Jim Davis – Garfield Unleashed
Jim Davis – Cartoonist of the beloved Garfield created n 1978.
Who is the Cartoonist behind Garfield?
Jim Davis (James Robert Davis) was born July 28, 1945, is an American Cartoonist, television writer, Television producer, screenwriter, and film producer. He is best known for his comic strips Garfield and U.S. Acres. U.S. Acres is however no longer being produced.
Jim Davis’s Inspiration
Davis was born in Marion, Indiana, and grew up on a Black Angus cow farm in Fairmount, Indiana with his father (William), mother (Catherine), and brother (Dave). His character and Garfield’s owner, Jon Arbuckle, are a parallel representation of his life on the farm. Jon is even a Cartoonist.
Career
Davis attended Fairmont High School. During his time, he joined the school’s newspaper, The Breeze, and became the Art Editor. His first comics were featured in this newspaper.
After school, he attended Ball State University where he studied art and business.
He went on to work at an advertising agency but in 1969, he began assisting Tom Ryan’s comic strip, Tumbleweeds. He then created a comic strip, Gnorm Gnat, that ran for two years (1973–1975) in The Pendleton Times, a newspaper in Pendleton, Indiana. This led him to the creation of Garfield in 1978. Garfield, however, was first published as Jon from 1976 to early 1978 in The Pendleton Times.
Garfield is produced under Jim Davis’s company: Paws, Inc., launched in 1981. Paws, Inc. manages Garfield’s vast licensing, publication, and entertainment empire. As of 2019, Paws, Inc. was sold to mass media conglomerate ViacomCBS (Paramount Global).
Garfield
Created in 1978, the intention of the cartoon was simple to come up with something good and marketable with the focus taken away from dogs. It has since spawned merchandising earnings of up to $1 billion dollars annually. As of 2013, it has been featured in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals and held the Guinness World Record for being the world’s most widely published comic strip.
Garfield is about a cat called Garfield and his owner, Jon. Further characters include Odie, the dog.
Common themes in the strip include Garfield’s laziness, obsessive eating, love of coffee and lasagna, disdain of Mondays, and diets. Garfield is also shown to manipulate people and Odie to get whatever he wants. The strip’s focus is mostly on the interactions among Garfield, Jon, and Odie.
Garfield Books listed on Bakgat Books
Main references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Davis_(cartoonist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield