I have a lot of respect for Jim Davis. Garfield has had an amazing run. It seems that most cartoonists of this generation have picked up a Garfield collection when they were young and were instantly enchanted (For me: Garfield At Large). That`s one heck of an endorsement, no matter how simple or “lowest common denominator” some people may feel the strip is. Garfield gets picked on a lot, and I think that`s telling as well.
Seriously, some comics start off with something that was said or done, but they never end that way. The majority of my ideas actually come to me when I`m doing something mindless: Showering, watching television and the like. Sometimes I get a one-shot idea, sometimes I get an idea for a story arc I want to pursue, and sometimes I get a real jem of an idea that gives me several comics and sometimes they can be organized in to a story arc. The upshot is, I can`t think of a single comic I`ve done off the top of my head which wasn`t jazzed up a bit, though sometimes jazzing up means making it sound like the characters are serious in the comic when they were joking in real life. Some comics are word for word, just dramatized.
I organize my ideas on sticky notes: For generic ideas, I write a sentence or two, sometimes a punchline, sometimes something I want to draw. Several of these go on a single note. For full ideas, I draw/write a small storyboard and each idea then gets one sticky note. If I have a string of inspiration, I get a stack of notes and scratch out a bunch of ideas. I use sticky notes because I keep them all over the place, and when I get an idea, I have to write it down immediately or it is gone. Plus, it`s easy to keep track of what I want to do and I can see and rework my ideas in a neat pile.
I just checked. Oddly enough, I use the real McCoy: Post-It brand sticky notes. I don`t think that`s important to my creative process, however.