By 1987, just nine years after Garfield’s launch, the cat--through the comic strip, merchandising, licensing and book sales--was reaping Davis an estimated $31 million annually, according to Forbes.

In late 1975, Davis culled Garfield from his imagination after abandoning another comic strip, “Gnorm the Gnat.” “I thought bugs were funny, but nobody else did,” Davis recalled.

Garfield: Comic strip cat celebrates 40 years of ... created after Davis’s Pendleton Times insect character Gnorm Gnat had been rejected by national publishers on the grounds that “nobody ...

I tried a bug strip, Gnorm Gnat. After two years of receiving rejection slips, an editor said, You know, nobody can relate to bugs. I took a long, hard look at the comics.

'The Garfield Movie' adapts Jim Davis' long-running comic strip about America's laziest cat The Surprisingly Simple Reason Jim Davis Created Garfield Skip to main content ...

2. Davis had Gnorm killed because people don’t like bugs. Gnorm Gnat ran for several years in Indiana’s The Pendleton Times, but failed to catch on. After failing to sell the comic strip to ...