COMIC ART. Newspaper Comics Garfield

Transcription

1 COMIC ART Although often dismissed as unsophisticated, the roots of Comic Art can be found in the most austere of beginnings from the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt to the frescoes of the Vatican. These early forms of Narrative Art told a story through an image or a series of images, much like the comics of today. Modern Comic Art first reached the masses through newspapers. Innovative artists paired illustrations with captions that displayed a continuous narrative and sometimes featured the use of speech balloons, satire and caricature. Many classic strips are still widely circulated today, boasting beloved characters that have withstood the test of time. Harold Gray s Little Orphan Annie and Chic Young s Blondie have entertained multiple generations of readers, and the characters featured in Charles Schulz s Peanuts are recognized and beloved around the world. The advent of comic books brought publishing giants Marvel and DC on the scene with superheroes like Spider-Man, Superman and Batman, and a thriving subculture of devoted fans was born. Over the past century, artists have experimented with narrative, format and content, producing works that have run the gamut from earnest religious directives to searing social and political commentary. The graphic novel format, popularized by pioneer Will Eisner beginning in the 1970s, has seen an explosion in popularity in recent years, providing a range of content for every kind of reader. Comic Art has stepped from the fringes of pop culture to take its place as one of the great American art forms. Educators have embraced Comic Art, recognizing the value of engaging students with material that makes reading fun (in example are children s books). Newspaper Comics Garfield Garfield is a comic created by Jim Davis. Published since 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, Garfield, the cat; Jon Arbuckle, the human; and Odie, the dog. As of 2013, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. Though this is rarely mentioned in print, Garfield is set in Muncie, Indiana, the home of Jim Davis, according to the television special Happy Birthday, Garfield. Common themes in the strip include Garfield's laziness, obsessive eating, coffee, and disdain of Mondays and diets. The strip's focus is mostly on the interactions among Garfield, Jon, and Odie, but other recurring minor characters appear as well. In addition to the various merchandise and commercial tie-ins, the strip has spawned several animated television specials, two animated television series, two theatrical feature-length live-action/cgi animated films, and three fully CGI animated direct-to-video movies. Part of the strip's broad pop cultural appeal is due to its lack of social or political commentary; though this was Davis's original intention, he also admitted that his "grasp of politics isn't strong," joking that, for many years, he thought "OPEC was a denture adhesive.

2 Jim Davis: Garfield + Intentions + Inspirations In the 1970s, Davis created a comic strip called Gnorm Gnat, which met with little success. One editor said, "his art was good, his gags were great," but that "nobody can identify with bugs." Davis decided to take a long, hard look at the comics and he saw that dogs were doing very well, but there were no cats at the time. Davis figured that since he had grown up on a farm with 25 cats that he could come up with a strip based on a cat. He then proceeded to create a new strip with a cat as its main character and thus created Garfield, who borrows the first letter of his name from Davis's earlier work. Garfield originally consisted of four main characters. Garfield, the titular character, was based on the cats Davis was around growing up; he took his name and personality from Davis's grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, who was, in Davis's words, "a large, cantankerous man". Jon Arbuckle came from a 1950s coffee commercial, and Odie was based on a car dealership commercial written by Davis, which featured Odie the Village Idiot. The strip underwent stylistic changes, evolving from the style of the strips, to a more cartoonish look from 1984 onward. This change has mainly affected Garfield's design, which underwent a "Darwinian evolution" in which he began walking on his hind legs, "slimmed down", and "stopped looking... through squinty little eyes" His evolution, according to Davis, was to make it easier to "push Odie off the table" or "reach for a piece of pie." Media Internet Garfield.com is the strip's official website, which contains archives of past strips along with games and an online store. Jim Davis has also collaborated with Ball state University and Pearson Digital Learning to create an educational website with interactive games focusing on math and reading skills, and with Children's Technology Group to create MindWalker, a web browser that allows parents to limit the websites their children can view to a pre-set list. A variety of edited Garfield strips have been made available on the Internet, some hosted on their own unofficial, dedicated sites. Dating from 2005, a site called the "Garfield Randomizer" created a three-panel strip using panels from previous Garfield strips. Another approach, known as "Silent Garfield" involves removing Garfield's thought balloons from the strips. Some examples date from A web-comic called Arbuckle does the above but also redraws the originals in a different art style. The Arbuckle website creator writes: "'Garfield' changes from being a comic about a sassy, corpulent feline, and becomes a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets. Consider that Jon, according to Garfield canon, cannot hear his cat's thoughts. This is the world as he sees it. This is his story". [ Another variation along the same lines, called "Realfield" or "Realistic Garfield", is to redraw Garfield as a real cat as well as removing his thought balloons. Still another approach to editing the strips involves removing Garfield and other main characters from the originals completely, leaving Jon talking to himself. Television Garfield's animation debut was on The Fantastic Funnies, which aired on CBS in May 15, 1980, voiced by actor Scott Beach. Garfield was one of the strips featured, introduced as a newcomer (the strip was only two years old at the time). From 1982 to 1991, twelve primetime Garfield cartoon specials and one hour-long primetime documentary celebrating the character's 10th anniversary were aired; Lorenzo Music voiced Garfield in all of them. A Saturday morning cartoon show, Garfield and Friends, aired for seven seasons from 1988 to 1994; this adaption also starred Music as the voice of Garfield. The Garfield Show, a CGI series, started development in 2007 to coincide with the strip's 30th anniversary the following year. It premiered in France in December 2008 and made its U.S. debut on Cartoon Network on November 2, 2009.

3 Movies Garfield: The Movie was released in theaters on June 11, Its sequel, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, was released on June 16, Three direct-to-video films were released, Garfield Gets Real on August 9, 2007, Garfield's Fun Fest on August 5, 2008, and Garfield's Pet Force on June 16, On May 24, Video Games A Garfield video game was developed by Atari, Inc. for its Atari 2600 home video game system and appears in their 1984 catalog. However, after Atari's spinoff and sale of its home games and computers division, owner Jack Tramiel decided the character's royalties were too expensive given the declining state of the video game industry at the time, and the game was cancelled. Garfield: Big Fat Hairy Deal is a 1987 video game for the Atari ST, ZX Spectrum based on the comic strip. Towa Chiki made A Week of Garfield for the Family Computer, released only in Japan in Sega also made video games based on Garfield for the Genesis (Garfield: Caught in the Act) and Windows 3.1 computers. Other companies made games, such as A Tale of Two Kitties for the DS, published by Game Factory, Garfield's Nightmare for DS, Garfield's Funfest for DS, and Garfield Labyrinth for Game Boy. On PlayStation 2 were Garfield and Garfield 2 (known in the US as Garfield, a Tale of Two Kitties). Garfield Lasagna World Tour was also made for PS2. And recent additions for mobile devices are "Garfield's Diner" and "Garfield's Zombie Defense". Stage Joseph Papp, producer of A Chorus Line, discussed making a Garfield stage musical, but due to some complications, it never got off ground. A full-length stage musical, titled "Garfield Live", was planned to kick off its US tour in September 2010, but got moved to January 18, 2011, where it premiered in Muncie, Indiana. The book was written by Jim Davis, with music and lyrics by Michael Dansicker and Bill Meade, and it was booked by AWA Touring Services. The opening song, "Cattitude" can be heard on the national tour's website, along with two more, "On the Fence," and "Going Home!". When the North-American tour concluded in 2012, it toured throughout Asia. Comic Book In agreement with Paws, Boom! Studios launched in May 2012 a monthly Garfield comic book, with the first issue featuring a story written by Mark Evanier (who has supervised Garfield and Friends and The Garfield Show) and illustrated by Davis's long-time assistant Gary Barker. Art Book In 2016, Hermes Press signed an agreement with Paws, Inc to publish an art book on the art of author Jim Davis, titled The Art of Jim Davis' Garfield. The book includes an essay by author R.C. Harvey and other original material, and was released in July 2016 for the San Diego Comic-Con.

4 MARVEL + DC COMICS Marvel Comics is the brand name and primary imprint of Marvel Worldwide Inc., formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, a publisher of American comic books and related media. In 2009, The Walt Disney Companyacquired Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Worldwide's parent company. Marvel started in 1939 as Timely Publications, and by the early 1950s, had generally become known as Atlas Comics. The Marvel branding began in 1961, the year that the company launched The Fantastic Four and other superhero titles created by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and many others. Marvel counts among its characters such well-known superheroes as Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Deadpool, Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Wolverine, Daredevil, Ghost Rider and the Punisher, such teams as the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Inhumans and the Guardians of the Galaxy, and supervillains including Thanos, Doctor Doom, Magneto, Red Skull, Green Goblin, Ultron, Doctor Octopus, Loki, Galactus, and Venom. Most of Marvel's fictional characters operate in a single reality known as the Marvel Universe, with most locations mirroring real-life places; many major characters are based in New York City. The first modern comic books under the Marvel Comics brand were the science-fiction anthology Journey into Mystery #69 and the teen-humor title Patsy Walker #95 (both cover dated June 1961), which each displayed an "MC" box on its cover. Then, in the wake of DC Comics' success in reviving superheroes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly with the Flash, Green Lantern, and other members of the team the Justice League of America, Marvel followed suit. In 1961, writer-editor Stan Lee revolutionized superhero comics by introducing superheroes designed to appeal to older readers than the predominantly child audiences of the medium. Modern Marvel's first superhero team, the titular stars of The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961), broke convention with other comic book archetypes of the time by squabbling, holding grudges both deep and petty, and eschewing anonymity or secret identities in favor of celebrity status. Subsequently, Marvel comics developed a reputation for focusing on characterization and adult issues to a greater extent than most superhero comics before them, a quality which the new generation of older readers appreciated. This applied to The Amazing Spider-Man title in particular, which turned out to be Marvel's most successful book. Its young hero suffered from self-doubt and mundane problems like any other teenager, something with which many readers could identify. Lee and freelance artist and eventual co-plotter Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four originated in a Cold War culture that led their creators to revise the superhero conventions of previous eras to better reflect the psychological spirit of their age. Eschewing such comic-book tropes as secret identities and even costumes at first, having a monster as one of the heroes, and having its characters bicker and complain in what was later called a "superheroes in the real world" approach, the series represented a change that proved to be a great success.

5 SOCIAL MEDIA Instagram, YouTube, Patreon In more contemporary times, graphic designers / illustrators / digital artists who create comics (or in general just narrative art) post their work on social media to gain a following and attract ad audience. There are several artists I follow on social media that really inspire me. A woman under the username lavendertowne particularly. I follow her on both instagram and YouTube under the same username. She designs characters and has a consistent unique style. Image below. With quite a large social media following takes commissions to design characters. She also makes money through patreon by giving people exclusive peaks to her art and can subscribe to her. She also has created stories with her original characters. She writes, draws, and produces etc. it all. She produces comic strips, comic books, and also creates YouTube videos where she is illustrating a voice over of the series. This may be something I bring up again when beginning to work.