U.S. Acres

U.S. Acres
U.S. Acres logo featuring the strip's main character Orson
Author(s)Jim Davis
Brett Koth
OwnerPaws, Inc. (Paramount)
Current status/scheduleConcluded
Launch dateMarch 3, 1986
End dateOriginal print run ended May 7, 1989. Reruns ran on Garfield.com from 2010 to 2020.
Alternate name(s)Orson's Place (Canada)
Orson's Farm (other countries)
Syndicate(s)United Feature Syndicate
Genre(s)Humor
Preceded byGarfield (1978–present)

U.S. Acres (known as Orson's Farm outside the United States and as Orson's Place in Canada) is an American comic strip that ran in newspapers from 1986 to 1989, created by Jim Davis, author of the comic strip Garfield.

U.S. Acres was launched on March 3, 1986, in a then-unprecedented 505 newspapers by United Feature Syndicate.[1] Most papers only ran the Sunday strip, usually on the same page as Garfield. For most of the last year of the strip's existence, Brett Koth, who had been assisting Davis on Garfield at that time, was given co-creator's credit in the strip, and signed his name to the strips along with Davis. The strip was centered on a group of barnyard animals, with the main character being Orson, a small pig who had been taken from his mother shortly after being born.

At the peak of the comic's popularity, there were children's books, plush animals (particularly of the characters Orson, Roy, Wade, Booker, Sheldon, and Cody), and posters of the main characters. Shirts, mugs, mousepads, and keychains of the characters would later be available.[2][3][4] An animated adaptation was included in the TV show Garfield and Friends (1988-1994) as a spin-off segment, and continued to be so for several years after the strip ended. The final daily strip was printed on April 15, 1989, while the final Sunday appeared on May 7, 1989.

The strip was relaunched as an online webcomic on October 1, 2010, and was announced the day before in a question and answer column in USA Today.[5] Later, in celebration of the strip's twenty-fourth anniversary, the U.S. Acres strips prior to August 1, 1986 were released on Garfield.com.[6] On August 7, 2016, a Garfield comic strip showed the U.S. Acres gang (sans Bo and Blue) in its logo box, featuring Garfield eating a bag of chicken feed.

In August 2019, Jim Davis sold the rights to U.S. Acres to Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS) as part of its acquisition of Paws, Inc.[7] In April 2020, the strip was removed from GoComics. On June 19, 2020, Garfield.com shut down, redirecting to Nickelodeon's website. As a result, the strip was removed as well as the webcomic being discontinued entirely. Garfield.com was later resurrected with a limited number of selected Garfield comics, but U.S. Acres is currently unavailable on the new website.

  1. ^ Rovin, Jeff (1991). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals. Prentice Hall Press. pp. 195-196. ISBN 0-13-275561-0. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
  2. ^ "Garfield Store: U.S. ACRES: Zazzle.com Store". Zazzle. Archived from the original on February 9, 2014. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  3. ^ "The Hundreds X Garfield". The Hundreds. Archived from the original on December 10, 2010. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  4. ^ Hundreds, Bobby (December 1, 2010). "THE HUNDREDS X GARFIELD : EXCLUSIVES". The Hundreds. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  5. ^ "'Garfield' creator Jim Davis answers your questions!". USA Today. September 30, 2010. Wow, Steven B. If I didn't know better I'd say you were a plant. Starting on Friday we're going to start running a U.S. Acres web comic on Garfield.com.
  6. ^ Davis, Jim. "How It All Began". Jim Davis. Retrieved March 4, 2011.
  7. ^ Porter, Rick (August 6, 2019). "New 'Garfield' Series Set at Nickelodeon". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 6, 2019.