Jim Davis Biography

Fast Facts

• Founder of The Professor Garfield Foundation with his alma mater, Ball State University, which supports children's literacy
• Has won four awards from the National Cartoonist Society for "Garfield:" two Best Humor Strip Awards in 1981 and 1985, an Elzie Segar Award in 1990, and a Reuben Award in 1990
• Supports a number of environmental restoration and reforestation projects and was responsible for the building of the world's first all-natural commercial wastewater plant
• Studied Art and Business at Ball State University, where he was a member of the Theta Xi fraternity
• Began drawing as a child, when he was often bedridden due to asthma
• Started out as an apprentice to Tom Ryan, the creator of "Tumbleweeds," before moving on to develop his own comic strip, "Gnorm Gnat․"
• Founder and president of Paws, Inc․, which he formed in 1981 to handle all of the "Garfield" licensing and business concerns
• The "Garfield" comic strip debuted on June 19, 1978 in 41 newspapers and now reaches 200 million people in more than 2400 newspapers
• Best known as the creator of the "Garfield" comic strip and the executive producer of the "Garfield and Friends" TV series
• Garfield was inspired by the cats he saw in his childhood living on a farm and is named after his grandfather, James Garfield Davis