Yo, here’s a strip from the vault of time – the first Garfield from June 19, 1978. Click it to enlarge it if you want.

Now I’ll admit to being a fan of the fat cat for decades. But in all those years, I had no freakin’ idea Jon was supposed to be a cartoonist! When I recently came across this debut strip, I was floored by this fact. My only knowledge of the blue shirt-wearing lame-o is that he sat around drinking coffee, reading the paper, calling potential dates and talking to his cat. Sometimes I even wondered how he made a living as he never seemed to go to work. Real life cartoonist, Jim Davis musta decided to drop that from the comic or it was rarely mentioned. A cartoonist, who wudda thunk it?

I love those early drawings of Garfield before he became more cute. He sure was fat and lazy back then. See how his belly just weighs him down? Ha ha ha!

One more thing, is this comic supposed to be a joke? I mean, is “feed me” really the zinger? It was the first comic strip to pick up on cat humor so maybe all you cat people love it. I don’t own a cat (I’m a bird after all) so maybe I just don’t get it.

Did you know Jon was a cartoonist? Have you ever seen him draw anything?

Yo readers! I always like comic strips about comic strips. Here’s a syndicated strip called Red and Rover by Brian Basset.

One of several reasons why you people love comic strips is the characters. Take me for example, my alligatory eyes, my alligatory disposition, you love me!

Ahem, seriously now. When you first begin reading a specific comic strip, you find humor in it or you like the drawings or you relate to the situation somehow. But at first, you don’t truly know the characters. Sure you might be able to immediately perceive certain characters’ qualities like stupidity, snobbery or laziness but you still don’t know him. After reading a comic strip daily or weekly or as often as you may, you eventually get to know the them like a good friend. This may take at least several months of reading.

Think of a strip that you’ve read for years. I assume you know its main players quite well, how they think, act and relate to each other. No other character driven artform achieves this kind of bond between you and itself. Certain kinds of literature accomplishes it, few movies do it. Comic strips can last years, even decades and it is this longevity that allows you to get to know the characters in a unique way.

What are your favorite characters?

To follow with the “Mutt” theme, here’s a more contemporary classic from the strip Mutts by Patrick McDonnell. This one dates back to 1994, when it was a new strip just gaining momentum in the papers. Comics about pets can get very popular pretty fast because readers begin to love them like they love their own four-legged roommates. Or they see their own pets in the characters. For many reasons, the attachment grows strong.

Click the comic to view it larger.

Newspaper barons, 1890s, salaries, blah blah blah. We’ll be sure to bring you some great comics too!

To start you off, here’s an old-school Mutt and Jeff strip from the early part of the last century. Click it to enlarge it.

Oh, oh, I know! Why at the beginning of course! Comic strips were born in very rudimentary form in American newspapers of the 1870s. The invention of photoengraving in 1873 made newspaper illustration inexpensive to reproduce and papers everywhere took advantage of the medium to gain readership. Comics were in their infancy, having not yet adopted panels in sequence to portray time and merely putting words with character drawings. By the 1890s, the basic form had evolved: panels, word balloons, reoccurring characters and storylines that might follow from one day’s strip to the next.

It wasn’t all fun and games though. The comic strip was a weapon used by publishing barons to gain readership and sell papers. The battle was particularly ruthless between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst where each ran rival strips that were direct rip-offs of the other. The two newspaper magnates even fought over rights to certain strips and lured artists from one another with higher salaries. We’ll get more into this fascinating history someday. Stay tuned.

Greetings! I’m Marilla and my fine-feathered blogging associate is Hank. Together we’re the cartoon universe’s leading authority on comic strips. Here at Zingerding, we’ll be discussing the ins and outs of our favorite medium. Stay tuned to hear more about the art of comic strips, learn about its history and maybe peek into its future. And of course, we’ll be meeting many great characters and their artists along the way!