Why is garfield popular

Unlike New Yorker cartoons, in which you are actually missing the joke, Garfield is not even designed to be funny. On Quora, someone asked this question and got a surprisingly interesting response from a woman who used to be bombarded with licensing proposals from none other than Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield. She dug up this Slate article that suggests that Davis really had no intention of making the strip funny at all:.

Davis makes no attempt to conceal the crass commercial motivations behind his creation of Garfield. Davis carefully studied the marketplace when developing Garfield.

Charlie Brown is not. Then, he consciously developed a stable of recurring, repetitive jokes for the cat. He hates Mondays. He loves lasagna.

He sure is fat. Caroline Zelonka, the intrepid Quora answerer, also argues that, even without the strip, Davis could make tons of money from Garfield.

Submit Search. Close Menu. The Trapeze. Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment. Polls Archive. Navigate Left. Navigate Right. Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. Share via Email. Close Modal Window. Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Verification Field. Davis has crafted the art of delivering a payoff in just three panels consummately over the past 40 years. So I do a lot of sight gags, a lot of physical humour, and the trick is to put something in there that the kids are just going to laugh at, but also another level which is going to make the adults smile.

TV series earned several Emmy nominations and there have been two movies plus three DVD animated features. Davis has written Garfield screenplays as well as working on the animated series, and relishes the extra room he gets to deliver the jokes. He embraces new technology with unalloyed joy. I took the actual newspaper strip digital about eight years ago, in the way that I work, but I do still start off with pencil sketches. The licensing business became so big that Davis set up his own offshoot company, Paws, Inc, in , to manage the worldwide rights usages of the character.

Davis also set up a charitable trust, the Professor Garfield Foundation, in collaboration with his old alma mater, Ball State University. The trust has taken the lead in a number of environmental projects in Indiana, including reforestation and the restoration of prairie and wetlands. And there are also some kids who are wired differently, who are bright but just do things differently, and they seem to be able to grasp reading comics quicker. Speaking of limits, does Davis have any plans to retire?

The idea shocks him. I told everyone to hold my calls after this interview. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later?

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Recommended Why do you hate your job? Blame Disney cartoons. Recommended The anti-American propaganda cartoons North Korea shows its children.