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Ever since Garfield <\/strong>swaggered onto the pages of 41 American newspapers on June 19, 1978, the rotund feline famous for his love of lasagna, naps, and sarcastic asides has occupied a special place in the cultural consciousness. Lazy, self-centered, and an unrepentant grump, the cat turned out to possess enough deadpan charm to entertain generations of audiences. Trends might come and go, but Garfield is no fad\u2014in fact, he\u2019ll be back on the big screen in 2024\u2019s animated feature The Garfield Movie<\/em>, voiced by none other than Chris Pratt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The character has enjoyed a remarkable run, says creator Jim Davis, precisely because he\u2019s both reliable and relatable, routinely expressing familiar feelings and frustrations. After all, who among us hasn\u2019t wanted to eat pasta and nap all day? And does anyone actually like Mondays? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI hold a mirror to the reader and show them [their lives] back with a humorous twist, that\u2019s all,\u201d Davis says. \u201cWe\u2019re made to feel guilty for overeating, not exercising, and over-sleeping. Garfield relieves our guilt by enjoying all of those things. More often than not, when someone laughs at a Garfield gag, it\u2019s because they\u2019re thinking, \u2018Isn\u2019t that true?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an age when attaining a satisfying work-life balance seems virtually impossible, and at a time when everyone is constantly asked to do more, achieve more, be better or risk feeling less than, Garfield serves as a potent reminder that some days, the healthier option is just going back to bed. The furry protagonist was clearly ahead of his time when it came to the idea of self-care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Garfield was also very much a creature of the 1980s\u2014maybe the<\/em> creature of the 1980s, a decade that celebrated conspicuous consumption in all its myriad forms and transformed the character into an A-list superstar. During the \u201cgreed is good\u201d era, Davis\u2019s comic-strip cat could be found not only in daily newspapers around the globe\u2014when daily newspapers were a thriving concern and most households were subscribers\u2014but also on the New York Times<\/em> best-seller list, the cover of People<\/em> magazine, and as a balloon in the Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s in addition to headlining his own Emmy-winning animated TV specials and a Saturday morning cartoon, Garfield and Friends<\/em>, not to mention the onslaught of merchandise featuring the feline. T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs\u2014you name it, Garfield was on it. At the height of the Garfield craze, people simply couldn\u2019t get enough of the obnoxious yet imminently lovable cat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGarfield was all over the place,\u201d says Robert J. Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. \u201cIt was a user-friendly comic strip, which means not a whole lot of words and plenty of white space in between. And if you missed [Garfield] in the paper, you saw [him] in the licensing products and in the back windows of people\u2019s cars or the TV specials. … Garfield was pretty much everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although no one <\/strong>could have anticipated just how successful Garfield would become, Davis had high hopes for how the cat might fare. He designed Garfield to appeal to the widest possible audience. In dreaming up the chubby character, Davis studied comic strips that were popular in the late 1970s and took notes. He\u2019d noticed numerous high-profile offerings centering on dogs, most obviously Peanuts,<\/em> with its anarchic beagle hero Snoopy. So he chose to create something for the world\u2019s many cat lovers, taking inspiration from the felines who lived on his parents\u2019 farm in Fairmount, Indiana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI pulled Garfield a little bit from several cats I knew, but more from the fat housecats that lived with my grandparents and friends\u2014cats who had their own chair,\u201d Davis told Entertainment Weekly<\/em> in 2014. \u201cIt was the indoor cats that most influenced [Garfield]. He was also influenced by a lot of people. Basically, Garfield is a human in a cat suit. He exists in a cat\u2019s body and moves like a cat and does many cat-like things, but really his basic personality is hopefully a lot like we all are, way down deep, with just our basic animal urges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To flesh out the strip, Davis developed characters\u2014nerdy owner Jon Arbuckle, clueless dog Odie, obnoxious fellow feline Nermal\u2014who could serve as foils for Garfield. As he explained to EW<\/em>: \u201cJon has my eternal optimism. That\u2019s me. I\u2019m the guy whose glass is half full, always looking on the bright side of things. He\u2019s a daydreamer, easygoing, puffy cheeks. I have that. … As Garfield is bright and cunning, Odie is not so bright, very accepting. Odie is a free spirit. It\u2019s in the contrasts and the conflicts in the characters that humor is derived. If everybody looked alike and got along, there would be no humor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, Davis decided to omit timely political and cultural references. Garfield exists in a space where years don\u2019t pass, characters don\u2019t age, and no one ever argues about current events. \u201cIf you were to mention the football strike, you\u2019re going to be excluding everyone else in the world that doesn\u2019t watch pro football,\u201d Davis explained to the Washington Post<\/em> in 1982. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although critics sometimes groused that the cartoonist played things too safe, the public loved Garfield,<\/em> and once it took off, Davis almost never wavered from his gag-a-day approach. The comic strip\u2019s visual style was simple, the humor grounded in universally relatable day-to-day experiences, all the better to translate for international audiences. \u201cI don\u2019t use any proper names, I try to use as few colloquialisms as possible, and about the only sport I recognize is golf, which is easily translatable,\u201d Davis told the National Post<\/em> in 2007. \u201c[If] I have to do a gag that\u2019s based on something I know will be difficult to translate, I always encourage the translators to capture the essence of the gag, the spirit of the gag, and write it for their own vernacular. In fact, for a while, Garfield loved sushi in Japan. Until Italian restaurants opened up and they knew what lasagna was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Garfield-mania did abate somewhat as the 1990s gave way to the 21st century, but the character never vanished from view. In 2002, Garfield<\/em> was named the globe\u2019s most widely syndicated comic strip by the Guinness Book of World Records<\/em>. It made the leap to the big screen in 2004 with Garfield: The Movie<\/em>, followed two years later Garfield-branded merchandise continued to be big business\u2014in 2018, the Guardian<\/em> reported that the character brought in an estimated $750 million to $1 billion annually worldwide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI say this all the time: Everyone is a fan of something, and they want their fandom to tell the story of who they are,\u201d says Amanda Cioletti, vice president of content and strategy for Informa Markets\u2019 global licensing group. \u201cEngagement with licensed properties can reflect identity and self-expression for audiences. Garfield speaks to many with his frank, no-holds-barred, lasagna-loving self. He\u2019s got a timeless, gruff charm that resonates, no matter the decade.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Davis sold the<\/strong> rights to Garfield to Viacom in 2019, he continues to play a hands-on role in the creation of the comic strip, ensuring that the characters and humor remain true to its essence. \u201cI work in the same way with the same folks that I have for the last 35 years or so,\u201d Davis says. \u201cI write gags, and a couple of other people submit writing that I edit for use. I have long-time assistants who work on the drawing, inking, and coloring of the strip. I approve, sign, and date each strip before it goes out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that Davis remains so invested in his signature creation sets Garfield<\/em> apart from some other long-running comic strips that have been passed on to other artists, often to their detriment, says Mike Peterson, who authors the Comic Strip of the Day feature for website Daily Cartoonist: \u201cYou get a lot of \u2018zombie strips,\u2019 which are strips that have been taken over. The original artists have been dead for 50 years, but the strip goes on. They\u2019re not very imaginative. They\u2019re not very interesting. But Garfield<\/em> is still being produced. I realize Jim Davis [is] not sitting in a garage someplace scratching that out on Bristol board, but it\u2019s still a fresh strip every day. It\u2019s a new piece.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That freshness is vital in attracting new readers to Garfield, <\/em>though, given the precipitous decline in print newspaper circulation, fans young and old have long since begun keeping up with the cat in other media. Davis\u2019s strips can be found online, on such sites as GoComics, and in 2023, Random House published the 75th Garfield book, Garfield Fully Caffeinated<\/em>. Meanwhile, other creators are penning adventures for the character\u2014people like Judd Winick, the New York Times<\/em> best-selling creator of Hilo, <\/em>who grew up on Davis\u2019s comic strips. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Winick told the website Comic Book Resources that it was a dream come true to be invited to contribute a short to BOOM! Studios\u2019 2017 graphic novel Garfield: Unreality TV,<\/em> as he\u2019d loved Garfield <\/em>since childhood. \u201cWhen I was 9 or so, it first started to run in my local paper,\u201d Winick told Comic Book Resources. \u201cIt was around the same time that the second Garfield collection came out, Garfield Gains Weight<\/em>. I was just nuts for it. I can\u2019t tell you exactly what it was, but when I was little, I just thought it was so damn funny. Maybe it was because Garfield is so mean, maybe because it was kind of slapsticky, but it just hit me in the right sweet spot back then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s easy to forget just how revolutionary the notion of Garfield as a kind of lovable antihero was back when the cat first exploded onto the scene, Thompson notes. A protagonist who proudly embraces his flaws\u2014who is, in fact, defined by them\u2014felt entirely new and delightfully subversive. \u201cWe were just beginning to see those kinds of characters in the culture,\u201d Thompson says. \u201cNow, of course, it\u2019s commonplace to have non-heroic [protagonists], from Mad Men<\/em> to Breaking Bad<\/em> to The Sopranos.<\/em> They\u2019re all [series about] antiheroes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut Garfield was coming out when that was still relatively new, and there was something appealing about his unapologetic, cynical, sarcastic, lazy, hedonistic, apathetic personality,\u201d Thompson continues. \u201cWe had all certainly known cats like that, but we also recognized humans like that. In fact, I think a lot of us recognize portions of ourselves in [Garfield]. If we had someone else feeding us and providing a roof over our head like Garfield did, we would probably be happy to lie around all day, dreaming of lasagna and complaining about Mondays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And even though the sassy cat, who celebrated his 45th birthday in 2023, has entered middle age, he remains as witty and wily (and hungry) as he\u2019s always been. Times may change, Davis notes, but Garfield remains the same. \u201cWhether we read the comics over breakfast or after school or work each day, comic strips and their characters become a part of our lives,\u201d Davis says. \u201cThey entertain us and make us feel a little better every single day. We can count on the comics. In a world where life is changing almost daily, Garfield still loves lasagna and hates Mondays.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a selection of the many images in LIFE’s new special issue<\/a><\/em> Garfield: Greatest. Cat. Ever.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n Garfield courtesy of Nickelodeon \u00a9 2024 by Paws, Inc. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n In The Garfield Movie (2024), Chris Pratt voices the title character, while Nicholas Hoult plays pal Jon Arbuckle and Harvey Guill\u00e9n is Odie.<\/p>\n Courtesy of DNEG Animation<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The Garfield Movie (2024) has one scene in which the cat is literally living large, much to the consternation of Odie.<\/p>\n Courtesy of DNEG Animation<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n A still from the 2006 movie Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, which mixed animation and live action and had Bill Murray voicing the title character.<\/p>\n Photo by 20th Century Fox\/Kobal\/Shutterstock <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
by a sequel, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties<\/em>. An animated series called The Garfield Show<\/em> subsequently premiered in America in 2009. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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