Next year, Garfield creator Jim Davis will celebrate his 80th birthday. The occasion will, no doubt, be a big one given Davis’ impact on pop culture. There is, however, one big drawback. July 25, 2025 is a Monday, which everyone, especially Garfield, knows is the worst day of the week.
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And so, rather than celebrate anything on a Monday, we decided to get a jump on things a year early and honor Davis on his 79th birthday instead, which is a perfectly enjoyable Sunday.
Speaking of Days of the Week, Davis Arrived in This World on a Saturday
Davis was born on July 28, 1945 in Marion, Indiana. He grew up on a small farm near Fairmont, Indiana.
Garfield’s Ancestors
Growing up on the farm, Davis had 25 different cats.
Don’t Forget Orson the Pig!
Davis’ agricultural upbringing also inspired his farm-set 1980s comic strip U.S. Acres, which starred the aforementioned Orson.
How Davis Started to Draw
“As a kid, I was asthmatic and was forced to stay in bed a lot, away from the farm chores,” he wrote in 20 Years & Still Kicking: Garfield’s Twentieth Anniversary Collection. “During those long bouts, mom would shove a pencil and paper in my hands and urge me to entertain myself. My drawings were so bad at first that I had to label everything. But mom, a talented artist in her own right, showed me how to draw realistically, using shading to give the pictures depth. I’d spend hours happily drawing and writing.”
His Asthma Was Pretty Serious
In fact, he had to travel with his mother 50 miles each week for cortisone treatments.
He Overcame Stuttering
David also stuttered as a child, but beat it with the help of a sympathetic teacher.
He Grew Up Reading Comic Strips
His favorites included Peanuts, Steve Canyon, Beetle Bailey, Prince Valiant and Pogo. He cites their creators as his “heroes.”
He Was a Double Major in College
He attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he studied art and business.
Muncie as Muse
Muncie is also where Garfield is set.
Odie’s Stupid Pet Tricks
Davis was a classmate of David Letterman at Ball State University.
Post-College, Pre-Cat
After graduating, Davis worked for a local advertising agency doing layout and paste-up work.
Like a Tumbling Tumbleweed
In 1969, Davis became the assistant of cartoonist Tom K. Ryan, creator of Tumbleweeds. Davis did backgrounds and lettering on the strip.
Newspaper Strip 101
“The pay may not have been terrific, but it was great experience and taught me the discipline required for a daily strip as well as the business of syndication,” David has said of his time working on Tumbleweeds.
Gnorm Gnat
While working on Tumbleweeds, Davis spent his personal time developing his first cartoon strip, Gnorm Gnat.
Gnorm!
Gnorm Gnat ran weekly in The Pendleton Times from 1973 to 1975.
The Impact of a Gnat
Davis tried to sell Gnorm Gnat to syndicates, but it was met with what Davis has called “overwhelming indifference.”
‘Nobody Can Relate to Bugs’
While trying to sell Gnorm Gnat, Davis said he got sage advice from a publisher that told him: “Your art is good, your gags are great, but bugs — nobody can relate to bugs!”
‘A Most Fortunate Failure’
In the foreword to Davis’ book 20 Years & Still Kicking, cartoonist Mike Peters wrote, “We can always be thankful that Jim’s first strip never made it. You can be sure that Jim would have worked just as hard if the strip were in six newspapers or 2,500 newspapers. Gnorm Gnat has gone down in cartoon folklore as a most fortunate failure.”
Animals > People
“My experience with comics convinced me that nonhuman characters could be placed in many more interesting situations with greater flexibility than human characters,” Davis has explained.
A Cat’s Calculation
“After my experience with Gnorm Gnat, I was looking for a character that would be funny and have broad appeal. I wanted to use an animal. Then it hit me. There were lots of dogs in the comics — Snoopy, Marmaduke, Fred Basset — but very few strips with a cat in the lead. I started sketching and came up with a big, cantankerous, cynical orange cat,” Davis once wrote.
No, Garfield Is Not Named After the President (Directly)
Davis named Garfield after his grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, “a big, cantankerous, cynical man,” as Davis has described him. And so, no, Garfield the cat was not named after President James Garfield — at least not directly, as Davis’ grandfather was born in October 1880 and was named after the then-presidential candidate.
Solids or Stripes?
In the earliest drawings of Garfield, he didn’t have stripes.
Training Garfield
“I spent (a) year and a half developing the comic strip,” Davis has written, “designing and redesigning the characters, and fine-tuning the humor.”
Garfield Comes Alive
Once Davis felt Garfield was ready, he sent a bunch of sample strips to several syndicates and United Feature accepted it on January 24, 1978.
Pretty Fast for Such a Fat Cat
Back then, comic strips usually got six months of lead time before a strip debuted to build up a proper backlog as well as to continue to refine the concept. However, Davis was given just two weeks to come up with Garfield’s first comics.
We’re Ready to Party, We’re Ready
Garfield debuted on June 19, 1978 in 41 newspapers.
Irony!
The first Garfield strip was published on a Monday.
Garfield Grows
By 1980, Garfield was in more than 100 newspapers. Three years later, he was in over 1,000.
Gargantuan Garfield
At its peak in the early aughts, Garfield was syndicated in about 2,500 newspapers. It has declined since then due to the decline in the number of newspapers overall.
Garfield, Guinness World Record Holder
“In 2003, the Guinness Book of World Records dubbed Garfield the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip,” reported Time back in May.
Cat Scratch Fever
After three months of test runs in the Chicago Sun-Times, the newspaper decided to discontinue Garfield. It swiftly received angry letters from 1,300 readers demanding Garfield’s return and the paper began running the strip again. The publicity from the incident would be used to push Garfield to more and more newspapers.
General Garfield Reporting for Duty
“I think part of Garfield’s appeal was that he was such an accessible character,” Davis has explained. “I made a conscious effort to include all readers. I kept the gags broad and the humor general and applicable to everyone. Most of the gags were about eating and sleeping. Plus, I avoided any social or political comments.”
Garfield the Glutton
“People love Garfield because he says and does things they want to but can’t,” Davis has also theorized. “People relate to him. Garfield relieves our guilt, too. We live In a world where we’re made to feel guilty for eating a potato chip. Garfield defends our right to eat not only a chip — but a whole bag! With dip! Sure he’s a glutton, but someone has to stand up and defend gluttony!”
Jon = Jim
Jon Arbuckle appears to be patterned after Davis himself as he was also a cartoonist. However, Jon’s job eventually fades away entirely from the strip.
The Books
In 1980, United Feature approached Davis about doing a compilation book collecting the daily and Sunday strips of Garfield. Davis wanted to do it, but he had a stipulation: “I’d always hated the standard mass-market-paperback comic strip books that stacked the strips vertically. The strip should be read across the page, just as it is in the newspaper. I mocked up a book that displayed the strips in a horizontal format. Next, I put a number one on the cover. The strips would run chronologically in numbered books. I thought it would promote collectibility. There was only one little problem. The book I had designed wouldn’t fit in the standard bookstore racks.”
While United Feature was skeptical, Ballantine Books liked the design and the odd format meant the book was often displayed on its own, commonly near registers, which helped to boost sales. “Today in the publishing industry, a book shaped like the Garfield compilation book is called a ‘Garfield Format’ book,” Davis has said.
The Cat Was Out of the Bag
When the first book came out, Davis went on a 20-city tour that helped to promote Garfield nationwide. This was when Garfield first exploded in popularity.
Garfield Was Born in a Rather Appropriate Place
In universe, Garfield was born in the kitchen of Mamma Leoni’s Italian Restaurant.
Culinary Twins
Like Garfield, Jim Davis loves lasagna.
Arbuckle’s Arrival
“The name Jon Arbuckle came from an old coffee commercial I remembered hearing. I’d also used the name as an ‘expert source’ to add ‘credibility’ to my speech during debates in my college days,” Davis has explained.
Here Boy!
Odie debuted just six weeks into the ongoing Garfield strip, on August 8, 1978. He was originally the pet of Lyman, Jon’s new roommate.
Have You Seen This Mustache?
Over the next few years, Lyman was featured less and less in the strip. He made his last appearance on April 24, 1983
‘Don’t Look in Jon’s Basement!’
A number of dark fan theories have circulated online about why Lyman suddenly disappeared from the strip — like Odie or Garfield killing Lyman — but the darkest theories have come from official Garfield merch. For example, 20 Years & Still Kicking offered up the “Top Ten Explanations for Lyman’s Disappearance,” and the top reason was “Don’t look in Jon’s basement!”
They Said Don’t Look
Even crazier, in 2011, 13 years after 20 Years & Still Kicking was published, a Garfield computer game featured a chained-up Lyman in the basement of a haunted mansion and the follow-up game featured his severed head in an oven.
Lyman the Spaceman
Lyman made two other more recent appearances in Garfield-related media as well. In 2013, his face was spotted on the cover of a newspaper while Jon was talking about alien abductions, giving rise to an online theory that Lyman was abducted by aliens. A year later, he appeared in a four-part story in The Garfield Show cartoon.
Odie, the Village Idiot
Getting back to Odie, Davis liked the name because it “connoted stupidity.” Additionally: “In the early 1970s, I wrote a radio commercial for a local car dealership. The spot featured Odie, the village idiot. I liked the name, so I used it again.”
Odie’s Ears
Odie’s ears were originally black, but in the summer of 1979, United Feature asked Davis to change them to brown to be less like Snoopy.
Pooky
Pooky, Garfield’s beloved teddy bear, debuted on October 23, 1978.
Nermal
Meanwhile, the adorable Nermal arrived about a year later on September 3, 1979.
Nermal’s Destination
A running gag is Garfield trying to mail Nermal to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which is about 7,270 miles from Muncie.
Jon’s Family
Like Davis’ own parents, Jon’s parents are farmers. Jon also has a brother named Doc Boy, named for Davis’ older brother Dave, who was nicknamed “Doc.”
U.S. Acres Is the Place to Be
The aforementioned U.S. Acres doesn’t take place on the Arbuckle family farm. However, according to the book Garfield’s Christmas Tales — where Garfield met Orson and the other characters from U.S. Acres — the U.S. Acres farm is right next to the Arbuckle Farm.
It Takes a Village
In 1998, when 20 Years & Still Kicking was published, Davis detailed his then-process for creating Garfield strips. Since licensing consumed most of his time, he “set aside three consecutive days each month to work on the writing of the Garfield strip.” He would have an ideas session with an assistant in which they came up with jokes and themes together, generating three to six weeks’ worth of ideas. They’d then rough out the strips themselves and hand the roughs to another assistant who drew the characters and kept them on-model. A third and fourth assistant would ink the strip, and a fifth would ink it and color the Sunday strips. Lastly, Davis would review it, sign it and date it. As of 2018, he still wrote and roughed out every strip.
Garfield Comes to the Small Screen
Garfield’s first TV appearance was on a 1980 special called The Fantastic Funnies, which featured segments with several popular comic strip characters at the time.
A Day at the Beach
On The Fantastic Funnies, Garfield was voiced by Scott Beach, who later had roles in Mrs. Doubtfire and Stand By Me.
‘Here Comes Garfield’
Garfield appeared next in the half-hour TV special Here Comes Garfield in 1982. This time, he was voiced by Lorenzo Music, who would become the voice of Garfield for a generation.
Golden Garfield
Music, who was also a writer, co-wrote the second Garfield special, Garfield on the Town, with Davis. The special won an Emmy.
More Gold
From 1982 to 1991 Garfield starred in a total of 12 TV specials, four of which earned Emmys.
‘Garfield and Friends’
Garfield and Friends premiered on September 17, 1988.
A Lot of Lasagna
Garfield and Friends ran until 1994 and lasted seven seasons and 121 episodes in all.
Critics on the Cat
“Garfield and Friends rapidly became the hub around which the rest of CBS’ morning lineup was built,” wrote media historian Hal Erickson, adding that it “seemed to get better with each passing season.”
Enter Bill Murray
Lorenzo Music died in 2001. And so, when Garfield the Movie was released in 2004, Bill Murray took on the role.
Murray vs. Music
Comparing Murray and Music, Davis has said, “When we were talking voice, we had only one person in mind. It had to be Bill Murray. Otherwise we were going to (look) for a sound-alike like the late Lorenzo Music because there is something very tough about Garfield’s delivery. Only Bill Murray has it, as far as I’m concerned, among major stars — (that) is, the ability to throw a line away, but do it with great comedic timing. Make you laugh if it’s said in a lazy way, which is very rare. Lorenzo could do it, plus Bill brings the attitude.”
More Murray vs. Music
Ironically, Garfield wasn’t the only role Murray and Music shared as Music also played Peter Venkman on the Ghostbusters cartoon. While unconfirmed, it’s believed Murray got Music fired from Ghostbusters because he thought his character sounded too much like Garfield.
Coen vs. Cohen
Murray only agreed to voice Garfield because he thought the movie was written by Joel Coen of the Coen Brothers. It wasn’t until he started recording his dialogue that he figured out it was actually written by Joel Cohen, an entirely different person.
A Glutton for Punishment
Murray didn’t seem to have a problem returning for the role, however, as he voiced Garfield again in the 2006 sequel, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.
Garfield 3: Flabby Tabby
Murray later parodied his involvement in the Garfield films when he played himself in Zombieland. In a junket interview in the film, Murray compares the Garfield trilogy to the Godfather trilogy.
Davis Didn’t Want an Animated Garfield Movie
His reason? Because “it would be tough to out-Disney Disney.” Instead, he wanted to wait until the technology was there for a computer-generated Garfield. The movie that finally convinced him that such a Garfield movie was doable was Monsters Inc.
Frank Welker’s Garfield
After Murray, the next voice of Garfield was veteran voice actor Frank Welker, who had played several other characters in Garfield and Friends. Welker’s voice for the cat was similar to Music’s.
Garfield’s New Voice
Welker played Garfield in three direct-to-video films, the 3D animated cartoon The Garfield Show and several video games.
‘The Garfield Show’
The Garfield Show premiered in 2009. It ran for five seasons and a total of 107 episodes.
A Trip to France
Beginning in 2019, Garfield starred in the French cartoon Garfield Originals. The series featured no dialogue and was inspired by silent films.
Why Does Garfield Sound Like Star-Lord?
MCU and Jurassic World star Chris Pratt took over the role of Garfield for 2024’s The Garfield Movie.
Davis on Pratt
“Chris has great attitude in his voice and incredible timing,” Davis said when the film was released. “I rate him a 10 for funny. And one of the things he does is really bring the Garfield edge and attitude to the character, and so, he really understood the character and absolutely nailed him.”
Pratt on Garfield
“Very early on (director Mark Dindal) let me know that his vision for the sound of this character, the voice that he’s always heard coming out of this animation he’s been working on for years before I even met him, was my voice,” Pratt explained. “He said, ‘I want him to sound like you. You’ve got a natural sarcastic sort of laziness about your voice that really works for this character.’ And I thought, ‘Well damn, that makes it look easy. That’s easy — I’m not coming in and trying to do anything other than just be myself and breathe my own spirit into the role.’”
Car Cat
The famous plush Garfield with suction cups hit stores in 1987 and became a very popular fad in the late 1980s, selling over two million units in its first year alone.
That’s Not Velcro
The suction cups were a happy accident, however. As Cracked’s own J.M. McNab explained, “Garfield creator Jim Davis’ original idea involved a plush toy with velcro on its paws. That way, people could make it look like Garfield was crawling up their curtains.” But it came back from the factory with suction cups, and Davis approved it anyway.
Garfield’s New Daddy
In 2019, Davis sold Garfield to Nickelodeon, though he still continues to work on the strip himself. At the time he said, “I’m delighted that Garfield is going to be placed in the capable hands of the folks at Nick. They know how to entertain and will be great stewards for the franchise. I am also excited to continue to do the thing that gets me out of bed every morning — the comic strip!”
Another Serving of Lasagna
Nickelodeon is currently developing a new Garfield series.
Will Garfield Go on Without Davis?
In a 2004 interview, Davis said, “After I’ve passed on, I won’t care whether he goes on or not, but I’ve always maintained that when I’m ready to retire, hopefully I’d know when that time comes around. If somebody’s funny. If someone is really writing well and could keep him going and keep him entertaining, more power to him because that’s why Garfield is there.”