Garfield, you either love him, hate him, or never really acknowledged him too much. Garfield is a fat, orange, tabby cat that loves lasagna, sleeping, coffee, and many other “relatable” things. He hates Mondays, dogs, spiders, and anything that requires a lot of effort. The first Garfield comic strip was published on June 19, 1978, which makes Garfield 46 years old as of 2024. I believe many aspects of Garfield are pretty interesting, like how much Garfield has changed over the years, the cultural impact of Garfield, and many other things.
Garfield actually didn’t start off being about Garfield, it was instead about Jon Arbuckle, Garfield’s owner. The comic was called “Jon” and ran from January 1976 to March of 1978. “Jon” was about Jon Arbuckle and his fat, orange cat named Garfield. Seem familiar? It should because “Jon” is considered to be the prototype of the Garfield we know today. Garfield Cat (yes, that is his actual name) started off as your typical cat that likes to sleep and eat. However, over the years Garfield started to become less normal and more humanoid. Garfield used to walk on all-fours but now walks on only two legs. He is not able to directly talk to humans except for the DTV (direct to video) movies such as “Garfield Gets Real”, “Garfield’s Fun Fest”, and “Garfield’s Pet Force”. In my personal opinion, Garfield used to have more witty and clever writing from the ‘80s to the ‘90s, while nowadays Garfield focuses more on being relatable and marketable than funny, but I digress.
Garfield has made quite the cultural impact over the years. For one, Garfield is absolutely EVERYWHERE. Garfield has tons of merchandise like shirts, mugs, calendars, snacks, posters, plush toys, landline telephones, pillows, blankets, bike reflectors, board games, slippers, halloween costumes, scissors, globes, and plenty more. Many people go about their lives, not realizing that Garfield in some shape or form, is around them. Garfield’s popularity was at an all time high during the ‘80s to ‘90s. There was at some point a Garfield plush that had suction cups on its feet; the plush was so popular that people broke into other people’s cars just to steal the suction cup Garfield plush toys.
This section will be filled with interesting facts and tidbits about Garfield:
- Jim Davis (the creator of Garfield) used to work on a comic before “Jon” and Garfield called: “Gnorm Gnat”.
- Odie the dog was originally named “spot” and was originally owned by Lyman, before being adopted by Jon to which Lyman appeared so rarely afterwards that fans questioned if he was even still alive.
- There is a Garfield flash game called “Garfield’s Scary Scavenger Hunt” where you collect various food items while trying not to get too scared. In that same game, you can actually find Lyman chained against the wall in the basement of the creepy mansion.
- Garfield was originally born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant on June 19, 1978.
- One of the age-old questions of the Garfield series is “why does Garfield hate Mondays so much?” Well, there may be two reasons why: For one, Garfield tends to have very bad luck on Mondays. The second reason is moreso a fan theory but does make sense. Garfield hates Mondays because Jon has to work starting on Mondays. Some may say it is because Garfield doesn’t get as much attention from Jon on Mondays and thus becomes very bored the whole day, while some say that Garfield actually misses Jon but can’t spend time with him when he is working. The actual reason is kind of boring but Garfield hates Mondays because it is seen as “relatable” to most people.
- The original “Jon” comic was considered lost media until January 22, 2018 which means the comic was lost since 1976 and was considered lost media for 42 years.
- The original “Jon” comics are in the public domain except for some of the later ones.
In conclusion, Garfield as a series is a lot more detailed and wide-spread than you might think. There are many more aspects of Garfield that I could put in this article but I am unsure about what would be considered “too strange” or “too specific for a general overview”. The Garfield fandom is also very active and creative with many great creations and ideas, but I will not go into those details here. If you want to learn more about Garfield, you can search up “Garfield wiki”. If you want to learn more about the fandom, then I would recommend looking it up on Youtube. One of the channels that I would recommend for learning more about Garfield, would be “Quinton Reviews”; to be more specific, I would recommend watching his video “How I Rewrote the History of Garfield” or watch “Finding Garfield Lost Media”.
Sources:
“Garfield Wiki.” Garfield.fandom.com, garfield.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page.