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Bill Waterson Returns, Kind of
When Bill Watterson retired his wildly popular “Calvin and Hobbes” comic, he intentionally dropped out of the public eye. He has spurned interviews, job offers and autograph seekers for two decades now, becoming the Sunday funnies version of J.D. Salinger.
Last year, the reclusive artist was honored by the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France, which awarded him their highest prize. In gratitude, Watterson celebrated this year’s festival with a wordless strip.
“Telling a story only in pictures is one of the great strengths — and greatest pleasures — offered by comics,” Watterson said. No stuffed tigers or little boys are featured, but I’m curious if the lead role is merely Calvin, all grown up.
He is sorely missed!
He anonymously drew a week of Pearls Before Swine this year as a favor to Stephan Pastis. He still has great humor.
http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever-wished-that-calvin-and-hobbes-creator-bill-watterson-would-return-to-the-comics-page-well-he-just-did/
Beautiful!
So many good comics slip into sad repetition and decline, so Waterson deserves a lot of credit for going out on a high. He created one of the best comic strips ever made (easily makes the all time top ten, perhaps easily into the top five.)
He was a couple of years ahead of me at Kenyon College. He drew cartoons for the campus newspaper, and the yearbook his senior year featured many of his best. My favorite depicted February…and what students were driven to by the combination of winter and old-fashioned professorial piling-on. He developed Calvin after college…at least to my knowledge. He looked not unlike Calvin’s father. I once glanced over as he took notes in class…fewer words, more pictures.
Awesome!
That strip looks like Calvin as an adult.
There’s a nice tribute documentary up on Netflix. Well worth the watching – especially for the interviews with other comic artists. The exchanges he had with Berk Brethed are very notable as Berk had to confess that Waterson was ultimately right about the problems of commercializing strips. My kids all have stacks of Calvin and Hobbes books and love them.
What’s the name of the documentary?
Dear Mr. Watterson
http://www.dearmrwatterson.com/DMW/dearmrwatterson.html