2023-06-19 22:18:50
Jon Arbuckle (Jon Bonachón in the Spanish version) talks to his cat. He insists on the importance of a diet and getting up early. Always naive, his tolerance characterizes him. This relationship would not surprise us if it were not for the ironic responses of his pet. He can’t understand it, but we complicit readers can. This empathy between readers and animal characters is not new, of course. The talking Bestiary originates from the beginnings of the comic. But reading the thoughts of an animal is a possibility that we owe to Charles Schulz, author of the most noble and philosophical Snoopy, capable of breaking the fourth wall with his reflections directed at the reader, looking at him from the roof of his booth.
On June 19, 1978, 45 years ago, the first Garfield strip was published. In a single panel, Jon, his human protagonist, declares to the reader, “Our only purpose is to entertain you,” while Garfield, next to him, retorts, “Feed me.” Evidently, cartoonist Jim Davis, another young man from the Midwest, had taken Schulz’s simplicity as a guide, and in the first week of Garfield he paid homage to him by drawing the cat curling up to ponder: “happiness is a hot television.” .
This new strip about a fat cat and somewhat dastardly lasagna fan turned out to be one of the most successful launches in comic book history. Davis, then 33, had made a conscious effort to create a good, sellable character, and his formula soon proved successful: Just two years later, Garfield’s first compilation was the best-seller on the World’s Best Seller list. New York Times, for two years in a row! Davis consciously assimilated Schulz’s success as a model. The “Peanuts” licensing program, the Charlie Brown and Snoopy series, “was the model that I wanted to apply to Garfield,” Davis told reporters.
In the traditional parade through Macy’s stores, Garfield’s inflatable presence sweeps through downtown New York every Thanksgiving.
That was not the only blow of the British Shorthair Red against the famous Beagle. As David Michaelis details in his monumental biography dedicated to Charles Schulz, in 1982, “Garfield” reached the emblematic number of one thousand newspapers subscribed to his strip, an amount that “Peanuts” took twenty years to reach. The following year, Davis broke all records by simultaneously placing seven books of his popular orange cat on the Times bestseller list. By then, “Garfield” had already graced the cover of “People” magazine and appeared in 1,400 newspapers in 22 countries. As a sign of this true fever, the feline displaced Snoopy in the traditional Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in New York.
For years without competition, Schulz had to accept, not without annoyance, that a cat wanted to sit on his knees while he occupied his throne. The sales figures in the United States were eloquent: in 1985, Garfield enjoyed annual income of 6 and a half million dollars, approaching Peanuts, then with 8 million. Snoopy’s father took every opportunity he had to privately rant about Davis as a cartoonist. To him, the arrogant cat of him celebrated laziness and cynicism. He seemed ugly, insulting and perverse, as his biographer Michaelis points out. Meanwhile, for Davis, Schulz was a father figure, an artistic conscience, from whom he would have appreciated some sort of nod of approval. However, that signal never came. Rather, Schulz was furious when his syndicate informed him that both “Peanuts” and “Garfield” would share the publicity team, forcing him to threaten them with leaving the publisher.
Garfield was certainly addressing another audience. While Schulz’s humor tended towards the intellectual, the affectionate and the tender, Jim Davis appealed to the domestic vulgarity, without great subtlety, aggressive and with a tinge of mischief. However, Davis himself has confessed that, without Snoopy, without his humor made from small everyday incidents, he would not have been able to create Garfield. It may be unpleasant to celebrate a character’s birthday by giving the gift to another, but certainly, behind that cynical cat, his dozens of books translated into 26 languages, his television series, movies, and popular merchandising, we will always find the shadow cast by a dog. freethinker.
Garfield y Gaturro
Does history repeat itself?
He has yellow cheeks, orange hair, and talks. Garfield? Not in this case. Just as Schulz’s work was essential for the creation of Jim Davis, the same would have happened with Garfield towards Gaturro, another cartoonish cat with similar characteristics, created by the Argentinean Nik. The author, who has drawn attention over the years for pieces that are too similar, others almost identical, to works by other authors, including Quino. Although Davis has not said anything about this “unacknowledged son”, who did speak is Gary Barker, an artist who has worked as Garfield’s official cartoonist. In a post to Instagram, he drew Gaturro surrounded by Garfield and the dog Odie, visibly confused. And how not to be. ARG
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