Jim Davis (b. 1945) Davis was born in Marion, Indiana, but grew up on a farm in Fairmount, Indiana. He studied art and business at Ball State University. In 1969 he joined an advertising company where he assisted Tom Ryan with the comic strip Tumbleweeds. Shortly after, he created the comic strip Gnorm Gnat, which ran in The Pendleton Times for five years. 1978 was the beginning of his most famous comic strip, Garfield. It started syndication in 1978 and appeared in 41 newspapers. Today the comic is syndicated in 2,580 newspapers with a readership of approximately 300 million daily.

Davis wanted to help support children’s literacy so he created the Professor Garfield Foundation. He joined the faculty at Ball State University in the fall of 2016 as an adjunct professor. He and his staff still produce the Garfield comics from Albany, Indiana, where he resides.

Jim Davis created one cover for The Saturday Evening Post, a Garfield-themed homage to Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait.