Arlo and Janis
Encyclopedia
Arlo and Janis is a comic strip
written and drawn by Jimmy Johnson
. It is a leisurely-paced domestic situation comedy
. It was first published in newspapers on July 29, 1985.
couple with an easygoing approach to life. The family surname is Day, but it's only rarely used in the strip. Johnson confessed, "When I first sold the strip, the family had no name. The strip itself had no name! Preparing to launch, the syndicate brain trust decided, 'Let’s make their name Day and call the strip Day by Day. ' However, it turned out there was an old, semi-defunct newspaper column called Day by Day, and legally timid heads prevailed. The strip was named Arlo and Janis. I subsequently kept the name ‘Day.’ Why not?"
Sometimes, Johnson strings together a few daily gags that, taken together, amount to an exploration of a topic. Only rarely does he create arcs of daily strips that together take on all the traditional elements of a story
.
Johnson wrote, "I’ve always enjoyed serial strips, but they change the nature of the product. Ultimately, I think I prefer the gag-a-day format, done well. The 'done well' part is crucial. Of course, they can’t be hilarious every day."
Some of his recurring themes for jokes and storylines are touched on below:
), Arlo and Janis are still besotted with each other. The libidinous content of the strip can be surprisingly overt to readers accustomed to more sanitized newspaper comics. And in a medium where long marriage
s are often presented as either sexless or antagonistic (The Lockhorns
, Andy Capp
, etc.), these strips that show the couple's love and ongoing attraction to each other offer an alternative.
"There has always been knowledge of sex in Arlo and Janis, and the fact that married people have sex," Johnson said. "I think it's silly to ignore that humans have sex. It's like ignoring eating and sleeping." Johnson also wrote, "I'd be willing to bet you five dollars I was the first cartoonist to depict a couple exchanging sexual fantasies in bed."
On the "Comics I Don't Understand" website, "The Arlo Award is given to a cartoonist who slips something past the syndicate censors."
Janis's negative body image
has been a popular topic over the years. She sees herself as at least a little overweight, and unworthy of wearing a two-piece swimsuit. Arlo, on the other hand, persistently tries to convince her to put on the bikini
again, and he once realized that based on this schism, one of them must be insane.
Arlo's envy of the cat Ludwig's idyllic lifestyle, sometimes veiled as criticism, fuels many strips. "I make it a rule to draw one cat cartoon a week," Johnson writes. "I draw a cat cartoon every fifth or sixth Sunday. Other than that, I don't plan it. Sometimes, a cat cartoon will run late in the week, then on Sunday, then again early the next week. Inevitably, I will get mail of the ilk, 'I hate your stupid cat cartoons! That's all you do anymore! Why don't you throw yourself under a bus, you loser!' If I were a cat, I'd steer clear of those types." Johnson's readers submit many stories of cute cats to his blog.
Johnson also treats Arlo's envy of Gene's youth and freedom, and Arlo's ironic and sympathetic observation of Gene's unawareness of how much lies ahead. Janis is shown worrying that Gene is growing up—and away—before she is ready and she struggles to hold onto him.
n relations. Another related the World War II
experience of Arlo's father.
.
So-called conveniences like cable television
and cellular phones are examined. For example, the miniaturization of data storage devices is both trumpeted and lampooned in the November 3, 2007 daily, with Janis unable to find the tiny disk that conveniently holds all her photographs. The loss of privacy
that has come with the internet
is also mourned: "I still think it's creepy to go to a book or music Web site and have it make suggestions of 'other titles you might enjoy,'" admits Johnson.
for a week. Janis imagined a large dust-bunny named Harvey
in another sequence, representing her feelings of house-keeping inadequacy. Janis has shared her fantasy of being a torch singer
and Arlo has periodically "sailed away" from his mundane existence in extended daydreams. The courtship of a mermaid
by a fisherman and a fable of the grasshopper and the ant were both played out by the Arlo and Janis characters. The fourth wall
is sometimes broken, and readers sometimes are shown behind the scenes, with the "actors" preparing for the strip.
strips about the process of creating a daily comic strip, particularly about writer's block
, with the character admitting (for the cartoonist) the absence of a joke or the reuse of a joke used before. Arlo's fondness for and the inclusion in the strip of the Mississippi-born singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett
reveal Johnson's musical taste, and his love of sailing mirrors Johnson's.
, Birmingham, Alabama
or Atlanta, Georgia
. On the other hand, it snows quite a bit in their area.
Most of the action takes place in the home and the yard, both of which are portrayed with an economy of ink. There are occasional forays into the neighborhood, but there are few if any discernible landmarks there.
, the lead characters are named after 1960s music icons Arlo Guthrie
and Janis Joplin
, and their son after Eugene McCarthy
. Jimmy Johnson has said that Arlo was inspired by a friend with curly hair who resembles Guthrie, and the name Janis was "a marketing device used to attract the baby boom generation." Some readers have suggested that the strip is autobiographical, because Janis and Rheta Grimsley Johnson are lookalikes, as are Johnson and Arlo. Rheta Grimsley Johnson confirms the physical resemblances, but states that the strip is not autobiographical, noting that they did not have any children, and that there is not a contrast between her personality and that of Johnson, unlike the personality differences in the strip between Arlo and Janis.
lives in the coastal city of Pass Christian, Mississippi
. Although his own house was largely undamaged by Hurricane Katrina
in August 2005, the devastation of his adopted hometown affected Johnson greatly; his blog
at ArloAndJanis.com focused on little else for months afterward, and references to the hurricane appeared in the strip in the last third of 2005.
, it is usually priced as a prized collectable. Johnson made mention in his blog of wanting to publish a twentieth anniversary volume for 2005. In 2008, after repeated inquiries by posters to his blog, the idea was revived on April 1, but on March 3, 2011, Johnson announced in his blog that the book deal had fallen through.
In November of 2011, Johnson published Beaucoup Arlo & Janis, a 256-page, hard-bound collection of over 900 carefully selected A&J comic strips.
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
written and drawn by Jimmy Johnson
Jimmy Johnson (cartoonist)
Jimmy Johnson is an American comic strip cartoonist who writes and draws Arlo and Janis. He is an alumnus of Auburn University, class of 1974."My earliest cartoon work was copying Fred and Barney and Yogi Bear...
. It is a leisurely-paced domestic situation comedy
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
. It was first published in newspapers on July 29, 1985.
Cast
The focus of the strip is tightly on its two title characters, a middle-aged, middle-class baby boomerBaby boomer
A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even...
couple with an easygoing approach to life. The family surname is Day, but it's only rarely used in the strip. Johnson confessed, "When I first sold the strip, the family had no name. The strip itself had no name! Preparing to launch, the syndicate brain trust decided, 'Let’s make their name Day and call the strip Day by Day. ' However, it turned out there was an old, semi-defunct newspaper column called Day by Day, and legally timid heads prevailed. The strip was named Arlo and Janis. I subsequently kept the name ‘Day.’ Why not?"
- Arlo is Janis' husband. "He works for one of those vague, comic-strip corporations that survives year after year despite inept management, disgruntled workers and no apparent purpose." Arlo is drawn wearing a tie when at work, and at home he wears jeans and a plain t-shirt. His character is generally laid back and ironicIronyIrony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
. He enjoys barbecues, and dreams and daydreams of sailing. He can be riled by injustice and marauding squirrels. He ponders the meaning of life, monitors his decline, and doesn't get enough exercise. He is in his late 40s. - Janis is Arlo's wife. Like Arlo, she is shown to have an undefined corporate job, at which she has been known to receive embarrassing faxes and emails from Arlo. Especially in earlier strips, she was portrayed as insecure about her looks (despite Arlo's sincere compliments) and, due to that insecurity, prone to "petty jealousies." She worries about Arlo's health and about Gene growing up. Janis is sincere, straightforward, and works hard on her relationships. She gets plenty of exercise, and enjoys gardening. She has at times sunbathed secretly, despite the danger to her health. "A highlight of the strip's run was when Janis bobbed her shoulder-length hair."
- Gene is their son. Arlo and Janis were once frequently joined by their son, but as Gene slowly matured, his presence in the strip shrank dramatically. He is a good kid. Having been approximately eight years old when the strip was introduced, he's roughly eighteen in 2007; a week's worth of strips in June 2007 featured Gene's high school graduation, and in August 2007 he is shown leaving home for college. Johnson maintains that Gene's diminished role in the strip is due to his wanting to show realistically the way that adolescents begin to lead their own lives.
- Ludwig the cat was first seen in the third panel of the daily published November 2, 1993, and has only more recently become a regular character. Except in fantasy sequences, Ludwig behaves like a real cat. On Johnson's blog, at least, he is often referred to as "Luddie", and his fans are identified as "Luddites".
- Other Cast Members: other characters take part in storylines on occasion, some as established "guest stars", but no other characters appear regularly in the strip, and few ever recur at all. One who does recur is Mary Lou, a summer love whom young Gene met while on a family beach vacation in 1996. Johnson brought her back into the strip on several subsequent occasions, including the summers after Gene's first three years of college (2008, 2009 and 2010). Johnson says that Mary Lou has taken on an importance second only to the three main characters and Ludwig, and that she and her family are about the only recurring characters outside the immediate family. As of 2009, Mary Lou, an unwed mother from a previous relationship, has become Gene's first serious love interest and in 2010 Gene offered Mary Lou his great-grandmother's ring.
Content
Arlo and Janis strips are most often daily gags based on recurring themes, with only rarely any advancement of continuity. Readers may see themselves in Johnson's observations, and have written to his blog jokingly accusing Johnson of looking in their windows.Sometimes, Johnson strings together a few daily gags that, taken together, amount to an exploration of a topic. Only rarely does he create arcs of daily strips that together take on all the traditional elements of a story
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
.
Johnson wrote, "I’ve always enjoyed serial strips, but they change the nature of the product. Ultimately, I think I prefer the gag-a-day format, done well. The 'done well' part is crucial. Of course, they can’t be hilarious every day."
Some of his recurring themes for jokes and storylines are touched on below:
Physical attraction
Many of the most notable jokes are based on sexual attraction, especially Arlo's desire for Janis. Despite having been a couple since meeting in college in 1973 (a backstory revealed in a series of strips that also functioned as a parody of the book and film Gone with the WindGone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
), Arlo and Janis are still besotted with each other. The libidinous content of the strip can be surprisingly overt to readers accustomed to more sanitized newspaper comics. And in a medium where long marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
s are often presented as either sexless or antagonistic (The Lockhorns
The Lockhorns
The Lockhorns is a United States single-panel cartoon created in 1968 by Bill Hoest and distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries. It is continued today by Bunny Hoest and John Reiner.-Characters and story:...
, Andy Capp
Andy Capp
Andy Capp is a British comic strip created by cartoonist Reg Smythe , seen in The Daily Mirror and The Sunday Mirror newspapers since 5 August 1957. Originally a single-panel cartoon, Smyth later expanded it to four panels....
, etc.), these strips that show the couple's love and ongoing attraction to each other offer an alternative.
"There has always been knowledge of sex in Arlo and Janis, and the fact that married people have sex," Johnson said. "I think it's silly to ignore that humans have sex. It's like ignoring eating and sleeping." Johnson also wrote, "I'd be willing to bet you five dollars I was the first cartoonist to depict a couple exchanging sexual fantasies in bed."
On the "Comics I Don't Understand" website, "The Arlo Award is given to a cartoonist who slips something past the syndicate censors."
Janis's negative body image
Body image
Body image refers to a person's perception of the aesthetics and sexual attractiveness of their own body. The phrase body image was first coined by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder in his masterpiece The Image and Appearance of the Human Body...
has been a popular topic over the years. She sees herself as at least a little overweight, and unworthy of wearing a two-piece swimsuit. Arlo, on the other hand, persistently tries to convince her to put on the bikini
Bikini
The bikini is typically a women's two-piece swimsuit. One part of the attire covers the breasts and the other part covers the crotch and part of or the entire buttocks, leaving an uncovered area between the two. Merriam–Webster describes the bikini as "a woman's scanty two-piece bathing suit" or "a...
again, and he once realized that based on this schism, one of them must be insane.
Battle of the sexes and species, and generations
Stereotypical gender differences between Arlo and Janis provide a lot of the strip's content. For example, Janis often accuses Arlo of not listening to her, and he pretends that he does. Arlo watches football and Janis complains about it.Arlo's envy of the cat Ludwig's idyllic lifestyle, sometimes veiled as criticism, fuels many strips. "I make it a rule to draw one cat cartoon a week," Johnson writes. "I draw a cat cartoon every fifth or sixth Sunday. Other than that, I don't plan it. Sometimes, a cat cartoon will run late in the week, then on Sunday, then again early the next week. Inevitably, I will get mail of the ilk, 'I hate your stupid cat cartoons! That's all you do anymore! Why don't you throw yourself under a bus, you loser!' If I were a cat, I'd steer clear of those types." Johnson's readers submit many stories of cute cats to his blog.
Johnson also treats Arlo's envy of Gene's youth and freedom, and Arlo's ironic and sympathetic observation of Gene's unawareness of how much lies ahead. Janis is shown worrying that Gene is growing up—and away—before she is ready and she struggles to hold onto him.
Politics and history
The strip often includes political viewpoints. In particular, Arlo regularly rants about the damaging influence of large corporations on American society. One lengthy storyline examined American and CubaCuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n relations. Another related the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
experience of Arlo's father.
Modern life
Arlo and Janis humorously criticizes the pace, direction, and quality of modern American life. Arlo feels trapped on a "treadmill" and has questioned the wisdom of the entire disposable consumer economy on multiple occasions. In the Sunday of 11/30/08, this idea was reiterated by Janis: "You said we buy things we don't need with money we don't have." Arlo counters with, "But the people who sell us the things we don't need depend on the money we don't have." In August 2009, Arlo has gone up a tree to escape "the absurdity of modern living," but he soon pines for a kindleAmazon Kindle
The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...
.
So-called conveniences like cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
and cellular phones are examined. For example, the miniaturization of data storage devices is both trumpeted and lampooned in the November 3, 2007 daily, with Janis unable to find the tiny disk that conveniently holds all her photographs. The loss of privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
that has come with the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
is also mourned: "I still think it's creepy to go to a book or music Web site and have it make suggestions of 'other titles you might enjoy,'" admits Johnson.
Surrealism, fantasy and metaphor
There are regular detours from "reality". In one case, Arlo "called in sick" to the strip and was replaced by a large, realistically drawn alligatorAlligator
An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. There are two extant alligator species: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator ....
for a week. Janis imagined a large dust-bunny named Harvey
Harvey (film)
Harvey is a 1950 film based on Mary Chase's play of the same name, directed by Henry Koster, and starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull. The story is about a man whose best friend is a pooka named Harvey—in the form of a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall invisible rabbit.-Plot:Elwood P...
in another sequence, representing her feelings of house-keeping inadequacy. Janis has shared her fantasy of being a torch singer
Torch Singer
Torch Singer is a 1933 film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Alexander Hall and George Somnes, and starring Claudette Colbert, Ricardo Cortez and David Manners and Lyda Roberti.The screenplay was written by Lenore J...
and Arlo has periodically "sailed away" from his mundane existence in extended daydreams. The courtship of a mermaid
Mermaid
A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head, arms, and torso and the tail of a fish. A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk"...
by a fisherman and a fable of the grasshopper and the ant were both played out by the Arlo and Janis characters. The fourth wall
Fourth wall
The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play...
is sometimes broken, and readers sometimes are shown behind the scenes, with the "actors" preparing for the strip.
Self-reference
There have been many meta-jokeMeta-joke
Meta-joke refers to several somewhat different, but related categories: self-referential jokes, jokes about jokes , and joke templates.-Self-referential jokes:...
strips about the process of creating a daily comic strip, particularly about writer's block
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
, with the character admitting (for the cartoonist) the absence of a joke or the reuse of a joke used before. Arlo's fondness for and the inclusion in the strip of the Mississippi-born singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett
James William "Jimmy" Buffett is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" , and "Come Monday"...
reveal Johnson's musical taste, and his love of sailing mirrors Johnson's.
Setting
Though it's unclear exactly where Arlo and Janis live, Johnson's southern upbringing regularly influences the strip, and it might be assumed that they live in or near a southern city such as Jackson, MississippiJackson, Mississippi
Jackson is the capital and the most populous city of the US state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County ,. The population of the city declined from 184,256 at the 2000 census to 173,514 at the 2010 census...
, Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
or Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
. On the other hand, it snows quite a bit in their area.
Most of the action takes place in the home and the yard, both of which are portrayed with an economy of ink. There are occasional forays into the neighborhood, but there are few if any discernible landmarks there.
Origins of the characters' names
According to Johnson's ex-wife, the newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley JohnsonRheta Grimsley Johnson
Rheta Grimsley Johnson is an award-winning reporter and columnist for King Features Syndicate of New York. Johnson travels the country in search of stories, frequently reporting from her native South, with datelines from Washington, D.C., to Iuka, Mississippi....
, the lead characters are named after 1960s music icons Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...
and Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
, and their son after Eugene McCarthy
Eugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...
. Jimmy Johnson has said that Arlo was inspired by a friend with curly hair who resembles Guthrie, and the name Janis was "a marketing device used to attract the baby boom generation." Some readers have suggested that the strip is autobiographical, because Janis and Rheta Grimsley Johnson are lookalikes, as are Johnson and Arlo. Rheta Grimsley Johnson confirms the physical resemblances, but states that the strip is not autobiographical, noting that they did not have any children, and that there is not a contrast between her personality and that of Johnson, unlike the personality differences in the strip between Arlo and Janis.
Jimmy Johnson
Jimmy JohnsonJimmy Johnson (cartoonist)
Jimmy Johnson is an American comic strip cartoonist who writes and draws Arlo and Janis. He is an alumnus of Auburn University, class of 1974."My earliest cartoon work was copying Fred and Barney and Yogi Bear...
lives in the coastal city of Pass Christian, Mississippi
Pass Christian, Mississippi
Pass Christian , nicknamed The Pass, is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States, along the Gulf of Mexico. It is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area...
. Although his own house was largely undamaged by Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
in August 2005, the devastation of his adopted hometown affected Johnson greatly; his blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
at ArloAndJanis.com focused on little else for months afterward, and references to the hurricane appeared in the strip in the last third of 2005.
Reprint volumes
There has been one paperback reprint volume titled Arlo and Janis: Bop 'Till You Drop. It was published by Pharos Books in February 1989. The ISBN numbers assigned to it are: ISBN 0886874130; and ISBN 978-0886874131. When offered for sale on Amazon.comAmazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, it is usually priced as a prized collectable. Johnson made mention in his blog of wanting to publish a twentieth anniversary volume for 2005. In 2008, after repeated inquiries by posters to his blog, the idea was revived on April 1, but on March 3, 2011, Johnson announced in his blog that the book deal had fallen through.
In November of 2011, Johnson published Beaucoup Arlo & Janis, a 256-page, hard-bound collection of over 900 carefully selected A&J comic strips.