James Robert Davis is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the comic stripsGarfield and U.S. Acres. Published since 1978, Garfield is one of the world's most widely syndicated comic strips. Davis's other comics work includes Tumbleweeds, Gnorm Gnat and Mr. Potato Head. Davis wrote and co-wrote all of the GarfieldTV specials for CBS, originally broadcast between 1982 and 1991. He also produced the Garfield & FriendsSaturday Morning series, which aired on the channel from 1988 to 1994. Davis was the writer and executive producer for a series of CGI direct-to-video feature films about Garfield, as well as an executive producer for the CGI animatedTV seriesThe Garfield Show.
Personal life
James Robert Davis was born in Marion, Indiana, on July 28, 1945. Davis grew up on a small farm in Fairmount, Indiana, with his father James William "Jim" Davis, mother Anna Catherine "Betty" Davis, and his brother, Dave Davis. Davis's childhood on a farm parallels the life of Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, who was also raised on a farm with his parents and a brother, Doc Boy. Jon is a cartoonist, who also celebrates his birthday on July 28. Davis attended Ball State University where he studied art and business. While attending Ball State, he became a member of the Theta Xifraternity. He worked for various things for his high school, such as his schools newspaper called Breeze in 1962 and his senior yearbook in 1963 Senior Wills. The first character he made was called Herbie, a senior. The earliest comic strip appeared in the yearbook on May 21, 1963. Davis has been married twice, first to Carolyn, who was allergic to cats, though they owned a dog named Molly. They have a son. On July 16, 2000, Davis married Jill, who had two children from a previous marriage. Davis joined the faculty of Ball State University in Muncie as an adjunct professor in fall 2006, lecturing on the creative and business aspects of the comics industry. Davis resides in Albany, Indiana, where he and his staff produce Garfield under his Paws, Inc. company, launched in 1981. Paws, Inc. employs nearly 50 artists and licensing administrators, who work with agents around the world managing Garfield's vast licensing, syndication, and entertainment empire. Davis is a former president of the Fairmount, Indiana FFA chapter. In December 2019, Davis announced that he would be holding weekly auctions for all hand-painted Garfield comics made from 1978 to 2011. As Davis explained, he started drawing comics digitally using a graphics tablet in 2011. Older comics remained sealed in a climate-controlled safe, and Davis had to figure out what to do with them.
Career
Prior to creating Garfield, Davis worked for an advertising agency, and in 1969, he began assisting Tom Ryan's comic strip, Tumbleweeds. He then created a comic strip, Gnorm Gnat, that ran for three years in The Pendleton Times, a newspaper in Pendleton, Indiana. When Davis attempted to sell it to a national comic strip syndicate, an editor told him: "Your art is good, your 'gags' are 'great', but bugs—nobody can relate to bugs!" He then began studying the comic strips; still firmly believing that animals were funny, he took note of how Snoopy was not only a scene stealer in the Peanuts comic strips, but that he was far more of a marketing success than his owner Charlie Brown. Deciding that the comic market was oversaturated with dogs, he decided to create a cat character as the lead of his next strip instead. From 1976 to early 1978, Davis then published a strip titled Jon in The Pendleton Times which would later become Garfield, starting syndication in 41 newspapers on June 19, 1978. Today it is syndicated in 2,580 newspapers and is read by approximately 300 million readers every day. In the 1980s, Davis created the barnyard slapstick comic strip U.S. Acres. Outside the U.S., the strip was known as Orson's Farm. Davis, along with Brett Koth, also made a 2000–03 strip based on the Mr. Potato Head toy. Davis founded the Professor Garfield Foundation to support children's literacy. His influences include Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts, Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon and Johnny Hart's B.C.
