As an artist myself, it hurts my soul when I see that the most successful stuff I’ve ever made has always been the most empty and pandering. He struggled for a long time trying to make something he was passionate about before making Garfield, and I just wonder if it hurts him a little bit every time he writes a new comic. Maybe he doesn’t care, maybe he sees it as “I spend like, 2 hours a day working and then can enjoy my millions of dollars” but I still feel like he’s frustrated by the fact that if you want to make “successful” art under capital, it needs to be as soulless and unchallenging as possible. I’m probably projecting a lot of my own feelings onto the situation.
Jim Davis made Garfield so that he could make a ton of money, and he’s admitted as much. So he’s probably pretty satisfied.
As an artist myself, it hurts my soul when I see that the most successful stuff I’ve ever made has always been the most empty and pandering. He struggled for a long time trying to make something he was passionate about before making Garfield, and I just wonder if it hurts him a little bit every time he writes a new comic. Maybe he doesn’t care, maybe he sees it as “I spend like, 2 hours a day working and then can enjoy my millions of dollars” but I still feel like he’s frustrated by the fact that if you want to make “successful” art under capital, it needs to be as soulless and unchallenging as possible. I’m probably projecting a lot of my own feelings onto the situation.