Forty years ago today, Jim Davis's cranky cat made his debut in a whopping 41 newspapers across the nation. 41 is not a bad number to start with but if you want to make a living off your strip, you'd better get that number up and soon. Three years later, he was well in the safety zone and by his fifth anniversary, in 1,000 papers. Today, Garfield's furry face is in more newspaper strips than any other strip.
In 1987, much of my writing work was on Saturday morning cartoon shows and I was having a problem: I was running out of studios to work for. I quit several of them. I sued one. A couple didn't want me on the premises. I left the biggest one — Hanna-Barbera — because I felt so uncomfortable arguing, as I so often found myself doing, with Joe Barbera. He not only had his name on the building, he was Joe Barbera and it didn't look like that was going to change.
My last major assignment before I hooked up with Jim Davis's pussycat was developing a Saturday morning series with Michael Jackson. I could fill this blog forever (but won't) with tales of that unpleasant experience and why I eventually moonwalked off it.
When all was said and done, I felt I owed CBS some money for work they'd paid me for but which I was declining to do. Instead, a terrific lady named Judy Price who was the Vice-Prez of Saturday Morn for them suggested that instead of giving it back, we apply it towards my price for the next project she wanted me to tackle…a Saturday AM series of Garfield. I said sure; I liked Garfield and had since I'd first laid eyes on the strip.
Soon, I was meeting with the man who would produce that series, Lee Mendelson — a gent who has more Emmys than I have toes and who turned out to be the best and most honest producer I have ever worked for. I liked him. Then I met Jim Davis and I liked him, too. Let me tell you one of the first things I liked about Jim…
I had worked for years for companies and people who owned or controlled great properties, including characters I loved when I was a child. To most of these people, they were properties first and beloved characters, second. Sometimes, it was a rather distant second. One of the things I argued about with Mr. Barbera was because I often dealt with the men who managed the merchandising for his company and who had, I thought, no grasp or concern for the integrity of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, etc.
On my first visit to Jim's offices outside Muncie, Indiana, this happened: We were meeting and talking about the creative direction of the show. An aide to Jim interrupted to ask him if he could sign off on the prototype for a Garfield alarm clock that one of his licensees was about to start producing in large quantities. Jim's OK was necessary and they needed it right away because the factory was poised to begin making them by the zillions and there were deadlines that had to be met to ensure on-time delivery to wholesalers and retailers.
Jim inspected the prototype and he said, "No, they still don't have Garfield's eyes right." He picked up a Sharpie and indicated on the model just where those eyes should be.
The aide said, "If they have to break the molds and redo them, it will cost them thousands of dollars and they'll miss their shipping dates." To which Jim said, "So?"
Jim doesn't know how close he came at that moment to getting a big, wet one on the lips from me. I had worked for way too many companies and individuals — including people who'd created the characters who were about to be done wrong — to not be delighted by his attitude. Later, he told me his philosophy and he's also said this in interviews: "If we take care of the cat, the cat will take care of us."
I've now been involved with Garfield for more than thirty years and I'll tell you a few things about Jim Davis, one being that he believes that credo. I have seen him turn down more money than most of us will ever see because some lucrative proposal might not do right by Garfield.
Jim also works very hard. True, others do a lot of the artwork on the strip but Jim writes and sketches things out and keeps an eye on every aspect of the strip and also of the voluminous merchandise. Early on in our association, I'd be about to knock off work and go to bed at 3:15 AM here in Los Angeles…and in would come a fax from Jim who had just started his workday in Muncie. And I know why he's able to put in that many hours a day. It's because he really loves what he does…and that has a lot to do with why Garfield has been around so long. It's why when people find out I work on Garfield, it gets the reaction it does. They just love that cat.
So happy birthday to the lasagna-eater and I feel like closing this with a song. Here's an appropriate excerpt from an old episode of Garfield and Friends…
