Garfield is a fictional orange cat created by cartoonist Jim Davis. His namesake comic strip debuted on June 19, 1978. The cat who naps whenever he can and helps himself to Jon Arbuckle’s dinner has since starred in comic books, animated series, television specials and movies. In 2026, Paramount+ announced a new animated series with Lamorne Morris as the English voice of Garfield. A premiere date is still pending.
Watch on YouTube: When Garfield mentioned the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Origins · Characters · Comics · TV shows · Specials · Movies · Crossovers · New series
Who is Garfield? How Jim Davis created the comic strip
Jim Davis grew up on a farm in Indiana. Before Garfield, he drew a comic about bugs called Gnorm Gnat. In 1976 he started publishing Jon in The Pendleton Times, where the orange cat was already making appearances. When the strip entered syndication in 1978, Garfield took the lead and gave the strip its name. Compare the local Jon strip with Garfield’s June 19, 1978 debut.
The strip began in 41 publications and reached about 2,100 in 80 countries, according to the 2015 tally from Guinness World Records. The joke could play out in a kitchen, on a couch, or next to an empty dinner plate. Jon tries to organize his life, and Garfield wants to be comfortable. That tension can carry a three-panel strip for decades.
The syndicated debut doubles as Garfield’s birthday. In the strip’s backstory, he was born at Mamma Leoni’s Italian restaurant, which explains his taste for lasagna. The 2024 film gives his family story a different direction. See the syndicator’s Garfield and Jim Davis profile.
Garfield characters, from Jon and Odie to Nermal
- Jon Arbuckle. The cartoonist who looks after Garfield and Odie. He tries to keep a routine, which his pets make impossible.
- Odie. An enthusiastic dog who enters the strip with Lyman. His energy and expressive reactions carry jokes with barely a word.
- Lyman. Jon’s friend brings Odie into the household. He fades out of the strip’s regular cast and takes center stage again in Long Lost Lyman on The Garfield Show.
- Liz Wilson. Garfield’s veterinarian and, later in the strip, Jon’s partner.
- Nermal, Arlene, and Pooky. Nermal is the show-off kitten who gets under Garfield’s skin. Arlene gives as good as she gets. Pooky is Garfield’s teddy bear, a giveaway for a cat who acts like he cares about nothing.
Thought balloons give the cat a voice on paper. Animation puts that voice in the audience’s ears, and individual adaptations adjust the rules when the animals need to talk to one another. The timing changes even when Garfield’s personality stays familiar.
Garfield comics, books, and where to start
| Title or publishing line | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Jon and Garfield (1976 / 1978 onward) | The local predecessor and the syndicated strip. GoComics lets you browse the syndicated archive by date. |
| Garfield at Large (1980) and numbered collections | The early strip collections. Fat Cat 3-Pack editions bundle several volumes. |
| Garfield Complete Works (2018 onward) | Chronological collections. Volume 1 covers 1978 and 1979. |
| Garfield: His 9 Lives (1984) | A story collection that reimagines the cat in different lives and art styles. It inspired the 1988 television special. |
| KaBOOM!’s Garfield (2012–2015) | 36 issues. Issues #33–36 revisit the nine-lives idea. These are original stories by creators including Mark Evanier and Scott Nickel. |
| BOOM! graphic novels | New stories include Big Fat Hairy Adventure, Unreality TV, and Trouble in Paradise. Full Course collects comics from this period. |
| Garfield: Homecoming (2018) | A miniseries about Garfield leaving home and trying out new households. |
| Baby Garfield (2026) | Four issues collected as an anthology of eight stories about early milestones, from Garfield’s first word to his first lasagna. |
Start with Complete Works if you want to see Garfield’s design develop. For a longer story in modern comic-book form, try Homecoming. The daily strip is easy to jump into almost anywhere, since most gags start fresh. Translated collections include the Spanish Grijalbo/Dargaud line, which began in 1989 with Aquí llega Garfield.
Every released Garfield animated TV series
Garfield and Friends (1988–1994)
The CBS series ran for seven seasons and 121 episodes. Lorenzo Music voiced Garfield in English. The show also adapted U.S. Acres, another Jim Davis strip known as Orson’s Farm in some markets. That explains why Orson, Wade, and Roy would turn up partway through a Garfield broadcast. Garfield and Friends on Pluto TV.
The Garfield Show (2008–2016)
It debuted in France in 2008 and arrived on Cartoon Network in the United States in 2009. Garfield and Odie moved to CGI, and Frank Welker voiced the cat in English. Mediatoon’s catalog lists seasons and episodes. Rodent Rebellion, broadcast in France in 2016, appears as the fifth season in the episode guide.
Garfield Originals (2019)
This 2D series uses very short episodes and gets its laughs from movement and reactions. Ellipse Animation dates the first broadcast to 2019. The 2026 Paramount+ announcement concerns a separate 2D production covered below.
All 12 Garfield television specials
A segment on The Fantastic Funnies (1980) preceded the cat’s own specials. The classic run began in 1982 and ended in 1991. Happy Birthday, Garfield! (1988) was a separate anniversary program. See the classic television specials list.
| Year | Special | Premise |
|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Here Comes Garfield | Odie ends up at the pound, and Garfield goes after him. |
| 1983 | Garfield on the Town | Garfield learns about his past and reunites with his mother. |
| 1984 | Garfield in the Rough | A camping trip goes wrong when a panther gets loose. |
| 1985 | Garfield’s Halloween Adventure | Garfield and Odie go trick-or-treating and run into ghost pirates. |
| 1986 | Garfield in Paradise | Jon’s vacation takes the group to a volcanic island. |
| 1987 | Garfield Goes Hollywood | Garfield and Odie chase fame in a talent competition. |
| 1987 | A Garfield Christmas | A visit to Jon’s family farm brings Garfield together with Grandma. |
| 1988 | Garfield: His 9 Lives | Each vignette reinvents the cat in a different period or genre. |
| 1989 | Garfield’s Babes and Bullets | Garfield becomes private detective Sam Spayed. |
| 1989 | Garfield’s Thanksgiving | A date with Liz and a new diet threaten the holiday dinner. |
| 1990 | Garfield’s Feline Fantasies | Garfield and Odie imagine themselves in a spy adventure. |
| 1991 | Garfield Gets a Life | Garfield watches Jon try to fix his social life. |
For seasonal viewing, start with the 1985 Halloween adventure or the 1987 Christmas special. His 9 Lives and Babes and Bullets show how much the character could change while keeping a familiar voice.
Every Garfield movie in release order
| Year | Movie | Original release | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Garfield: The Movie | Theaters | Bill Murray voices a CGI cat in a live-action world. Garfield goes looking for Odie when he disappears. |
| 2006 | Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties | Theaters | In England, Garfield is mistaken for Prince, an aristocratic cat. Murray returns as Garfield. |
| 2007 | Garfield Gets Real | Home video | Garfield leaves the world of comic strips to try life in the real world. |
| 2008 | Garfield’s Fun Fest | Home video | Garfield’s sense of humor is put to the test when a rival threatens his place at the festival. |
| 2009 | Garfield’s Pet Force | Home video | Garzooka brings trouble from a superhero universe. It’s the third animated feature from the Frank Welker era. |
| 2024 | The Garfield Movie | Theaters | Chris Pratt voices Garfield and Samuel L. Jackson plays his father, Vic. Their reunion pulls Garfield and Odie into a heist. |
The two Fox films form a live-action pair. The three home-video releases share an animated era of their own. Sony and Alcon’s version revisits Garfield’s childhood, his bond with Jon, and his reunion with Vic. The home-video release years appear in the Andrews McMeel timeline. Alcon has confirmed a sequel to the 2024 movie with Chris Pratt returning. That movie and the Paramount+ series are separate productions.
Garfield crossovers with the Ninja Turtles and other characters
Garfield Meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1992)
The Winter 1992 issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine ran a one-page story written by Jim Davis. Garfield dresses as a turtle and shows off his pizza cutter. His idea of helping the team is staying behind to watch the food. Comic details and credits.
That story is a separate encounter from the newspaper-strip reference featured in the video above. For more on the brothers’ modern animated series, see the best Rise of the TMNT episodes.
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990)
The television special brought together Garfield, ALF, Looney Tunes characters, and Michelangelo from TMNT for a story about drug prevention. The cat and Turtle shared a program two years before Garfello appeared in the magazine. Contemporary Billboard advertisement.
Blondie’s anniversary (2005)
Garfield was one of the guest characters in Blondie’s 75th-anniversary storyline. Beetle Bailey and Hägar were among the other newspaper-strip characters invited to the celebration.
Grumpy Cat/Garfield (2017)
Dynamite and BOOM! paired an internet-famous cat with an expression of permanent annoyance and a comic-strip cat who had already spent decades complaining about Mondays. Both look like the world has let them down, but they get there in different ways. BOOM! Studios’ crossover announcement.
Garfield in Nickelodeon games
Garfield joined Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (2021) and returned in All-Star Brawl 2 (2023), where he can face characters from other series, including the Ninja Turtles. His own games range from the platformer Garfield: Caught in the Act (1995) to Garfield Kart (2013).
The new Garfield series announced in 2026
On March 6, 2026, Paramount+ announced Garfield as the working title for a new 2D series based on the original strip. Nickelodeon Animation Studios is producing it. Lamorne Morris, known for New Girl and Fargo, voices the cat in English. Dave H. Johnson and John Trabbic III are executive producers. Read the official Paramount+ announcement.
As of November 14, 2026, the announcement does not give a premiere date, episode count, or Latin American Spanish voice cast. Garfield joined Paramount’s portfolio following the Paws acquisition announced in 2019. While waiting for the new series, Garfield and Friends is the place to go for the classic TV version, and Garfield Originals gives you a quick look at how the strip’s visual humor works in 2D.
