Since I answered that one question about why cartoonists hate...

Since I answered that one question about why cartoonists hate Jim Davis, a couple people have posted questions mentioning that Gafrield used to be good and, really now.

That up there? It is the very first Garfield comic. Look at it. It's a cat, and he wants to be fed by his owner. THAT IS SOME COMEDY GOLD RIGHT THERE.

I understand, though. When something as lame and calculated exists, people tend to assume there was some kind of "early indie year" the comic must have had where the artist really did care and wanted to tell a good, unique story, but no. Not with Garfield, not with Jim Davis. Davis sort of tried for a month or so by submitting a comic about a gnat to the syndicates, and was told by everyone how unmarketable a comic about bugs was. He took the advice to heart and ran with it.

Paws, Inc, the company devoted solely to making Garfield dolls, shirts, and mugs, was founded less than three years after the comic began. It's not well-documented when Jim Davis stopped working on the comic himself, but I'm willing to bet it was somewhere around this time. He knew what he was doing from the start. This cat was created to sell greeting cards and toys.

I guess it comes back to "why HATE this? Yes, Davis is a businessman and he's good at it. Is there anything wrong with it?" And I dunno… is it really that odd to just find this kind of thing repugnant? Corporate marketing masquerading as a creative work? And moreover, the example this sets for other cartoonists?

The whole syndicated comic model has more or less taught artists that they shouldn't expect much payback solely from the work they put into their comic, and that it's necessary to expand into merchandising if they want to get anywhere. And look how many webcartoonists out there give their comic away for free and make almost all their money from lame-ass T-shirts…