MUNCIE — He’s ruled the world’s comic pages for years.

The Garfield Show, an all-new animated TV show for American audiences, debuts today at 10:30 a.m. and will air Mondays through Fridays at 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.

“It’s really fantastic,” said associate producer Kim Campbell. “He’s out in this vast, wacky world. … There are hundreds of sets for Garfield to play around in.”

It’s a lushly produced world, too, as a quick peek at an episode playing on Campbell’s office computer proved.

Know the “flat” look of some cartoon shows? Forget it.

“It’s not your father’s Garfield TV show,” she joked. “It’s just rich. It’s rich with color. The music’s great. We’ve really labored over the writing. … The production value is just top drawer. … Just unbelievable. Very alive. … It’s really appealing, visually.”

A small point, perhaps, but one that Garfield’s legions of fans will notice?

“His lips move,” Campbell said. “In the past, his lips haven’t moved.”

American audiences, she predicted, will be very impressed with the overall look.

More is being offered, though. According to a Paws, Inc. press release, the show will have tie-ins to iTunes, YouTube (youtube.com/garfieldshow) and at www.thegarfieldshow.com. In addition, the Web site devoted to the show “will feature games, mobile downloads, video and ‘The Catbox,’ featuring social networking aspects, including blogs by Dr. Liz (Garfield’s veterinarian) and Squeak the mouse, an authority on the world’s cheeses, and much more.”

Characters from the show will also be found on Facebook (www.facebook.com/garfield) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/therealgarfield).

“Garfield is really stepping into the digital world in a big way,” Campbell said.

Much of the rest of the world, by the way, has already seen The Garfield Show.

A production of Paws, Inc. and Paris-based Dargaud Media, it debuted in France in November 2008.

It also presently airs in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, the Philippines, Latin America and the United Kingdom, and come Saturday it will debut in South Africa, the Middle East and Eastern and Western Europe.

Big as the world is, though, the local influence is there, too.

“We have contributed a great number of story lines,” Campbell said, discussing the local role in the joint venture, noting the standards that are set here for each script. “Are they fun for Garfield? Can we see where that’s going?”

Fact is, she added, there has been lots of writing going on out at Paws, Inc.’s rural Delaware County headquarters.

Davis himself has written a script for a half-hour Garfield Christmas special that will air in 2010.

Campbell, also, has written scripts for two shows, one to air this season and the other to air next season. They are, respectively, The History of Dogs and The History of Cats, both from a certain orange feline’s entertaining point of view, of course.

But back to The Garfield Show, for which Davis, Garfield and Friends writer Mark Evanier and French director Robert Réa are executive producers.

When it debuted on France 3 in 2008, it drew that network’s largest audience ever for a new show, with 900,000 viewers.

“That’s huge there,” Campbell said.

As for America’s edition, veteran actors recorded the English-language scripts in Los Angeles.

“It’s the typical voice cast that we’ve used in the past,” Campbell said, noting that the shows are also going to be dubbed in Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, the last for when it debuts in Japan in 2010.

Everyone associated with Garfield, she added, is also happy to be associated with the Cartoon Network.

“It’s the best,” Campbell said. “It’s one of the top youth networks in the world.”

So far, she continued, 52 stories of 11 minutes each have been produced, enough for 26 half-hour episodes of The Garfield Show.

And beyond those?

“We’ll be writing 52 more,” Campbell said. “We’re hoping it’ll be on the network for years to come.”