Wilfull Mediocrity: The Paws Story

[richardf8]

The mediocrity of Garfield is part of the Paws strategy. Davis basically wanted a low-maintenance licensing vehicle for modest profits, and as an adman that's what he developed.

Kiped from theferrett, here's the scoop:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102299

I consider the Davis approach to be both cynical and sad, and this is just another reason that he deserves the contempt of any cartoonist who actually cares about a strip.

Comments

Slate Article

[(Anonymous)]

We DON'T hate the fatcat? I've heard nothing but well deserved slamming from everyone I know. People seemed pretty hostile to this new "Garfield" movie. The author of the Slate article hasn't really proven any point: that Garfield is "loved" and that Davis has been careful not to overexpose him. The only proof the article cited was one sentence about the plush line being discontinued. Hmm, I'd wonder if it might be to Davis's credit that he's trying NOT to overexpose Garfield(tm), but it sure feels overexposed to me.

BTW: Does anyone find Roger Ebert's review baffling?:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-garfield11f.html

- Inkan

Re: Slate Article

[richardf8]

You overlook this:

The genesis of the strip was "a conscious effort to come up with a good, marketable character," Davis told Walter Shapiro in a 1982 interview in the Washington Post. "And primarily an animal. … Snoopy is very popular in licensing. Charlie Brown is not."

If one is seeking proof that Garfield was created as a licensing vehicle not not as artistic expression, it is right there.

Re: Slate Article

[(Anonymous)]

Oh he proved that very well. But I was questioning instead the idea that Garfield was "loved" and that Davis has done a good job preventing a backlash against Garfield. I'm sure not detecting any love for the comic strip

Re: Slate Article

[timtylor.livejournal.com]

Can't say I detect any either. McDonalds seems a perfect analogy to it.

Re: Slate Article

[richardf8]

I would say that the fact that Davis is not eating a slurry of rat-and-rockdove chowder outside a refrigerator box under a bridge demonstrates that enough people like it enough to pay money for it.

Re: Slate Article

[(Anonymous)]

Neither is Michael Eisner, nor whoever replaced Ray Kroc after he died. But the author asserted that those franchises where "hated" while Garfield wasn't. The author's decription of the Davis racket is good, but his main theme seems trumped up.

- Inkan

[kevinjdog.livejournal.com]

Heh, you beat me to it. If anyone could possibly defend "Garfield" as having any intrinsic merit after reading this (other than in the crassest capitalist fashion possible) they're even more clueless than I suspected.

I remember in the bygone days when I would frequent the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.comic.strips, there was one poster who worked for Paws Inc. as a writer for the comic strip (!) and she would constantly defend Davis's artistic integrity with lines like "With
a company under his belt, I'm sure he's got much more important things to worry about than what the fat orange cat is going to do in the next day's funny papers. Can you blame him?" I am not making that up. (http://www.google.com/groups?q=Garfield+%22worry+about%22+group:rec.arts.comics.**&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=16&as_maxm=6&as_maxy=2001&selm=6lmhrb%248h5i%241%40newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com&rnum=7) She got rightly scorned for that, too.

In the same thread, she disses people like Watterson and Larson for quitting early. But at least they did worry about what their characters would do in the next day's funny papers. They paid a LOT of attention.

free time

[(Anonymous)]

People wouldn't be minding this meal-ticket racket so much if Jim Davis was say, solving world peace with all that free time...Or at least making a comic strip that had artistic merit. Or is "US Acres" supposed to be that?....

- Inkan

[makovette.livejournal.com]

(reposted to fix a horrific Elka tail in the face induced type :)
Davis is not a cartoonist nor an artist. He's a businessman. Set your expectations accordingly.

You'll know where my heart lays by noticing how many businessmen I host on my server :-D

That said, as a businessman, he's spectacularly sucessful and he did it without doing an Enron, cutting down a rain forest or running a boiler room out of a North Las Vegas strip mall. He has my respect for that.

CYa!
Mako

space for all comic strips

[(Anonymous)]

The Davis money machine wouldn't seem so troubling ( it's actually kind of fascinating in that article ) if comic strips with actual artistic merit could get in the papers as well. But I instantly remembered Dave Simpson's outraged commentary about how he's had so much difficulty selling his strip while the Davis boys take up all the space. The forum just isn't open for all voices.

- Inkan

Re: space for all comic strips

[richardf8]

The forum just isn't open for all voices.

Nor should it be. But it should be open to good ones and Grafield does not meet that criterion.

[timtylor.livejournal.com]

It stinks, all right. What really scares me is the thought that there's probably no reason for it to end, ever. That which does not live cannot die. :( Reminds me a bit of Licensable Bear (http://www.licensablebeartm.com/). Except that I think that's a joke - it's hard to tell when people go postmodern. :P

Please, tell me they were kidding about the themed Carribean cruises.

[richardf8]

Tonight on Zombie Slapdown
Garfield Vs. Manny

Can an undead, obese flesh golem of a cat withstand the onslaught of bits leveled at him by the world's angriest cybermink?

Can a body of digital ephemera be crushed under the weight of 26 years of Alpo Cat Food and Lasagna when distracted by "Happy Slut Time?"

And for the final question, who's more of a whore: Jim Davis or Angie Lishuss?

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

My sister's college friend actually laughed all thru an ad for the movie. But we soon saw that it really doesn't take much to get her to laugh.

The Washington Post's 2002 comics survey saw Garfield at #1 under the column "It's Okay." That's still overrating, I'd say. The surveyed under-12 crowd seems to love the piece of orange crud, but when I attended the "Shrek 2" matinee, the child-heavy audience was silent thru the "Garfield" preview.