On January 8, 1976 Jim Davis’ comic strip “Jon” premiered in the Pendleton Times
>>152051128A good strip. Better than most comic books.
>>152051128Yo their eyes are so small compared to how the art style develops.
>>152051128Aboslute Unit Garfield is the ideal Garfield, and anyone who disagrees is wrong.
I didn't know there even was a Jon comic strip until Quinton Reviews.
>>152051128God, I want to fuck Nermal from Garfield series! <3 <3 <3
>>152051448
>>152051128the success of this false narrative of a prototype comic for Garfield is so impressive, despite the really obvious red flags of there being no mention of it prior to when that first guy posted it in 2021 or whenever it was.Graggle wishes he had a tenth of this power
>Garfield and Heathcliff are the same cat.>Now, in the very first Garfield strip Garfield's owner Jon is established as being a cartoonist. This is still technically the case, it's just never brought up in favour of focusing on Jon's life as the most pathetic man in the universe.>Now Jon must obviously be getting regular work as a cartoonist: How else is he able to care for his pets and pay the mortgage on that bland house in the suburbs he lives in? Yet we're never actually shown any of Jon's cartoons.>The one defining trait of Jon Arbuckle is just how sad and boring a man he is. This is a guy with no social life outside of talking to his cat (A cat who, canonically, doesn't talk back to him) so any cartoons he produces are obviously going to be incredibly dull and unfunny. Jon has also been driven completely insane due to years of social isolation (A fact that becomes apparent if you ever read any of those "Garfield Minus Garfield" strips or really just remove Garfield's thought bubbles from the cartoons) so any cartoon is not only going to be completely unfunny but also totally fucking insane.>Finally, Jon is also a completely and totally uncreative individual (Which sort of goes along with being incredibly boring) so he's not going to be making cartoons about anything that he's not encountering in his day to day life.>Do you see where I'm going with this?>Heathcliff is the comic strip that Jon Arbuckle writes and draws. Heathcliff is Jon's day job. It is Garfield's antics filtered through the boring, batshit crazy filter that is Jon Arbuckle.>Jon sees his cat eating Lasagna and killing spiders and hating Mondays and it gets filtered through his boring, diseased brain in "He is Bad News" and "Cat Eat Fish". Then he churns out a week's worth of these boring, one panel comic strips and gets to eat for another night.
>>152051128Happy B-Day, Garfield!!
>>152053001Go back to /x/, retard.
>>152051128That design for Garfield would have worked a lot better for the voice he had in this special.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNY9-XPz5ls
Oh god, that's Garfield's very first design? If I had a cat like that....
>>152051128This version is public domain so you can have this garfield but if you mention lasagna or eating you’ll get sued
>>152051128>Pendleton TimesI grew up in Pendleton, and the fact that the first Jon/Garfield strips debuted there was always cool to me. Jim Davis grew up around Fairmount, which is about an hour north of Pendleton. IIRC he had another strip that never caught on that was published in the Pendleton newspaper too.I lived around Muncie for a while too in college, which is near the Garfield headquarters and where Jon, Garfield, and Odie also canonically live. There's also an official "Garfield Trail" where you can drive around the Marion area and stop to see a bunch of Garfield statues that are themed around the businesses/buildings where they are.I'm not even a huge Garfield fan, I just happen to keep ending up in the same places as him lmao. But if you're a Garfield aficionado I suppose central Indiana is the place to visit
>>152055477That's pretty cool anon, I'll check it out one day.
>>152055477>IIRC he had another strip that never caught on that was published in the Pendleton newspaper too.Gnorm Gnat, I think it was.
>>152052180He's not gay, he's perfectly Nermal.
>>15205112850 years? Impressive
>>152051128i wonder if paramount's ever gonna reference this date
>50 years since Garfield's first appearance in 2026>Lasagna Cat's 9 year upload date corresponds with 2026it won't happen though
Does Jon still make a living as a cartoonist in contemporary Garfield or did he get another job?
>>152051128https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHnZphCBWTA
>>152051128We honestly don't deserve Garfield. Its pure comic kino.
>>152057241Does Jim Davis still draw Garfield? Or do assistants or AI do it?
Garfield the comic nowadays is the definition of mediocrity, but it used to be quite alright, as far as inoffensive Sunday funnies went.The Garfield & Friends cartoon on the other hand is kino (at least the Garfield segments). The writers really squeezed the setting and characters down to the last drop, and the animation is both faithful to the comic and surprisingly solid, especially considering the shoestring budget Film Roman had to produce it, genuinely one of my favourite cartoons of all time. The specials are very good, too.
>take something everyone loves (dogs, cats) >make millionsHow do I do this? Has anyone made a comic about pizza? How do I make a multi million dollar franchise about pizza
>>152057590There used to be an entire industry around getting a comic strip serialized in newspapers, then creating a media empire around it. That doesn't exist now, you're basically just a minimum wage webcomic artist even if you do get something in, and you aren't getting a fucking cartoon deal out of it that's for sure.
>>152051128That doesn't really count, wait until 1978
>>152057590>>152057727On the other hand, you have AI now!
>>152054990NEAT! Never seen this before. This voice isn't terrible, I think it would have worked with the normal Garfield show but Lorenzo Music's natural yawning sounding voice is just so perfect for Garfield.
>>152057331This cannot be real
>>152051128I like seeing the first strips of newspaper comics, especially if they start off with 'Hi, we're the characters you're going to be seeing the wacky adventures of!' Of course in pic related case only Funky and Les will persist throughout the whole series, and even Funky takes a back seat a lot of the time.
>>152057883History has shown that wierdos tend to rise to power.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekeq4szDmJohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00bGPhETXXM
>>152058206This is too clunky and inartful for me, I can't help but cringe at it.
>>152051128I wouldn't mind seeing a Garfield storytime instead of another Funky Winkershit thread.
>>152058324>Garfield storytimeWhat's stopping you, anon?
>>152058368Work and the idea of a daily commitment I'm not being paid for.
Glad to see lasagne starts off right from the get-go.
In case you want to read all of proto-Garf:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mIxJ-58j1j001X7PHmafY3y8mdtG8HV-/view?pli=1
The OG OG Garfield strip.
>>152058448What the fuck, this is actually funny. When did Jim Davis lose his sense of humor?
>>152051128He looks like he's about to hurl. If I was drawn like that, I would too.
>>152058600Very few series get funnier with age.
>>152051128He looked even more like Gaturro.
>>152051197But you can see the half sleep look even in this early image.
>>152053086That...makes a lot of sense.
>>152057590cowabunga dude>>152057727iirc it was hellish and pretty much a shot in the dark. even then most newspaper strip cartoons are pretty short-lived/obscure, idk how much the creators made from them
>>152051197It's another case of Early Installment Weirdness
>>152057727>>152061029Suprdee sometimes shares insights about the newspaper comic industry. It's apparently really cutthroat especially in today's climate when newspapers are getting smaller and smaller and comics are going into reruns, but he still seems to be rising above it.
