Origins of The Characters' Names
According to Johnson's ex-wife, the newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson, the lead characters are named after 1960s music icons Arlo Guthrie and Janis Joplin, and their son after Eugene McCarthy. Jimmy Johnson has said that Arlo was inspired by a friend with curly hair who resembles Guthrie, and the name Janis was "a marketing device used to attract the baby boom generation." Some readers have suggested that the strip is autobiographical, because Janis and Rheta Grimsley Johnson are lookalikes, as are Johnson and Arlo. Rheta Grimsley Johnson confirms the physical resemblances, but states that the strip is not autobiographical, noting that they did not have any children, and that there is not a contrast between her personality and that of Johnson, unlike the personality differences in the strip between Arlo and Janis.
Read more about this topic: Arlo And Janis
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