Gnorm Gnat is an American gag-a-day comic strip by Jim Davis centered on a community of anthropomorphic insects, with the title character being the protagonist. The strip appeared weekly in The Pendleton Times in Pendleton, Indiana, the only newspaper to publish the strip, from 1973 to 1975, but failure to take the character to mainstream success led Davis to instead create the comic strip Garfield. Mike Peters, creator of Mother Goose and Grimm, has said that Gnorm Gnat is now a part of "cartoon folklore" as a failure that paved the way for major success.
History
thumb|right|500px|Gnorm Gnat strip for October 16, 1975
Davis developed the idea for the strip while assisting cartoonist Tom Ryan on his Tumbleweeds strip. Davis saw the possibilities for gags with insect characters, and the strip was adopted by The Pendleton Times starting in early 1973. During this time, Davis unsuccessfully pitched Gnorm Gnat to various syndicates. 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 later said.
Davis also recounted that one editor had advised him, "Your art is good, your gags are great, but bugs—nobody can relate to bugs!" Davis took the advice to heart and then turned to Garfield. Another reporter suggested that the notion that no one can relate to insects has been disproved by some jokes in the comic strip The Far Side by Gary Larson.
For years since the strip ended, Davis claimed that the last published Gnorm Gnat strip involved Gnorm being stepped on by a human foot. The document also contained some strips for Davis' next work, Jon, a prototype to Garfield, which debuted in the Times on January 8, 1976, two weeks after Gnorm Gnat ended. The comic strip Jon was renamed Garfield on August 1, 1977. In 1997, one Garfield comic strip featured a fly talking to a spider; Davis alluded to Gnorm Gnat by commenting that, "After nearly 30 years, I finally got a bug strip published".
However, Davis's fellow-cartoonist Mike Peters looked back on Gnorm Gnat in an unfavorable way. Peters claimed, "We can always be thankful that Jim's first strip never made it... Gnorm Gnat has gone down in cartoon folklore as a most fortunate failure. Can you imagine a bright orange gnat on every car window? A great, huge gnat for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. A big fat gnat saying 'I hate Tuesdays.'"