A Brief Biography about the Artist:

　　I was born July 28, 1945 in Marion, Indiana. I was promptly dropped on my head, explaining my lifelong desire to become a cartoonist.[1] Because I was asthmatic[2] as a kid and spent a lot of time in bed, Mom used to shove a pencil and paper in my hand urging me to draw to entertain myself. I was so bad I had to label everything. Fortunately, my art and writing style improved over the years. Garfield began syndication[3] with only 41 papers on June 19, 1978. But his faithful following of cat lovers and pasta[4] addicts[5] has grown into the millions, and the tubby tabby now appears in over 2600 newspapers worldwide!

　　How did I think up Garfield?

　　I had tried a comic strip based on a bug[, Gnorm Gnat. Comic strip[6] editors at the syndicates thought there was something there, but bugs? Who can relate to bugs? So I took a long look at the comics pages and noticed there were a lot of dogs doing quite well. There was Snoopy, Belvedere, and Marmaduke -- but no cats! So I took my memories of all the cats I remembered from my childhood home -- on a country farm it's not unusual to have dozens of cats -- and I combined those traits[7] with those of my grandfather, James Garfield Davis, and Volla! Garfield was born.