Garfield Question

Here's a question that a number of folks have sent me…

We've been enjoying our new Garfield and Friends DVDs. However, one thing baffles us. U.S. Acres seems to have turned into Orson's Farm. Do you know how or why this happened?

Yes. When Jim Davis did the U.S. Acres newspaper strip (on which the cartoons were based), the strip was distributed in certain other nations as Orson's Farm. The "U.S.A." pun didn't translate and even in some English-speaking countries, they wanted to change it to not remind readers that it was a foreign feature. When we did the cartoons, each title card was filmed twice, once with each name, so that when the shows were distributed overseas, they could air with the same name the strip had in each country. The DVD set was made off a set of negatives that had Orson's Farm title cards.

And to answer another oft-asked question: The second set of Garfield and Friends DVD is scheduled for December and the third for May of 2005. The second will not have any special features and I don't yet know about the ones to follow.