Garfield a Career on the Beach

Garfield, the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world since 2002, was first published in 1978 (de Bertodano, 20009). Cartoonist Jim Davis decided to focus his comic on a cat to fill what he saw as a hole in the market. Davis was a business major at Ball State and worked in advertising, and always acutely managed Garfield as a brand as much as a comic (Sullentrop, 2004). He recognized the marketability of animal characters and noticed that there were many popular cartoon dogs, but no cats. So he created Garfield, naming him after his grandfather John Garfield Davis, a man Davis said had "a gruff exterior but a soft heart" (de Bertodano, 20009).