Garfield.
posted in Cartoon Cats |
Garfield is a comic strip about a furry orange cat created by Jim Davis featuring Garfield the cat, Odie the dog, and their owner Jon Arbuckle. As of 2007, it is syndicated in roughly 2,570 newspapers and journals and it currently holds the Guinness World Record for being the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip. The popularity of the strip has led to an animated television series, several animated television specials and two theatrical feature-length live-action films, as well as a large amount of Garfield merchandise.
Garfield debuted on June 19, 1978, which is considered to be his birthday. The strip makes fun of pet owners and their relationship with their pets, often with the pet as the true master of the household. Garfield also struggles with human problems, such as diets, Mondays, apathy, boredom, and so on. By the middle of 1983, his familiar appearance—featuring oval-shaped eyes—had taken shape. By this time, Garfield was walking on two feet, and the strip emphasized sitcom situations such as Garfield making fun of Jon’s stupidity and his inability to date. Jon and Odie have also evolved quite a bit, from being thin and starkly colored to the cartoons they are today.
Like many comic strips, Garfield is not exclusively drawn by its creator. Jim Davis still writes and makes rough sketches for the strip, but his company, Paws, employs cartoonists and assistants who do most of the work of the finished drawing and inking, while Davis’s final job is usually confined to approving and signing the finished strip. Otherwise, Davis spends most of his time managing the business and merchandising of Garfield.
The characters and situations in Garfield have often been constant, with no change or development for the past several years. While this was not unique to Garfield, as Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes and the children of Peanuts never aged, other strips such as For Better or For Worse, Cathy, and Doonesbury maintain a continuity with characters who develop, age, and may even die as the strip proceeds. In one particular sequence, however, leading up to Garfield’s 25th birthday (which is always marked by Garfield complaining about his age along with the rest of the characters making subtle references to it), Davis brought back the Garfield from 1978, the one that waddled and always had a frown under his pinpoint eyes. The old and new Garfields talk and find that, although they look different, they are still both too greedy and territorial to stand even themselves.
The comic strip was turned into a cartoon special for television in 1982 called Here Comes Garfield. Actor Lorenzo Music, previously known as the voice of Carlton the doorman on the show Rhoda, was hired to portray the voice of Garfield. Soul singer Lou Rawls provided music. Twelve television specials were made (through 1991) as well as a Saturday morning television series, Garfield and Friends, which ran from 1988 to 1995 on CBS, and still runs occasionally in syndication today.
In 1984, Garfield was introduced to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as a balloon. This is one of the most popular at the parade. In recent years, he has been holding Pooky.
A live-action film version of the comic strip, Garfield: The Movie had its debut in the United States on June 11, 2004. The film employed a computer-animated Garfield and real Odie. Lorenzo Music had died before filming began, and Bill Murray was cast as the voice of Garfield. Murray’s laid-back, deadpan delivery has often been compared to Music’s; indeed, Music provided the voice of Murray’s Peter Venkman character in The Real Ghostbusters, the cartoon version of Ghostbusters. Murray became the fourth actor to provide a voice for Garfield: Tommy Smothers voiced the role in a cat food commercial, and an unnamed Lorenzo Music sound-alike was used in another TV spot.
Garfield’s second live-action feature film, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, was released on June 16, 2006.
