Gnorm Gnat

Gnorm Gnat was a comic strip by Jim Davis based on fictional insects, especially a gnat named Gnorm. The strip appeared in The Pendleton Times in Pendleton, Indiana in the 1970s, but failures to take the character to more mainstream success led Davis to create the popular comic strip Garfield. Mike Peters, the cartoonist for Mother Goose and Grimm, has said that Gnorm Gnat is now a part of "cartoon folklore", but not for merit in its own right. Davis developed the idea for the strip while assisting another cartoonist named Tom Ryan in a comic strip called Tumbleweeds. Davis felt he had more possibilities for stories working with insect characters, and the strip was adopted by The Pendleton Times. However, Davis also approached syndicates to publish Gnorm Gnat and was rejected. According to writers Mark Acey and Scott Nickel, Davis would receive rejections for Gnorm Gnat for years. "I thought bugs were funny, and nobody else did", Davis would later tell the press. Davis also... full article at wikipedia