Arlo and Janis

Infobox Comic strip
title=Arlo and Janis


caption= Arlo and Janis
creator=Jimmy Johnson
current=
status=Running
syndicate=NEA
comictype=print
genre=Humor
first=July 29, 1985
last=

"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.

The Cast

The focus of the strip is tightly on its two title characters, a middle-aged, middle-class baby boomer 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?" [ [http://arloandjanis.com/?p=469 Murder, he wrote 09/05/08] ]

*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." [http://www.comics.com/comics/arlonjanis/html/cast_ArlonJanis.html Arlo & Janis - Meet the Characters ] ] 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 ironic. He enjoys barbecues and dreams 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.
*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. 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 of 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 introduced in the mid-1990s (casually, as if Arlo and Janis had always had a cat), and has only more recently become a regular character. Except in fantasy sequences, Ludwig behaves like a real cat.
*Other Cast Members: other characters take part in storylines on occasion, 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 four subsequent occasions, including the summer after Gene's first year of college (2008). [ [http://arloandjanis.com/?p=443#comments The Backstory of Mary Lou 8/18/08] ]

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. [ [http://arloandjanis.com/?p=449#comments A Rhetorical Question 8/20/08] ]

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." [ [http://arloandjanis.com/?p=479#comments Goodbye to all that 9/11/08] ]

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 Wind"), 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 marriages 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."cite web | url=http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Johnson_Carolyn_85177820.aspx| title= Birmingham Post-Herald, Published on: 7/5/2001| accessdate=2007-06-21] 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." [ [http://www.arloandjanis.com/fantasies2.htm Fantasies 2 ] ]

On the "Comics I Don't Understand" website, "The Arlo Award is given to a cartoonist who slips something past the syndicate censors." [ [http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/ Comics I Don’t Understand ] ]

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. Fact|date=July 2008

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. [ [http://www.arloandjanis.com/gripe1.htm Gripe 1 ] ] 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. [ [http://www.arloandjanis.com/cracks.htm Cracks ] ]

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

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 Cuban relations. Another related the World War II 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. 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. [ [http://www.arloandjanis.com/netshare.htm Net Share ] ]

urrealism, 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 alligator 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. [ [http://www.lib.msu.edu/comics/rri/grri/gras.htm Index to Comic Art Collection: "Grasping" to "Gratuitous" ] ] The fourth wall is sometimes broken, and readers sometimes are shown behind the scenes, with the "actors" preparing for the strip.

elf-Reference

There have been many meta-joke 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 Alabama-born singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett reveal Johnson's musical taste, and his love of sailing mirrors Johnson's.

etting

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, Mississippi, 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.

Origins of the Character Names

Given the strip's original baby boomer focus, which has been toned down as the strip has aged into a quirky domestic comedy, it has been assumed that the lead characters are named after 1960s music icons Arlo Guthrie and Janis Joplin. However, Jimmy Johnson has said that Arlo was inspired by a friend with curly hair who resembles Guthrie, and the name Janis was simply "a marketing device used to attract the baby boom generation." Some readers have suggested that Janis and Johnson's ex-wife, the newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson, are lookalikes. There's some suspicion that Gene is named for Eugene McCarthy.

The Artist Jimmy Johnson

Jimmy Johnson 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 [http://www.arloandjanis.com 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-10: 0886874130; and ISBN-13: 978-0886874131. When offered for sale, 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. The publication of a hardcover retrospective is under consideration by NewSouth Books.

External links

* [http://www.arloandjanis.com ArloAndJanis.com, a blog website of Jimmy Johnson]
* [http://www.comics.com/comics/arlonjanis/index.html Comics.com's Arlo and Janis page]

Notes