Garfield First Christmas Sunday Pencil Prelim 1978 - Jim Davis

June 19th, 1978 was the first day of syndication for Garfield after there was a short test run in a Chicago paper. Art from 1978 is extremely rare and is 100% all Jim Davis and so although not the finished and published piece, this is a really cool look at the raw pencils and designs of Davis in those early days. Notice the classic Garfield line "Big fat hairy deal" and Odie getting a kick from the grumpy feline. Fun stuff.

Technically Garfield started in a strip called Jon which was first published in January of 1976 and later changed it's name to Garfield in 1977. This was done for a smaller paper (Pendelton Times) and was not syndicated and only recently did the existence of this strip come into public knowledge. I don't know how often or when Garfield first appeared in that strip. TO the best of my knowledge, none of the originals for this earlier pre-syndication strip have been seen.