PAWS, America’s first comic strip Mangaka?

The Toonhound Studios crew got a rare opportunity to visit PAWS, INC this month. For those of you who don’t know, PAWS is the company that produces the Garfield comic strip and oversees all of the Garfield licensing and merchandise. The whole operation is still run by Garfield’s original creator, cartoonist Jim Davis. 

Traditionally, comic strips in America have been a single-cartoonist affair. Unlike the world of comic books and animation, the American comic strip has always been a one-person job. There have been outliers, teams of writers/artists, but I would say 90-95% of American comic strips have been created by one artist; The Cartoonist. 

But in 1980, two years after it’s debut in papers, Jim Davis took a play from his colleagues in Japan, and he created what could possibly be the first American comic-strip Mangaka. Mangaka is the Japanese word for an expert or professional cartoonist but the Mangaka doesn’t work alone, they have an entire team that produces a great amount of work under their name. The lead Mangaka (artist) oversees production, writes and draws, but a whole team of artists and assistants also produce pages, background art, inks, colors… the whole gamut.

This team allows creators in Japan to produce a staggering amount of professional work at a level and consistency that could not be produced by a single individual, no matter how talented. A Mangaka on a weekly comic is expected to publish 12-20 pages a week. As a comparative, an American cartoonist on a monthly title is usually expected to put out 22 pages a month, and that’s moving very quickly. 

These Mangaka are revered both by readers and fellow artists alike, but for some reason in America artists who takes on this method of producing work, especially comic strip artists, are looked down upon. How many times have you heard someone take a shot at Jim Davis for “not even drawing the strip anymore” while championing the work of Charles Schulz, who drew every Peanuts strip by himself.

Why is Garfield widely considered the “sell-out” strip while Peanuts is considered the artistic paragon of the comic strip page? No other property has been exploited more commercially than Peanuts. But Sparky is considered, in some circles, to be the “truer” artist because he drew every strip himself.

Sparky died the day his last strip was published which is poignant, sad, and poetic. But I find merit in both Sparky’s singular spirit and Jim’s creative group effort. Different doesn’t always have to mean better or worse. Sometimes it just means different.

Walking through PAWS, seeing the marketing people, animators, and the art bullpen charged me up. So many people working towards one common goal, making kids laugh and read. Making their parents laugh all over again. Giving people at least a minute to escape each day and feel laughter and nostalgia.

I am trying to build a Mangaka of my own here at Toonhound Studios, and I find both Charles Schulz and Jim Davis to be huge inspirations and role models. Both have so much to teach me.

In an interview he gave shortly after a stroke took away his ability to continue his strip, Charles Schulz broke down in tears over the idea that he couldn’t draw anymore. As I walked through PAWS I wondered if he would have felt less disconnected if he had built something akin to what Jim built in Muncie, Indiana.

Food for thought, huh?