Summary

• Jon's profession as a cartoonist was established early on in Garfield to avoid repetitive interview questions later.
• Jim Davis avoided exploring Jon's work life further to prevent getting too self-referential in the comic strip.
• Davis made sure to answer all Garfield's lingering questions, from his hatred of Mondays to his love of lasagna to what happened to Jon's original roommate Lyman.

As the creator of the most syndicated comic in the world, Garfield's Jim Davis has given more than his fair share of interviews, with fans poring over the inspirations and techniques that made his sarcastic tabby character iconic the world over. However, in all those interviews Davis has been able to dodge one question, and that's because from the very beginning of Garfield, he was planning how to make sure it didn't come up.

Garfield revolves around the titular cat and his cast of friends - most prominently the dull-witted dog Odie and Garfield's owner Jon Arbuckle. Indeed, Jon always seems to be around the house to get into shenanigans with the two, which might prompt some readers to wonder what he does for a living. However, Jim Davis got out ahead of this question in Garfield's very first strip, locking down the idea that Jon was a cartoonist - an idea he was relucant to explore in future strips but had to include because he didn't want to be asked about it later.

In a 2018 interview with Mental Floss, Davis revealed that while he didn't want to depict Jon's work life, he also didn't want to spend the rest of his career fielding questions about it. As a result, he shared Jon's profession as early as possible, but then essentially ignored it for the rest of the strip's history.

I didn't want to tread on the fact that Jon's a cartoonist because my biggest fear was getting a little too inside. That it would be a little too easy for me to write. I didn’t want to lose the readers just for my own enjoyment, or for a handful of peers. Also, I purposely gave him a job right off the top for the reason that The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet never explained what Ozzie did for a living. Nobody ever knew because he was always in the house with Harriet and Ricky and David. Just hanging around. So I thought I would give Jon a job right off the top to avoid being asked what he does for a living in interviews.

Davis has actually answered all of Garfield's biggest mysteries, from why he loves lasagna to where the comic strip is set.

Garfield's Jon Arbuckle Is a Professional Cartoonist

Jim Davis Revealed Jon's Job Once, Then Totally Ignored It

Like Davis, Jon Arbuckle is a cartoonist, explaining why he spends so much time at home with his pets. Davis references the sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in his explanation for why he wanted to establish Jon's profession. The sitcom ran from 1952 to 1966, with a successful run on radio before becoming a fixture on television. During the show's run, it became a running joke among fans to speculate what Ozzie did for a living, since it wasn't ever covered on-screen. Ozzie often referenced appointments downtown, but never went further - at least on TV. In the related but questionably canon movie Here Come the Nelsons, the plot did establish Ozzie as an ad executive.

Until recently, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet held the record for the longest running live-action sitcom on American television, though It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has since taken that title.

While Davis wanted to establish Jon's profession, he avoided delving into his work as he was worried about being too self-referential and alienating his readership. That was a smart call - in a 2019 interview with Vice, Davis noted that the strip's immense success around the world is due to its relatability, with sentiments and gags that make sense no matter where you're from. Davis summed up this important aspect of Garfield's success to Mental Floss, saying, "I would like for readers in Sydney, Australia to think that Garfield lives next door."

However, for fans who wish they knew what Jon's comics are like, a fun piece of head canon is to imagine that Jim Davis' first comic Gnorm Gnat is the in-world work of Jon. This is particularly satisfying, since Davis re-used several gags from Gnorm Gnat in Garfield, which can be read as Jon finding inspiration for his work in his everyday mishaps alongside his cat.

Garfield does have one unanswered question, with fans even speculating that Jon is a murderer as a way to answer it.

Jim Davis Answered All of Fans' Garfield Questions

Garfield's Love of Lasagna and Hatred of Mondays Have Explanations

Jon Arbuckle's profession isn't the only mystery that puzzles fans of Garfield, but most questions about the tabby cat's life do have an official answer. For example, Garfield's love of lasagna isn't random - he's obsessed with the food because he was born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant, gaining a taste for the cuisine in his formative days. Likewise, Davis confirmed to Huffpost in 2017 that Garfield hates Mondays partly because they remind him of the boring, repetitive cycle of his lazy life, and partly because - likely due to his bad mood - bad things tend to happen to him on Mondays. Davis states:

Garfield does not have a job, Garfield does not go to school and every day is the same. Nevertheless every Monday is just a reminder that his life is the same old, same old cycling again and for some reason even though his life is pretty much the same every day on Mondays specifically, awful things tend to happen to him physically.

Likewise, while Davis keeps the setting of Garfield vague in order to make the comic relatable to all readers, it's officially set in Muncie, Indiana - Davis' own hometown; another detail where Davis has shared the official answer, even though the strip itself goes to pains to keep things generic.

Fan theories range from the idea that Jon killed Lyman to him being abducted by aliens...

Garfield Does Have One Unanswered Mystery

The Comic's Weird Decision Has Fans Speculating That Jon Is a Killer

One mystery that Davis hasn't officially answered is the fate of Lyman. Lyman was a side character in Jon (the strip which eventually became Garfield, once Davis shifted focus to the cat over his owner), and is actually introduced as the owner of Odie the dog. Davis intended Lyman to give Jon someone to talk to, however as Garfield took a bigger and bigger role in the strip, Lyman became surplus to requirement and Davis started featuring him less and less, with the character finally disappearing after his final (uneventful) strip in 1983.

Like Ozzie's job, Lyman's disappearance has become a running joke for fans of Garfield, especially because Jon kept Odie without any explanation. Fan theories range from the idea that Jon killed Lyman to him being abducted by aliens, mostly because of a strip that shows him on the front page of a newspaper while Jon and Garfield discuss abductions. Jim Davis added fuel to the fire in 1998's 20 Years & Still Kicking! Garfield’s Twentieth Anniversary Collection, including a joking list of explanations for Lyman's disappearance that included the exhortation "don't look in Jon's basement."

Davis followed up the joke in the 2011 game Garfield’s Scary Scavenger Hunt, where Garfield indeed discovers Lyman chained in a basement and - in the sequel - finds him beheaded under suspicious circumstances. A cheerier answer was presented by an episode of the 2014 cartoon The Garfield Show, where it turns out Lyman moved to the jungle to become an anti-poaching activist. Neither the games or show are considered part of Garfield's official canon (which is mostly limited to the comics), they do offer satisfying (if not definitive) answers to where Lyman went.

Jim Davis was surprisingly prescient about how often he'd be doing interviews about Garfield, long before the franchise was generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue per year. The smart decision to clarify the strip's 'big' (but ultimately irrelevant) mysteries means that over the years, Davis has been able to dodge repeatedly explaining the logic behind Garfield's world again and again.

Source: Scott Neumyer, Mental Floss; Vice; Nell Minow, Huffpost