Davis later realized that Garfield and Jon could "communicate nonverbally", and Lyman was eventually written out. The fourth character, Lyman, was Odie's original owner he was written in to give Jon someone to talk with. Jon Arbuckle came from a coffee commercial from the 1950s, and Odie came from a radio advertisement Davis had written for Oldsmobile-Cadillac. Garfield Davis, who was, in Davis's words, "a large cantankerous man". Garfield, the titular character, who was based on the cats Davis grew up with he took his name and personality from Davis's grandfather James A. The strip originally consisted of four main characters. One editor said that "his art was good, his gags were great," but "nobody can identify with bugs." Davis took the advice and completely created a new strip with a cat as its main character. In the 1970s, the comic strip artist Jim Davis, authored a strip called Gnorm Gnat, which was met with mostly negative reviews. He admitted that his "grasp of politics isn't strong," remarking that, for many years, he thought "OPEC was a denture adhesive." Part of the strip's broad appeal is due to its lack of social or political commentary though this was Davis's original intention.
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 films and three CGI animated direct-to- video movies. Originally created with the intentions to "come up with a good, marketable character," Garfield has spawned merchandise earning $750 million to $1 billion annually. The strip focuses on the interactions among Garfield, Jon, and Odie as well as recurring minor characters.
Common themes in the strip are Garfield's laziness, obsessive eating, and hatred of Mondays and diets.
Though never mentioned in print, the comic is set in Muncie, Indiana, the home of Jim Davis, according to the television special Garfield Goes Hollywood. As of 2007, 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. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, a cat named Garfield (named after Davis's grandfather) his owner, Jon Arbuckle and Arbuckle's dog, Odie. Random House (under Ballantine Books), occasionally Andrews McMeel Publishing Garfield is a comic strip created by Jim Davis.