Jim Davis (cartoonist)
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James Robert Davis (born July 28, 1945), is an American cartoonist who created the popular comic strip Garfield in 1978; Garfield is now one of the most popular comic-strip characters in the world according to the Guinness World Records.[link]
Davis was born in Fairmount, Indiana, near Marion where he grew up on a small farm with his father Jim Sr., his mother Betty, his brother Dave, and 25 cats. His love of cartooning emerged during the time he would normally be doing chores, but couldn't due to asthma. Davis' childhood on a farm parallels the life of Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, who was also raised on a farm with his parents and brother Doc Boy. Jon, too, is a cartoonist, and also celebrates his birthday on July 28.
As an Art and Business major at Ball State University, he distinguished himself by earning one of the lowest accumulative grade point averages in the history of the school along with David Letterman. While attending Ball State, he pledged and became a member of Theta Xi Fraternity.
Prior to creating Garfield, Davis worked for a local advertising agency and in 1969 began assisting Tom Ryan's comic strip, Tumbleweeds. He then created a comic strip, Gnorm Gnat, that ran for five years in The Pendleton Times, an Indiana newspaper. Davis tried to sell it to a national comic strip syndicate, but according to 20 Years & Still Kicking!: Garfield's Twentieth Anniversary Collection, an editor told him, "Your art is good, your gags are great, but bugs - nobody can indentify with bugs!" Five years after starting Gnorm Gnat, Davis drew a giant foot that fell out of the sky, crushing Gnorm and ending the comic strip.
On June 19, 1978, Garfield started syndication in 41 newspapers. Today, it appears in more than 2,500 newspapers, the world record for a currently-syndicated comic strip. There has been speculation that Garfield was named for the assassinated President of the United States, James Abram Garfield. This is only indirectly true, however. According to the book Garfield at 25: In Dog Years I'd Be Dead, he is actually named after Davis' grandfather, James Garfield Davis, who was named after President Garfield.
Garfield and Friends was an animated cartoon series that ran for seven years between 1988 and 1994; it was also created by cartoonist Davis and featured segments that were based on his comic strips; Garfield and U.S. Acres, a lesser-known comic strip, also created by Davis, featuring Orson the Pig and ran in newspapers during the late 1980's. Outside the U.S., the strip was known as Orson's Farm. He also created a strip based on Mr. Potato Head that ran from 2000 to 2003.
He now resides in Muncie, Indiana where he and his staff continue to produce Garfield under his own company, Paws, Inc., which started in 1981. He was married to Carolyn, a singer and elementary teacher whom he met while both were attending college, and has a son named James with her. However, according to IMDB and Garfield at 25, Davis is now divorced from Carolyn and has been married to a woman named Jill, the senior vice president of licensing who has worked at Paws for about twenty-five years, since 2000.
Ironically, Davis did not have cats when he started Garfield because of Carolyn's allergies, but they owned a Labrador retriever named Molly. With Jill the family has expanded to include childen Ashley and Chris, granddaughter Chloe, and cats Link, Spunky, and Spritzy. Regarding leisure activities, Davis says in Garfield at 25: "When we're not working on Garfield, Jill and I like to golf, garden, attend school activities with the kids, and go out for dinner and a movie once a week."
The live-action film version of Davis' creation, ' was released to theaters early in the summer of 2004. Though it was a box office success and featured Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield, it received generally negative reviews. A theatrical sequel, ', was released in U.S. movie theatres on June 16, 2006.Davis has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Humor Strip Award for 1981 and 1985, and their Reuben Award for 1989, and the Elzie Segar Award for 1985.
Davis recently appeared in Lazy Muncie, a parody of the popular SNL video Lazy Sunday.
External links
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