Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and sixty-first installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this installment's legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Garfield creator Jim Davis killed off his first comic strip character, Gnorm Gnat, in his final strip.
STATUS:
False
It's always good to remember that success is very rarely overnight. For instance, one of the most popular comic strips of all-time is Garfield, by Jim Davis.
However, before he created Garfield, Jim Davis tried his luck with another comic strip character (technically two, but we'll get to that).
His original idea, Gnorm Gnat, was a very similar style comic strip to Garfield, a gag-a-day strip, just starring a gnat named Gnorm and his other bug friends, like his crazy friend, Lyman.
The strip only appeared in one newspaper, The Pendleton Times, in Davis' home state of Indiana.
It ran for three years but Davis could never get it syndicated.
The rumor is that when Davis ended it, his final strip included Gnorm being stomped on and killed by a human foot.
That's not the case. It ended with a simple "Merry Christmas" strip at the end of 1975.
There was a sort of similar strip soon before the end that people might be remembering...
Davis then started a new strip about a human named Jon.
Jon eventually had a cat named Garfield...
And...well, I think you know the rest, right?
Thanks to the Lost Media Wiki for the information!
_______________________________________________________________________________
In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Did the Rankin-Bass TV special, Jack Frost, accidentally enter the public domain?
_______________________________________________________________________________
Feel free to write in with any legends suggestion to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!