th, 1978, Garfield was launched as a third-page size until March 22nd, 1981. With a little experimentation, it debuted as a half-page the next Sunday, March 29th. There was also a unique, nine-panel format during March 14th and 21st, but UFS restricted it.
Over time, Garfield went through some stylistic changes between 1976 and 1983, looking more and more cartoonish in 1984. Davis slimmed him down and opened up his eyes from a squint, apparently to “push Odie off the table” or “reach for a piece of pie.”
In just three years after it was launched, Garfield made its way to 850 other newspapers which accumulated over $15 million in merchandise. That’s where Davis founded Paws, Inc. By 1982, the strip was in over 1,000 newspapers. From 1978 to 1993, Paws, Inc., purchased all rights to the strips from United Featured. In 2002, Garfield grew into the world’s most syndicated strip (making the Guinness World Record), with appearances in 2,570 newspapers and 263 million worldwide readers. In 2004, Garfield was in over 2,600 newspapers and sold between $750 million to $1 billion worth of merchandise in 111 countries.
But on August 6th, 2019 ViacomCBS (Nickelodeon’s parent company) recently purchased the rights as well as acquired Paws, Inc. Jim Davis still works on making comics to this day.
Garfield on TV
Airing just after two years, Garfield debuted on The Fantastic Funnies, which aired on CBS on May 15th, 1980, voiced by actor Scott Beach. From 1982 to 1991, twelve primetime Garfield cartoon specials as well as one 1-hour primetime documentary were aired that celebrated the character’s 10th anniversary. Lorenzo Music voiced Garfield in all of them. Then in 2007, a CGI version, called The Garfield Show aired on TV for the comic strip’s 30th anniversary. It also premiered in France in December 2008 and then on Cartoon Network on November 2nd, 2009. Nickelodeon is currently developing a new series after the rights were purchased in August 2019 by its parent company, ViacomCBS.
Movies
Certainly there’s nothing that beats the comic strip, but the movies have been a huge hit for kids today. Each of the following movies were made from Garfield:
- Garfield: The Movie (2004)
- Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006)
- Garfield Gets Real (2007)
- Garfield’s Fun Fest (2008)
Video Games
The last major hit from Garfield were the video games. Atari, Inc. developed the first major game for the Atari 2600 home video game system that appeared in their 1984 catalog. But after owner Jack Tramiel thought the royalties were too expensive, especially given the decline in the video game industry at the time, the game was cancelled. Although a ROM image was released with Jim Davis’ blessing.
Following the 1984 version, Garfield: Big Fat Hairy Deal came out in 1987 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Amiga and Atari ST, based on the original comic strip. In 1989, Japan company Towa Chiki created A Week of Garfield for the Family computer.
Other games included:
- Garfield: Caught in the Act for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear and Windows 3.1 computers
- A Tale of Two Kitties for the Nintendo DS
- Garfield’s Nightmare for the Nintendo DS
- Garfield’s Funfest for the Nintendo DS
- Garfield Labyrinth for the Gameboy
- Garfield and Garfield 2 for the PS2 (known in the US as Garfield, a Tale of Two Kitties)
- Garfield Lasagna Tour for the PS2
- Garfield’s Diner for mobile devices
- Garfield’s Zombie Defense for mobile devices
Musical, Books and Restaurants
As if comic strips, movies, TV shows and video games weren’t enough, there were a few other small things that came from Garfield’s popularity, such as a musical, comic book and art book.
Originally, Joseph Papp was planning to write a stage musical, but unfortunately it never took off. But on January 18th, 2011, a full-stage musical, called “Garfield Live” took off. It was written by Jim Davis with the music and lyrics by Michael Dansicker and Bill Meade. It then toured in Asia in 2012, just after the US tour ended.
Comic and Art Book
Boom! Studios made an agreement with Paws, Inc. to launch a monthly Garfield comic book in May 2012 with the first issue written by Mark Evanier (he supervised Garfield and Friends and The Garfield Show) and illustrated by his assistant Gary Barker.
Hermes Press also made an agreement with Paws, Inc. to publish an art book in 2016 on the art of author Jim Davis, called The Art of Jim Davis’ Garfield. It includes an essay by author R.C. Harvey as well as other original material and was released in July 2016, just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con.
Restaurant
You probably haven’t heard of this one before, but in 2018, a ghost restaurant, called GarfieldEATS (with a Garfield theme of course) was opened in Dubai. It’s been described by it founder as a “quick mobile restaurant,” that was both entertaining and engaging. Customers would order through an app, which also had games available to play as well as episodes of Garfield and Friends for purchase. The restaurant served Garfield-shaped pizza, called “Garfuccinos”, Garfield-shaped dark chocolate bars, and lasagna. There was also a 2nd location that opened in Toronto in 2019 but recently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So Much Garfield!
Despite the pandemic closing down the 2nd Garfield restaurant, how cool must it be for Davis to have started something based on his own personal life? And then just after three short years, it exploded into fame. Comic strips across thousands of newspapers, TV shows, video games and so much merchandise were all based on his idea. That was the million dollar idea!
