"Calvin and Hobbes" Creator Bill Watterson Looks Back With No Regrets

With fifteen years separating us from the last appearance of "Calvin and Hobbes" on the comic pages, reclusive artist Bill Watterson gave a rare interview reminiscing about his legacy. "The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts. I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can't explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don't think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once."

Comments

Best comics

[sopssa]

If you think about it, it is actually quite hard to say what makes a good comic. Humor plays some role, but it isn't so straightforward either. Calvin and Hobbes was definitely my favorite comic as a kid. I did read Donald Duck too (obviously, as everyone did), but apart from that I can't remember any other as good comic. And I went to library solely to read Calvin and Hobbes. I didn't like the alien parts, but otherwise it was great fun.

RSS programs today make it really nice to read comics too. I am reading Cyanide & Happiness, Pearls Before Swine, a few local comics and xkcd. I actually have some others in my rss program, but a lot of times I skip them because they're not that up to quality and not that funny.

Now a days I like Pearls Before Swine for its good humor and references to other comics, culture and politics. The random appearances of Stephan Pastis himself and being self-satiric also make it great. I remember there being some reference to Calvin and Hobbes sometimes too.

Re:Best comics

[Em Emalb]

The thing about C&H, to me, was that Watterson didn't dumb down his comic. It was just a story about a boy, his tiger, and the adventures they'd have growing up. It had wonderful imagination, wonderful commentary on life, and was more amusing than funny, IMO.

Greatest comic of all time, IMO....ranked 1A with Farside being 1B.

Re:Best comics

[Useful Wheat]

To me, Calvin and Hobbes looked like the poster child of a comic that yearned to be on the web. If you read any of his books, he often had long and bitter fights with the publisher about the format of his comics. How much space he could use, if he had to have the “Throwaway frame” and so forth. I wish a comic like this had come along maybe 10 years later so it could take full advantage of the web, instead of being smothered by the oppressive newspaper guideline . Then again, I may just have wanted it delayed so we’d still have new ones, but hey. I can dream.

Re:Best comics

[Scrameustache]

To me, Calvin and Hobbes looked like the poster child of a comic that yearned to be on the web. If you read any of his books, he often had long and bitter fights with the publisher about the format of his comics. How much space he could use, if he had to have the “Throwaway frame” and so forth. I wish a comic like this had come along maybe 10 years later so it could take full advantage of the web, instead of being smothered by the oppressive newspaper guideline .

Look at what Lucas made when he had to contend with other people's input, and look at what he made once he got absolute, unsupervised creative control.

It helps to have an editor to keep you grounded.

Re:Best comics

[Ethanol-fueled]

It's very unusual for a first-grader to use words like "arboreal" and "ichthyoid". He played by his own rules, often living in his own head, and shunned the status quo. The strip showcases the importance of imagination contributing to intelligence and richness of experience. Calvin and Hobbes was the single largest influence of my childhood and I am happy that Watterson never whored out his work, unlike the guy who wrote the preface of the first C&H book.[scroll down for the strip]

Most of the parodies of Calvin and Hobbes revolve around the fact that Calvin's rambunctiousness would be considered abnormal, today. Very sad.

Re:Best comics

[alvinrod]

The only other comic that I enjoyed as much as Calvin and Hobbes was The Far Side. Both were wildly imaginative and highly creative. They transformed what would have otherwise been a boring comic section into something fascinating. I have the complete works of both on my bookshelf and would highly recommend them to anyone. If you want to inspire a sense of wonder, curiosity, and beauty in a child, I can't think of anything better than those two comics.

Re:Best comics

[goldaryn]

*prepares to get modded down into the infernal depths of hell* Far Side wasn't in the same /league/ as Calvin and Hobbes. I know that they were one frame and no continuity, but they were also miles off in terms of writing, observation, illustration and funniness. It's like comparing a one-liner to a poem, perhaps it's even unfair to compare. But IMHO, if they were Slashdot posts and I had 4 mod points, Far Side would be Interesting but Overrated. C&H would be Insightful and Funny

Re:Best comics

[Red Flayer]

If you think about it, it is actually quite hard to say what makes a good comic. Humor plays some role, but it isn't so straightforward either.

It's very easy to say what makes a good comic. Basically, it's all of the positive slashdot moderation categories, except for underrated.

Funny? Check. Insightful? Check. Informative? Check (though to a lesser extent).

Plus characters that people can identify with. My dad loved Calvin & Hobbes because he identified with the Dad (and now that I have kids, I do too). I identified with Calvin. My sister identified with Suzie. My mom never read comics, but I'd bet that she'd identify with Calvin's mom... I swear there were times when she said stuff that I recall reading in a speech bubble above Calvin's Mom's head.

But, since this is turning into a tribute thread... Let me just say that Calvin's dad's explanations of science are a wonderful model for how to stimulate original thought in kids. I too, have told my kid that the sun rises in the morning because hot things rise, and sets in the evening as it cools.

Re:Best comics

[fahrbot-bot]

It's very unusual for a first-grader to use words like "arboreal" and "ichthyoid". ... Calvin's rambunctiousness would be considered abnormal...

In reality, Calvin would probably classified as At-Risk/Underachieving Gifted.
[My wife was a Gifted Education teacher.]

Re:Best comics

[John Whitley]

It's not about having an editor or not having an editor. A good editor is a member of a team focused on producing a great creative work.

Instead, these types of fights were about the restrictions of the entrenched format -- how many panels, how formatted, how big, how often. And that's not even considering the lowest common denominator factor of a VERY bandwidth restricted medium -- two-ish pages for weekday comics, with a bit more room for the Sunday funnies. The decision to drop a comic or add a comic was a notable one for most papers; no decision would keep everyone happy.

Maybe there are web comics out there that would do well with an editor, but there are a number of great ones that seem to get along far better than their print counterparts by way of art, creativity, and storytelling.

Re:Best comics

[MoxCamel]

I too have ranked The Far Side right up there with C&H for years, and then for Christmas somebody bought me a gigantic collection of Far Side strips (don't remember which one), and I've gotta say TFS really hasn't held up all that well. Yes, there are some classic gems that are damn funny still, but on the whole it's pretty meh. Unlike C&H, which is going to be fresh for many decades--perhaps centuries--to come.

Re:Best comics

[IorDMUX]

Calvin and Hobbes was my number one inspiration to explore, growing up. Seeing Calvin philosophize while riding a red wagon led directly to me pondering the world while climbing a river gorge... Reading Spaceman Spiff turned Nelson's Ledges into a hasty retreat through a hostile alien environment.

Part of the comic strip's allure to me in particular, though I didn't recognize it until years later, was that Bill Watterson wrote the strip in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, about ten miles from where I grew up. Cleveland weather patters are fairly unique, so no other comic strip--or really any fiction I read--I read captured the effect of the rain, snow, and winds of the Cleveland area on an inquisitive kid the way that Calvin and Hobbes did... because Bill Watterson (and Calvin) looked out the window and saw the same little portion of sky that I did.

Not long ago, as I paged through my old Calvin and Hobbes collection, I noticed a fairly familiar sight on the back cover of "The Essential Calvin and Hobbes". There, in fully Bill Watterson cartoony glory, was an image of a Godzilla-sized Calvin trampling my favorite high school date spot: the Chagrin Falls Triangle.

How do you want people to remember that 6-year-old and his tiger?

I vote for "Calvin and Hobbes, Eighth Wonder of the World."

Indeed.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very different comparison, actually.
It wasn't the content that he fought. Watterson actually ended up fairly free to do what he wanted in the end and it showed for it. It was the constraints of the medium, the publishers have this set of boxes, and the artist was supposed to fill just those boxes. And to top it off, the comic has to be designed in such a way that certain boxes can be removed (the throwaway boxes).
The example with George Lucas (who I presume you're talking about) would be more accurate if George Lucas had decided to say "screw the 4:3, 'made to fit to tv' crap. I want my film shown in 16:9 in its original high resolution, no cropping the sides off and no letterboxing." Watterson risked losing some market to hold to his artist vision.

Re:Best comics

[FelixNZ]

That joeydevilla parody made me sad.

Re:Best comics

[tool462]

Exactly. It's all the same things that made The Simpsons great. It's a caricature of humanity at its best (the caricature, not the humanity ;) ).

Except Watterson did something that Groening didn't--leave at the peak. Financially, Groening made the better move. Artistically, Watterson did.

Re:Best comics

[mosb1000]

That joeydevilla.com comic you posted is so depressing.

I am depressed now.

Re:Best comics

[Arthur Grumbine]

Don't worry, here are some pills to make you feel bet- oh, wait...

Re:Best comics

[LandDolphin]

You compare Far Side to a one liner and C&H to a poem based upon the 1 frame vs. 3 frames (And I assume continuity). It is worth noting that telling a story in 1 frame or line versus 3 frames or a whole poem is much more difficult.

Re:Best comics

[MightyMartian]

I don't even like comparing them. It's like comparing Monty Python and Don Rickles. Both are extraordinarily funny, but the humor comes from places so different that saying one is better than the other doesn't even make sense.

The Far Side was as Pythonesque as a comic ever got. It was absurdest and surreal, meant to tickle with bizarre juxtapositions. I still remember the first Far Side comic I saw, of the truck smashed into a single palm tree in the middle of a desert. It was so bizarre, so absurd that I laughed out loud.

C&H was utterly different, a more human comic script that found its humor in this wonderful world that Waterson created. While I don't think any childhood was quite like it, I don't think I've ever experienced anything that invoked childhood with the kind of purity of that comic book.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

"Look at what Lucas made when he had to contend with other people's input, and look at what he made once he got absolute, unsupervised creative control.

It helps to have an editor to keep you grounded"

Isn't it more about what Lucas created versus what he directed himself?

Re:Best comics

[techno-vampire]

I want my film shown in 16:9 in its original high resolution, no cropping the sides off and no letterboxing."

You do realize, don't you, that the point of letterboxing a movie is to preserve the original 16:9 ratio on a 4:3 screen?

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all writers suck like Lucas.

Re:Best comics

[Darkness404]

Depends. Basically, these labels can change the entire child. One teacher finds them special ed and they get put in with drooling idiots, the other teacher finds them gifted and they learn more and do cool things. One kid ends up on welfare floating between dead end jobs, the other kid ends up rather successful.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine if someone had the nerve to say "Umm this Crystal Skull thing needs some serious reworking."

Re:Best comics

[BobMcD]

Except Watterson did something that Groening didn't--leave at the peak. Financially, Groening made the better move. Artistically, Watterson did.

I don't believe that the Simpsons will ever actually 'peak'. It just sort of 'is' and this is why it would really only die if Groening himself killed it.

This is for several reasons, I think:

1) Homer, Lisa, Bart, Marge, Maggie - none of these characters have changed a whit since they were created. Each episode happens in a vacuum that has no impact on any of the other episodes. The fact that you can predict what the characters will do is based on seeing many, many episodes of them doing similar things, and we seem to enjoy that 'comfort-zone' factor.

2) Most individual episodes are entirely forgettable.

3) There are a wide variety of situations you could put these characters into that would amuse an audience for 20 minutes or so.

4) Due to '2', many of the best outcomes of '3' can be rehashed in a slightly different way, against a different character, etc. Factoring in '1' you can predict an outcome of an episode/idea by the previous season's results.

Unless we reach a point where the predictability of the outcome no longer amuses us, there's no reason that this show would need to end.

Saying the Simpsons has or will 'peak' is like saying bread has or will 'peak'. Doesn't seem very likely, and this has little to do with how 'awesome' a given loaf of sliced wheat bread is, has been, or will be in the future.

Re:Best comics

[Obfuscant]

I too, have told my kid that the sun rises in the morning because hot things rise, and sets in the evening as it cools.

And what civil engineer hasn't told his kid that they determine weight limits for a bridge by driving continually heavier trucks across until it collapses and then rebuild it?

Or that there was color photography in the late 1800's/early 1900's, but all the stuff they took pictures of was black and white?

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably meant pan and scan, which is a much more apt comparison.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

He was implying that George Lucas led to the invention of in home wide screen television... no side cropping and no letterboxing.

Re:Best comics

[tsm_sf]

And, if you want to introduce a child to pathos and introspection, Peanuts is a good way to sneak it in.

Re:Best comics

[Maniacal]

I was going to post this anonymously but I'll man up and admit it. I don't know if this makes me a geek or just a dork but I was choked up the first time I read this http://xkcd.com/695/. It's not a related comic but your post reminded me of it. Don't think I've ever felt that way about a comic.

Re:Best comics

[GabriellaKat]

It's very unusual for a first-grader to use words like "arboreal" and "ichthyoid". ... Calvin's rambunctiousness would be considered abnormal...

In reality, Calvin would probably classified as At-Risk/Underachieving Gifted. [My wife was a Gifted Education teacher.]

Sadly, he would more then likely be called some form of ADD/Autism (living in his own world, shunning clothes at times, etc). ADD/ADHD & Autism are siblings after all. I'll never forget the strip where "the pills must be working" and Hobbes just becomes a stuffed toy.

Re:Best comics

[Maxo-Texas]

I like PBS too. I'm also fond of Questionable Content.

I like Girlgenius but don't really consider it a comic. It's more of a page at a time graphic novel.

I recently ripped through Order of the Stick and I was really deeply impressed with the quality of the characters and writing that developed from the cheap humorous beginnings. I was very touched over what happened to Miko the palidan (which is surprising given stick figures with round heads-- but like I said, good writing).

I've never been a big Calvin and Hobbe's fan. Perhaps one day I'll sit down with a book and read all of them at once.

Re:Best comics

[chiguy]

I'd fall into the 'hard to compare' category.

The Far Side is a bunch of one-liners and it's like listening to Steven Wright for an hour. Initially funny, but then you get used to the rhythm and they're mostly just chuckles until one hits you.

C&H has much more story telling so should be considered a different medium. The humor builds up.

So I do appreciate both, but can't really say one is better. In Slashdot speak, they solve different problems.

Re:Best comics

[Yaa 101]

I think human resourcefulness comes from limits, I think on the web it would not had such an impact as it does not have these limits.

But then, I could be wrong.

Re:Best comics

[bonch]

While I agree with what Calvin's personality represented, I do think a lot of people overanalyze the comic today to try to convince everyone of its greatness. Calvin used words like "arboreal" not to shun the status quo and illustrate the richness of experience but because it's funny for a kid in a comic strip to use words like that. The Peanuts kids also spoke in a way that was above their age level for the same reason.

Bill Watterson seems kind of mystified and amused at the enduring popularity of the strip and how people have latched onto it.

Re:Best comics

[PachmanP]

*prepares to get modded down into the infernal depths of hell* Far Side wasn't in the same /league/ as Calvin and Hobbes. I know that they were one frame and no continuity, but they were also miles off in terms of writing, observation, illustration and funniness. It's like comparing a one-liner to a poem, perhaps it's even unfair to compare. But IMHO, if they were Slashdot posts and I had 4 mod points, Far Side would be Interesting but Overrated. C&H would be Insightful and Funny

And over here children we have a well preserved specimen of the Troll. First you observe the acknowledgment by denial. This is followed by a series of preposterous statements designed to "rile the crowd". Finally, he closes with the classic In My Humble Opinion which signifies that his opinion is of course not so humble. Now if you move along, we will now go see the lolcat exhibit.

Re:Best comics

[B1oodAnge1]

This is why I've never regretted being home schooled.

Re:Best comics

[Ahnteis]

I think you've just described "Garfield" or "Dilbert" rather than "Calvin & Hobbes".

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

... and I am happy that Watterson never whored out his work, ...

Yes, in the early 90's I was pining to work on a C&H NES game, but my employer (Virgin Games) just couldn't get a license.

You have to admire that in Bill, but it's quite strange that he would license Calvin pissing on Ford. I never understood that one. He must not like Ford. ;-)

Re:Best comics

[mosb1000]

I too share empathy for those rovers.

Re:Best comics

[tubegeek]

That color/b&W strip was my all-time favorite - especially when Dad reminds Calvin that many artists are insane. A classic.

Re:Best comics

[Ethanol-fueled]

but it's quite strange that he would license Calvin pissing on Ford.

Those are bootlegs. The licensed ones have him pissing on Chevy.

This one makes me rage. I'm going to look into making a sticker of Calvin pissing on a cross or the word "religion".

Re:Best comics

[Maxo-Texas]

No. The point of letterboxing is to create extra space for TV logos and animated overlay advertisements.
It has become so popular that now, all my cable channels have 10% black borders on all four sides of the movie.
It's a good thing that they invented letterboxing or else we would have to have commercial breaks instead of animated advertisements during the movie or show!

Sheesh, some folks just don't understand.

Re:Best comics

[Ranzear]

You're more likely to get the religious indoctrination in public schools anymore. Better to be Socially Retard than a Retarded Socialite.

We are on Slashdot after all.

Re:Best comics

[marklark]

Your statements, sir or madame, are self-refuting.

Thanks for playing.

Re:Best comics

[Skater]

I remember one that had me laughing pretty hard. I had a description of it typed out here, but then I found it available on the web, so I'll just link to it. I promise, this really is a C&H cartoon.

Re:Best comics

[bennomatic]

You should check out Too Much Coffee Man. It's awesome. OK, I'm just a huge fan, but I think it's great. The current incarnation is called "How To Be Happy", but The old coffee drinking superhero still shows up every once in a while.

Re:Best comics

[Alarindris]

I too, have told my kid that the sun rises in the morning because hot things rise, and sets in the evening as it cools.

Actually it sets in Flagstaff, Arizona. That's why the rocks there are so red.

Re:Best comics

[evil_aar0n]

"Boy, the trees are really sneezing, today."

My son and I read C&H as we grew up - I was 20 years older, but not necessarily that much more mature. We had a blast with C&H and we can almost recall every punch-line. It's almost a game with us. I'll say, "Most babies are brought by the stork." And he'll finish, "But not you. You were a K-Mart Blue Light Special." His mother - my wife - just rolls her eyes.

I hope - really hope - that he'll provide the same experience to his daughter, now 4, when she's ready. She already knows when to drop a, "My mom loves me more than life itself. Not like you, you nasty old barracuda."

Re:Best comics

[AVee]

But he most definitely would have to be classified something today. I mean, you really can't be just Calvin (or Tom, or Bill) any more. You need to be classified.

I really doubt anyone was thinking in "what type of kid is Calvin" terms when the comic was first released...

Re:Best comics

[EvanED]

Except that 16:9 is still too tall for most movies to be shown with no pan-and-scan or letterboxing.

16:9 is 1.78:1; all the Star Wars movies were shot in 2.35:1, a popular aspect ratio for movies. (1.85:1 is also popular.) You'd need a screen that's almost a full 1/3rd wider than 16:9 is to encompass it at its full height, or letterbox away almost 1/4 of the height.

Re:Best comics

[mattack2]

Can you give more detail about the "throwaway boxes"?

On the Wikipedia page for comic books, the only reference besides one to Watterson is

When Sunday strips began to appear in more than one format, it became necessary for the cartoonist to allow for rearranged, cropped or dropped panels.

So how exactly do they allow this? Is a certain panel designated as the throwaway one? It seems hard to imagine that a standard 3 pane panel is designed for anything to be left out.

Re:Best comics

[darkpixel2k]

This one makes me rage. I'm going to look into making a sticker of Calvin pissing on a cross or the word "religion".

Calvin pissing on a Chevy or Ford is ok, but religion makes you 'rage'?
Maybe you could use a bit of religion...

Re:Best comics

[Obfuscant]

Is a certain panel designated as the throwaway one? It seems hard to imagine that a standard 3 pane panel is designed for anything to be left out.

The throwaway wasn't one of the 3 out of the 3-panel dailies, it was the first panel of the Sunday strip. The usually larger panel that was usually mostly just art, because some papers ran that panel and some did not.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

Read some of the comments Gary Larson puts into his Far Side collections.

At least once that I recall, Larson discusses how the constraints of the comic medium forced him to become a better comic artist.

Re:Best comics

[mattack2]

Duhh, thanks, the part I even quoted was about the Sunday comic! The first "mostly art" one is useful to know.

Re:Best comics

[wickedskaman]

The strip showcases the importance of imagination contributing to intelligence and richness of experience. Calvin and Hobbes was the single largest influence of my childhood .

... Does this include the influence of your parents? If so, I'd like to hear more about your childhood in the interest of science.

Re:Best comics

[lawpoop]

This "The pills must be working" strip has got to be phony. First, in this example of it, the copyright date is 1986. Back then, ADD was on nobody's radar screen, and certainly not pills for it, and anybody hearing about a child being on pills for any mental disease would have been horrified, and had no idea what this strip was about. Putting children on speed for ADD was a meme that blew up in the 90s.

Secondly, there are a few clues that this isn't a real strip. First, the four-panel daily comics were never in color, even to this day. So the loss of color in the last panel that seems integral to this comic's story is a tip-off. Second, when Waterson doesn't put dialogue in bubbles, there is a single line emanating from the character speaking, like this. Notice also that Hobbes never moves in the purported authentic strip. That's a no-no among serious comics -- they always move things around from panel to panel, to keep visual attention. Notice how Hobbes moves in the second, real comic. First he looks at Calvin, then us, then the paper. Motion in each panel.

Also it seems to me that the lettering isn't as space-consuming as it is in authentic Waterson strips. Too much white space. I don't recall any white-space back-and-forth like in the first panel -- certainly not with that much white space. When two people are dialoguing in the same panel, he puts words in bubbles.

Notice too that there are *no* word bubbles in this cartoon. In the examples I just found in a google image search, bubbles were the norm. This strip is the opposite. Finally, I've read all the Calvin and Hobbes anthologies several times and don't recall this strip ever. This is the first I've seen of it :)

Oh, I was doing some more googling, and here's another obvious forgery. Notice how in this one also, Calvin and Hobbes never move in the strip. Of course, the fonts of the lettering give it away, but I think this one was intended to be an obvious phony. And here's another bad copy.

Don't get me wrong; I like the message of the strip! It's just not Waterson :)

Re:Best comics

[cayenne8]

There were some really good cartoons at this though.

Let's not also forget Bloom County!!

I still keep Bloom Country, Calvin and Hobbes, and the Far Side as reading material in the bathrooom. Since then...well, there's been kind of a dearth of good cartoons of that level...

Re:Best comics

[Ethanol-fueled]

It's not religion per se, it's the backwards assumption that Calvin would bow to a cross. To my knowledge, Calvin has bowed only to the T.V. and has prayed to the snow god.

Calvin is more like a Wile. E Coyote. When he acknowledges god, he's either shaking his fist at him or trying to make sleazy bargains with him as shown in this strip. Calvin's defiance is especially evident at Christmastime, where he lives in the moment and pellets Suzie with snowballs despite his trying to stay straight bargaining with Santa.

Re:Best comics

[GodfatherofSoul]

That wasn't Lucas' problem. His problem was that for 2 decades he had geeks fellating him to the point that he thought he could do no wrong (I include myself). He developed that classic blind arrogance of all great artists without that seed of self-doubt and drive for perfection. There was a great documentary on the original trilogy a while back. Areas where he ceded control like direction and actor input on dialog didn't happen in the new movies. Listen to what Harrison Ford says about his ad libbing (some of the greatest lines of the trilogy) that became treasonous in I-III.

Watterson was smart enough to realize that he was reaching that point and rather than risking becoming a Charles Schulz, he decided to move on.

Re:Best comics

[DannyO152]

I'm sure we all recall that Calvin's Dad was a patent attorney.

Re:Best comics

[thrawn_aj]

It's very unusual for a first-grader to use words like "arboreal" and "ichthyoid". He played by his own rules, often living in his own head, and shunned the status quo. The strip showcases the importance of imagination contributing to intelligence and richness of experience. Calvin and Hobbes was the single largest influence of my childhood and I am happy that Watterson never whored out his work, unlike the guy who wrote the preface of the first C&H book.[scroll down for the strip] Most of the parodies of Calvin and Hobbes revolve around the fact that Calvin's rambunctiousness would be considered abnormal, today. Very sad.

Well now. The fact that I too admired Calvin's rambunctiousness does not in any way mean that his behavior was admirable in an objective sense. Fact is that Watterson himself wrote (in his Tenth Anniversary collection annotations) that he would hate to have a kid like Calvin and that he frequently disagreed with Calvin's POVs.

On the other hand, there are aspects of his personality that I absolutely adore. I hate organized events, just like Calvin. That just means that I have a hard time having a social life because I find most social events to be unimaginative, mundane and frightfully limited in scope. Ditto for sports. Calvin would grow up into the kind of person for whom boredom would be a fate worse than death (it's a blessing and a curse, for obvious reasons). In a strip where Calvin complains in his wonderfully frank way - "Why can't I just have fun on my own?", his dad retorts (in an unusual burst of man-to-man honesty), "When you grow up, it's not allowed". That pretty much says it all. I think it comes from needing greater variety in entertainment (which obviously includes education) options at a lower tree level of organization (i.e. "I'm bored with music, switch to reading", as opposed to "I'm bored with classical, switch to punk rock").

Also, you speak of shunning the status quo. I know what you're trying to say, but I think Watterson's genius lay in specifically NOT portraying Calvin as a rebel. Any rebellion was accidental, as it usually is in the case of very young children. Many of Calvin's exploits stemmed from taking an adult principle literally or following it to the logical conclusion - something that adults almost never do. In that sense, I get some of the same vicarious thrill from several C&H strips that I got from Atlas Shrugged ;-). Essentially, he never deliberately shunned the status quo - he just didn't give a damn either way - something I found quite charming. It's sorta like Doctor Who - you just can't wait to see what he does next - there's an expectation of magic on the horizon :-). The deliberate rebels (as typified by the surly teen variety) are too predictable to be interesting. Simply negating something is neither subtle nor entertaining.

Re:Best comics

[Artifakt]

A good example is the Wizard of Oz. When it was written, there was one word you obviously couldn't use as a rhyme for witch. So we end up with songwriters who use lots of alternates, working in hitch, pitch, twitch, ditch, itch, ... and then come up with clever ways to make those words fit well. I suspect that if the writers had enjoyed the modern artistic freedom to use a word like bitch, it would have left us with a song that had fewer total rhymes and less effort put into making those rhymes fit the narrative, and the whole film might have suffered for it.
      But like you, I'm speculating that the alternatives all simply had to be worse, and I could be wrong.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

The big difference is, Watterson remained wonderfully talented and adored when left to his own devices.

Re:Best comics

[laparel]

Sad but that's probably true unless if the parents of the child intervenes of course (which they should). I'm not yet a parent but I believe they should be the primary educator of their children - they know their child's strengths and weaknesses after all. Encouraging a child's curiosity and imagination and all that. Schools should only serve as a supplementary education.

And even if a child is unlucky enough to have irresponsible parents and end "up on welfare floating between dead end jobs," at the very least, he gets an education and with it the tools for self improvement. One can only blame his parents & society for so much; ultimately, he/she is answerable only to themselves.

Re:Best comics

[TapeCutter]

"Any rebellion was accidental, as it usually is in the case of very young children."

One of the first words that comes out of most kids mouths is "No". Belive me, it's no accident.

Re:Best comics

[darkpixel2k]

Calvin is more like a Wile. E Coyote. When he acknowledges god, he's either shaking his fist at him or trying to make sleazy bargains with him as shown in this strip.

Agreed. I haven't seen that strip in years. Still makes me laugh.

I think it's time to take a trip to the storage locker to pull out the old books. My son is just about the right age to get hooked...

Re:Best comics

[drsmack1]

That strip was genius. And I mean literally. That is also my favorite strip of all time. The genius was in the structure of the perfect circular argument. If any imperfection was noted; the "insane" comment filled in any cracks quite nicely. A similar Bloom County involve Oliver, a porcupine, and two tons of raisin bran. I suggest you try to find it.

Re:Best comics

[thrawn_aj]

"Any rebellion was accidental, as it usually is in the case of very young children." One of the first words that comes out of most kids mouths is "No". Belive me, it's no accident.

I stand corrected insofar as real kids are concerned* but I stand by my assertion as it pertains to Calvin. A simple "no" would have made for a piss-poor comic.

_________
* I don't have kids and if what you say is right, my little cousins (on whom I based my previous post) appear to be intellectual giants seeing as how they can argue in such fascinatingly convoluted ways. They have harried but proud parents :-).

Re:Best comics

[mfnickster]

> I too share empathy for those rovers.

Don't anthropomorphize machines. They hate that!

Re:Best comics

[drinkypoo]

In school they told me I was gifted, they told me I was a problem student, and they told me I was too young to study astronomy. When I went to college for the second time I failed astronomy, and I'm still an intelligent (or so I am often told) pain in the ass (likewise.) Thanks, public schools of California!

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know the Far Side comic, but a truck smashing into a single tree in the middle of the desert is sadly true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbre_du_T%C3%A9n%C3%A9r%C3%A9

Re:Best comics

[e9th]

+1, Poignant.

Re:Best comics

[Meski]

Fifteen years? It hasn't dated like a lot of strips do.

Re:Best comics

[OrangeCatholic]

Mmm, I'm not sure why you were down-modded, except that I've been on sd for about 10 years and I've seen the vagaries of moddation.

But I've been reading Calvin for 15 years now, and your observations are correct.

I never remembered strips quite like this where Hobbes shrunk into the background in the face of superior reality-power. Yes, Hobbes had trouble treading water, but in this comic he is shut down.

Non-canonical is my feeling. If you want to kill the tiger, then just kill him. This is sauce. Weak, tepid, vodka-filled vodka-sauce against an opponent who didn't know what was coming.

Re:Best comics

[lawpoop]

Man, why is this getting modded "Troll"? Waxy.org says in December of '04 ( with another crappy version of it )

Image: Calvin (The ADD Remix) (originally created by Jordan Fish for the Wesleyan Argus)

Sheesh. Sorry you guys really want it to be from Watterson, but it's not. Just have a flippin' look at it!

Re:Best comics

[OrangeCatholic]

So Calvin was our Aeon Flux?

The chaos warrior, in the face of massive ordering?

I'll take that. It lends more to Calvin than was previously theorized.

Re:Best comics

[hoggoth]

I know you're a trolling anonymous coward who won't even see this, but just for the record I am home-schooling my three kids so they get a better education. I am teaching them to think for themselves. They realized that the bible is illogical and contradictory about the same time they realized Santa couldn't really be true either, and I couldn't be prouder.

Re:Best comics

[MurphyZero]

Still the three best. By far the Golden Age of Comics Strips.

Re:Best comics

[X'16435934]

Maybe you could use a bit of GM.
..
Oh wait....

Re:Best comics

[Ethanol-fueled]

My dad passed away during my infancy. Killed in a drug deal gone bad. I have no recollection of him, but my mother always called him a "loser" and she constantly told me that I would grow up to be a loser like he was.

My mother was very cold. She called me a "horndog" and ignored me for days everytime I asked for a hug. She always told me that I was too feminine to get the girls to dance with me and that I would eventually be paying dominatrices to step on my balls with their stiletto heels. She started telling me this when I was 8.

I still live with my mom, by the way, in her basement. She would have thrown me out long ago except that she needs somebody to abuse. Everytime she looks at me, she sees that loser of a man who was my father. Whenever I ask her a question, she mimics exactly what I say in a mousey, high-pitched voice and tells me, "Go fucking Google it, you idiot. Sheesh! Am I going to have to wipe your ass until I'm sixty?" Then she chops up her Xanax and Percocet into a fine powder and dissolves it in a pilsner glass full of Carlo Rossi sangria, chugs the whole thing, and passes out in front of Shawn Hannity. Every night. Sometimes a large black man comes over and they both go into her room. Man, it must be nice to be respected...to be manly like that black man is.

But it's okay, because I'm going to get a job and go to school when the economy picks up. And I'm gonna get me a girlfriend, too. I'm gonna be so manly that I will channel the energy of the world's most powerful negro, Lexington Steele. Fuck YEAH!

Re:Best comics

[GabriellaKat]

Thanks, I never knew it WAS a fake. To me, its still falls into the "spirit" of something I feel he would write. It was sent to me long ago in a email with a friend as we were discussing how best to deal with hyper-active kids and how so many parents just use pills and drugs (same as in the past) instead of being parents and teachers in this world. Teaching a child to focus and use his or her engery in a constructive way is better then a pill any day of the week. And your sig kinda does sum it up, cause it ruined a fond memory for me of a strip I now know he never wrote.

Re:Best comics

[Maxo-Texas]

Doh! I was shooting for sarcastic/funny.

Re:Best comics

[Xeno man]

but it's quite strange that he would license Calvin pissing on Ford. I never understood that one. He must not like Ford. ;-)

That's because he didn't license Calvin pissing on a Ford or Calvin pissing on anything. All of those stickers are not authorized images but Bill, well aware of them has also decided that he's not going to bother going after anyone as he figures that it's not really worth it.

Re:Best comics

[fahrbot-bot]

the other teacher finds them gifted and they learn more and do cool things

"Gifted" is something that can be tested for. It requires a minimal IQ as well as other factors. Good school systems have well-defined and well-recognized standards and an independent assessment process. It's not based on the whims of a teacher...

Re:Best comics

[dotancohen]

I still remember the first Far Side comic I saw, of the truck smashed into a single palm tree in the middle of a desert.

I have to find that. I used to love the Far Side (Nature's Way) but I don't remember that comic. It was probably a parody of L'Arbre du Ténéré, though Larson rarely did parodies of real-life events.

Re:Best comics

[tyrione]

Still the three best. By far the Golden Age of Comics Strips.

Bloom County, Far Side and C&H in that order for me.
Here, here. Having Larson as a fellow alumni is a point of pride. Bloom County and C&H were vital for a kid who grew up in the 70s/80s and after Gary Larson retired I gave up on comic strips all together.

Re:Best comics

[fahrbot-bot]

Sadly, he would more then likely be called some form of ADD/Autism

One can be those and gifted. My wife had a gifted student with Asperger Syndrome - in fact she was one of the few teachers to whom he would relate. As I've mentioned before, "gifted" is something that can be tested for and requires a minimal IQ and other factors. Our school system has well-defined standards and an independent process for testing students for the Gifted and Talented program.

Gifted students can have all the same issues and problems as the general student body, with the additional issue of being really, really smart - perhaps smarter than most of the teachers - and it takes a well-trained teacher who can handle it. My wife was awarded Gifted Teacher of the year in Virginia in 2005. Sadly, one month later she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she died seven weeks after that.

Re:Best comics

[fahrbot-bot]

I really doubt anyone was thinking in "what type of kid is Calvin" terms when the comic was first released.

You're probably right, but it's not that Calvin needs to be classified, but that there is probably a classification that describes him, and does so fairly accurately.

I mentioned Gifted, because those kids aren't just "nerds", but can fall anywhere within the spectrum. My wife had Gifted kids with ADD, Asperger Syndrome, discipline problems, artistic and musically talented, as well as what most people would think. The main things they all had in common were astronomical IQs and the ability to be very focused and driven - if motivated. It takes the right, well-trained, teacher for this - which she was.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

I am very sorry for your loss. Sounds like she was quite an amazing lady.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

Humor and sarcasm are their own kind of insight.

Re:Best comics

[Greyfox]

Perhaps you will be spared when the machines implement their plan to kill all humans. Though I doubt they'd understand your squishy and illogical concept of empathy.

Re:Best comics

[darth dickinson]

...the copyright date is 1986. Back then, ADD was on nobody's radar screen, and certainly not pills for it, and anybody hearing about a child being on pills for any mental disease would have been horrified, and had no idea what this strip was about. Putting children on speed for ADD was a meme that blew up in the 90s.

I dunno, I was on Ritalin for ADD from ages 6 to 14 (1981-1989)... Perhaps your timing is a decade behind?

Re:Best comics

[thrawn_aj]

So Calvin was our Aeon Flux? The chaos warrior, in the face of massive ordering? I'll take that. It lends more to Calvin than was previously theorized.

Interesting. I'd never looked into Aeon Flux. Your comment made me google it and yes ... I guess you could say that :). I stay away from anime but Wikipedia specifically states that this is NOT anime so I may give it a shot - looks quirky enough.

Forgive me if you're a rapturous AF fan, but I can't get over the vague similarity between Charlize Theron in that ... costume, and ... Stuuuuupenddddousssss Mannnnnnnnnn =D

Re:Best comics

[The Grand Falloon]

Ya know, when I first saw that one, I laughed, but I knew it was a parody because (dun dun dunn...) I had never seen it before.

Re:Best comics

[dargaud]

It's very unusual for a first-grader to use words like "arboreal" and "ichthyoid"

I was surprised too when my nephew of the same age quoted a whole bunch of dinosaurs, using their correct latin names...

Re:Best comics

[dargaud]

I still remember the first Far Side comic I saw, of the truck smashed into a single palm tree in the middle of a desert. It was so bizarre, so absurd that I laughed out loud.

Unfortunately it's a true story...

Re:Best comics

[silverspell]

Calvin used words like "arboreal" not to shun the status quo and illustrate the richness of experience but because it's funny for a kid in a comic strip to use words like that. The Peanuts kids also spoke in a way that was above their age level for the same reason.

Well, I don't think that Schulz or Watterson ever thought "I'm going to have my child characters use big words so that I can shun the status quo and illustrate the richness of experience", per se. If they had, the results probably would've been crap!

Fortunately, we don't need them to have had that thought, nor to have planned all the different layers and resonances in their work. A lot of what we love in great art (and Schulz and Watterson are great artists) comes not from an artist's intellect, but from his intuition. In other words, the thing that makes it great is often something the artist can't even articulate to himself, at least not in words -- instead, he articulates it in his work. There's no way to fully paraphrase the combination of humor, incongruity, and poignancy we get from C&H at their best; if words could fully do it justice, we wouldn't need C&H.

So, yeah -- I don't think Watterson needs to know what he's up to, or to fully understand his own work. If anything, I think it would've ruined it if he were too self-aware. Think of all the bands who have great first albums, but then hit the "sophomore slump" with their second album: whereas the first one was spontaneous, raw, and overflowing with ideas, the second effort feels self-conscious, labored, and forced. Artists who have a long, strong career, and never jump the shark, often live in a bit of a bubble -- never thinking too hard about the meaning of what they do, and often privileging their intuition above their intellect. Credit to Watterson for finding a way to do that.

Re:Best comics

[ciderVisor]

Artists who have a long, strong career, and never jump the shark, often live in a bit of a bubble

Michael Jackson was known to put a bit of himself into Bubbles.

Re:Best comics

[Fotherington]

"Calvin grows up" seems to be a whole genre of parody/fanart - see here for some examples.

Re:Best comics

[Jedi Alec]

I was going to post this anonymously but I'll man up and admit it. I don't know if this makes me a geek or just a dork but I was choked up the first time I read this http://xkcd.com/695/. It's not a related comic but your post reminded me of it. Don't think I've ever felt that way about a comic.

Actually, being sensitive is very un-geeky ;-) And yes, I agree that one touched a note. Nothing to be ashamed of or to "man up" about in my opinion.

Re:Best comics

[KlaymenDK]

Calvin and Hobbes on Ritalin

That is without a doubt the saddest C&H strip I've seen. Ever.

By $DEITY, don't take away a child's imagination!

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'll just pray while your kids die of easily treatable diseases as you're reading a bible in your mobile home on a mountainside.

Home schooled = Social retard

Public school = moron see how that works?

Is either true in general? no.
Considering the fastest growing area of homeschooling is secular homeschooling.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

My kindergarten teacher thought I was slow because she never saw me doing any work. The trouble was, I did the work too quickly. Fortunately, my second grade teacher thought the opposite and had my IQ tested, and I was put into a gifted program the next school year. So I suppose it's a very fine line.

Re:Best comics

[jonadab]

> This "The pills must be working" strip has got to be phony

Yes, it's a fake. I have just about every C&H book including TCC&H, and I've never seen that strip before.

But it's just as funny and interesting and pointed as what you normally would expect from a C&H, and I think it fits the spirit of the strip nicely. The visual variation between the panels is very much not up to the typical C&H standard (in more ways than just the one you point out), but I think that fits well with what this particular strip is saying.

However, I'd like to see the author (actually, either the author of this strip, or Waterson, either way) write the rest of the storyline. Obviously, it has to end with Calvin not taking the pills any more. I'd like to see how it gets there. That could be quite interesting. Actually, I think that has the potential to be one of the better C&H storylines ever (which is going some), if it were well done.

BTW, Waterson did do some strips with no word bubbles, although they're not very common (excepting ones with no dialog at all, but that's different).

Re:Best comics

[MikeBabcock]

I have to explain this to people all the time when they come watch 2.35:1 (or 2.4:1) movies on my wide screen TV and they point out that I "still" have letterboxing. Well of course I do, the TV's not wide enough.

What I hate, can't stand, must resist strangling people for saying is "just hit zoom, it stretches it all out nice".

AAAAACK.

Re:Best comics

[Hatta]

Reading Spaceman Spiff turned Nelson's Ledges into a hasty retreat through a hostile alien environment.

I'm sure the LSD didn't hurt either. Love the Ledges.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin & Hobbes) (v. 1, 2, 3) [Box set] (Hardcover) http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Calvin-Hobbes-v/dp/0740748475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265122654&sr=8-1

vs.

The Complete Far Side 1980-1994 (2 vol set) (Hardcover)http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Far-Side-1980-1994-vol/dp/0740721135/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

vs.

Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert (Hardcover)
http://www.amazon.com/Dilbert-2-0-20-Years/dp/0740777351/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

I've got all three. The Dilbert one has a CD with EVERY Dilbert catoon until 12/31/2008.
They are extremly high quality paper and print, really HEAVY literature.
The next one will be the Complete Don Martin. The Complete Peanuts one is still a tad bit to expensive (14 books @ 25 €) IIRC.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with what Calvin's personality represented, I do think a lot of people overanalyze the comic today to try to convince everyone of its greatness.

I personally only yesterday learned enough of the thoughts of John Calvin to draw the connection with them and those of Thomas Hobbes. The cartoon was named very differently in my country so this /. submission was a real eye opener.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

I call shenanigan. It's quite obvious where the inspiration comes from for us who grew up watching Pooh Bear. (C&H simply makes the imaginary friend sickness part more severe.)

Beyond that, it's just what people read into the strips.

Re:Best comics

[cayenne8]

"...and after Gary Larson retired I gave up on comic strips all together."

Goodness, did you get hit by the 'Thagomizer' too...?

:)

Re:Best comics

[Maxo-Texas]

Aye... the old "it's funny because it's true."

Re:Best comics

[TheoMurpse]

ITT Slashdotters egregiously forget to mention Peanuts, which has more in common with Calvin and Hobbes than any other comic that has ever existed.

Re:Best comics

[TheoMurpse]

Far Side was better than Peanuts

Woooooah, slow down there, Nelly!

Re:Best comics

[TheoMurpse]

I think he wasn't talking about Calvin and Hobbes at all, and you need to re-read his post.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

actually in one strip he leaves a bowl of tapioca in front of the TV as an 'appropriate' offering to what it does to your brain. In the end he spent more of his time out of doors than in watching TV.

Re:Best comics

[Darkness404]

Sure, but most schools don't test every child for gifted-ness. They see them doing something and then request them to be tested. Same with special ed. A lot of things overlap and one teacher can be the difference. Until we have high, medium and low classes (which, IMHO is the only way for public education to work) it is based on the whims of the teacher on which students get tested.

Re:Best comics

[jgrahn]

But he most definitely would have to be classified something today. I mean, you really can't be just Calvin (or Tom, or Bill) any more. You need to be classified.

I really doubt anyone was thinking in "what type of kid is Calvin" terms when the comic was first released...

No, but I remember thinking "oh boy, this Calvin guy is going to be really fucked up by the time he's fifteen". There was always that dark side of C&H to me.

Re:Best comics

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you like that comic, you need to see Moon.

Re:Best comics

[QuietObserver]

I can't say I remember the first Far Side I read, but I do remember the one that made me laugh the hardest. It's the one with a drawing of a woman walking through the woods with a vacuum cleaner, and the caption reads something to the effect that Alice walked down the path warily because "Nature abhors a vacuum."

I thought I'd look it up, so here's the link.

http://groupkos.com/eso/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=96

Re:Best comics

[lawpoop]

Yeah, but I'm talking about people's consciousness, what's on the mind of the public. There's a difference between what the public is generally aware of and how they perceive it ( "doctors are giving kids too many drugs these days" ) versus what's actually happening. My memory was that people were unaware of this until the 90s. Well, I was unaware of it, anyway. I could be wrong.

Re:Best comics

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could use a bit of religion...

I can't help noticing this sounds remarkably like a threat. Why ever would that be?

Re:Best comics

[rigging hardware]

I did read Donald Duck too.hehe

Thanks share. We produce wrought iron gates ,if you need it ,please contact us.

Good for him

[Foggiano]

I'm glad he was able to create something that he is pleased with and has brought happiness and pleasure to those around him. May we all be so fortunate.

regrets?

[Bodero]

No regrets? That's like asking Bill Gates if he regrets dropping out of Harvard and becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I'm sure he regrets it daily.

Re:regrets?

[eldavojohn]

No regrets? That's like asking Bill Gates if he regrets dropping out of Harvard and becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I'm sure he regrets it daily.

The regret in question would be the one where you regretted quitting early. Because Watterson quit early. It's a very short 'interview' but to all artists and people in general out there who start something very good, take note:

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

I've never regretted stopping when I did.

As someone suffering to find anything even remotely watchable on American TV, I wish more people would adopt this kind of attitude.

Re:regrets?

[cupantae]

Not going to RTFA, no? He has no regrets about stopping when he did. If he kept going, he would be vastly more wealthy.

Also, although it wasn't touched in TFA, he repeatedly turned down the option of syndicating so that merchandise could be sold. That would have been millions straight into the hand.

Re:regrets?

[T Murphy]

Ask Gates if he regrets stepping down and you're getting a closer comparison.

Re:regrets?

[fm6]

That bit about leaving the party early resonates with me. A very long time ago, I couldn't look at a Peanuts strip without laughing. Then after a decade or so, I couldn't look at it without grimacing.

Still, I do miss that young sociopath and his tiger.

Another brave thing Watterson did: no licenses for animated cartoons, coffee cups, etc. He said he couldn't stand the idea of some voice actor doing Hobbes. Neither could I, but I'm not sure I could have walked away from the millions of dollars those licenses would have paid.

Re:regrets?

[nigelo]

I've heard the same from John Cleese about Fawlty Towers and Ricky Gervais about The Office - limit the episodes (2 short series each) to tell the story, and then declare victory (Also, my grandfather about public speaking - stand up, speak up, shut up...)

Or, you can be run by the corporations, and continue to turn out rehashes of stories and character traits as long as you can sell the advertising.
How many episodes does the US The Office have now? It's in its sixth series... It doesn't have the same punch for me that the first episodes did.

Re:regrets?

[mctk]

So incredibly true. Compare the two versions of "The Office." In the UK, they told their story, had some laughs, but when it ran its course, they stopped. I wanted more. I still want more. I'll just have to wait a few years then watch the episodes again. In the US, however, the program is floundering to find weekly topics. And it shows. Once Jim and Pam hooked up, the main tension, the binding thread was gone. Look at "Heroes". Intriguing first season, great climactic moment. But it just...keeps...going. Look at "Lost". I followed the first season closely, but after a while, you start to think that the writers are sitting around going, "Now what can we do this week, without really changing much. After all, we still have 10 more hours of programming to fill." Does anybody even watch The Simpson's anymore?

Re:regrets?

[jrronimo]

How you feel about Peanuts is how I feel about Garfield.

Garfield Minus Garfield, on the other hand...

Re:regrets?

[fm6]

Ehh, don't even mention "Garfield" in my presence. Though there's less to regret there, since the strip always was a little labored.

Recently, Get Fuzzy and Monty have started to run out of material. (And I only just discovered them!) Now I'm down to Non Sequitur.

Re:regrets?

[MightyMartian]

North American media tends to drive things into the ground (not that others don't to, the last season of Monty Python's Flying Circus, sans Cleese, apart from a few moments, was clearly beyond its prime).

I remember the same thing happened to MASH. I look back at the original few seasons when McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers were still there, and they constitute some incredibly funny moments in TV history. Once they were gone and Alda exerted more control as the "Star", the tendency to be overly maudlin and topical ruined the goon show quality.

Peanuts certainly went past its prime. It's heyday in the late 1960s and into the late 1970s certainly constitutes probably the greatest comic strip there ever was (and I've yet to see a cartoonist that doesn't think Charles M. Schulz was the best the medium ever produced). But clearly the concept had run out of gas by the 1980s, and like anything taken too far, it began to be a terrible caricature of its former self. The whole strip turned into a cliche. If Schulz had walked away in 1980, he would have the left the strip at the top of its game. I don't think it was, in his case, for want of money, with TV and even movies, and the wide syndication, he was probably the best-paid writer in comic strip history. I think it was that he just couldn't leave it behind.

Watterson left C&H in a place where its perfection was never compromised. I've reread my collection a dozen times, at it all seems so perfect. Nothing is stale or reused. It's now art for the ages.

Re:regrets?

[allseason radial]

As someone suffering to find anything even remotely watchable on American TV, I wish more people would adopt this kind of attitude.

Just before I read this, I thought to myself, "Watterson speaks the exact same attitude shown by the writers, creators and distributor of television's best show ever: The Wire." To quote another pretty good writer, "You've got to know when to fold 'em."

Re:regrets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, this guy plagarized what I was thinking!

Re:regrets?

[MasterPatricko]

Killing a product at its peak is an exceedingly brave thing to do but the only way to safeguard its legacy and reputation. Most TV producers don't have the guts to even air interesting shows, let alone allow the successful ones to die a decent death before they run out of ideas.
I'd say that unintentionally, Firefly suffered/benefited from the early-termination effect - just as it started getting good, the end.
Take Heroes as another recent example. It could have been classic if they had stopped after season one; but each new season just drags the average down further.

Long live Calvin & Hobbes. I just wish there was some way of gradually feeding the strips to the next generation in the same way that I was ...

Re:regrets?

[PachmanP]

Long live Calvin & Hobbes. I just wish there was some way of gradually feeding the strips to the next generation in the same way that I was ...

Get "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" and glue a strip over Mary Worth every day...

Re:regrets?

[milkmage]

don't forget 24 - jumped the shark after season 2 (and I stopped watching after season 3)

Re:regrets?

[mattack2]

As someone suffering to find anything even remotely watchable on American TV, I wish more people would adopt this kind of attitude.

(This seems to be getting awfully close to the "I don't even OWN a TV" argument.)

"The Office". Yes, obviously based upon the British show, but especially since it's gone on so much longer than the original, they *are* very different. (I suspect you would call the US one worse.)
"30 Rock"
"Better off Ted" -- unfortunately I think it just aired its last episode.
"Community" - Not as good as the above, but pretty good (and better than "Parks and Recreation" which follows it).

That's just a few, I could name more, but those are FAR better than "remotely watchable".

Re:regrets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at "Lost". I followed the first season closely, but after a while, you start to think that the writers are sitting around going, "Now what can we do this week, without really changing much. After all, we still have 10 more hours of programming to fill."

FYI, Lost's sixth and final season begins on 2nd Feb and the writers always had a deadline for the show in mind.

Re:regrets?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part about Peanuts is Schultz finally did decide to retire, when he retired what did all the newspapers do? Did they go out and find aspiring new artists with new ideas and new strips? No. They started rerunning old Peanuts strips.

Re:regrets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed on all shows plus the recent Battlestar Galactica. Season's 1 and 2 were great. Everything on and after New Caprica was just sad.

My solution these days is to pretend that the ongoing seasons simply don't exist. Since the creators can't end on a high note, I do it for them and get back into a good book.

Re:regrets?

[Unending]

Non Sequitur gets a pass on the running out of material problem because it's not necessarily following a set of characters, it's really just a space for the artist to draw whatever he wants.
Definitely something that is more commonly found in webcomics.

Re:regrets?

[tehcyder]

I'm not sure I could have walked away from the millions of dollars those licenses would have paid

Who needs millions of dollars though? Really?

Re:regrets?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I could have walked away from the millions of dollars those licenses would have paid

Who needs millions of dollars though? Really?

I agree, but you should probably prepare yourself for a horde of pitchfork wielding pro-market zealots screaming "Heretic!"

Re:regrets?

[H0p313ss]

I'd say that unintentionally, Firefly suffered/benefited from the early-termination effect - just as it started getting good, the end.

I was going to mention that too. Despite the fact that we lost the potential for the best SF TV series of all time I'm kind of glad that nobody got the chance to drive Firefly down into the dirt. Instead it stands like a brilliant set of short stories with no clear end. In my heart Firefly will be out there forever

They shouldn't oughta killed Book in the movie though... that just weren't right...

Re:regrets?

[fm6]

I don't much care how he does it. All that matters to me is that the material is still worth following, and the rest of the comic page isn't.

Re:regrets?

[fm6]

Nobody needs that much money. Nobody needs sex either. But it's rare to find somebody who will turn their back on either.

Sorry Bill

[elrous0]

I was born a Berkeley Breathed fan and I will die a Berkeley Breathed fan.

Re:Sorry Bill

[ShadowRangerRIT]

And that means you can't appreciate any other comic? A bit limiting don't you think?

Re:Sorry Bill

[elrous0]

I'll tell you what I once told my son: "My love is limited, there is only so much I can share and I don't see why I should give you any when your sister is clearly the better child."

Re:Sorry Bill

[srobert]

Nearly spewed my coffee. From offtopic to 5 funny. Great recovery.

Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

I wish someone had mentioned that to Matt Groening.

Re:Wise words

[elrous0]

Groening was always overrated. If you listen to the Simpsons commentary tracks, you figure out pretty quickly that he had little to do with the success of the show, or its quality. All he talks about is the quality of the animation. It's quite clear he has little appreciation for the writing (which is what truly made The Simpsons so great). Someone will be talking on a track about how clever a bit of satire there was in this scene, and Groening will interrupt with "Hey look at how cool that flower looks!" Going back and looking at "Life in Hell" and his other early works, it's clear he was never a fraction as creative as the Simpsons writers (probably why he only wrote one episode--one of the more mediocre ones at that). Either he or one of the other co-creators was smart enough to hire Harvard Lampoon grads and other smart writers in the early days of the show, but after that he basically contributed nothing. It was always a paycheck for him (and maybe an ego boost, since many people assume he's the actual show-runner and creative force--which he never was). So you can't really fault him for milking it. He doesn't realize how mundane the show has become because he never really appreciated what made it great in the first place.

Re:Wise words

[sopssa]

I actually started liking Simpsons again after season 20 began, it felt like it went back to roots and the humor was back there. I earlier stopped watching around season 14. Now I do not know Groening comes in to play with this, but Simpsons has definitely picked up again.

But I wouldn't say Groening didn't contribute much to the show. Even if the other writers did have a lot to do in it, he must have played some role. Remember that Futurama is great too and he was vocal against Fox when it got cancelled.

Re:Wise words

[Locke2005]

Matt Groening?!? I wish somebody had mentioned that to Charles Schultz! Peanuts is still being published 10 years after the creator's death! Sure, The Simpsons isn't nearly as good as it once was, but it's not totally bad yet either.

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Or better yet, Jim Davis. When was the last time you could stand looking at a Garfield strip? For me it was over 20 years ago.

Re:Wise words

[wandazulu]

Peanuts is in eternal reruns; Schulz was very specific he didn't want it to continue after he stopped (he even mentions it in the last strip ever).

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Garfield was ever good?

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Futurama is not great. No-one (other than nerds) thinks it is funny.

I have not been able to watch the new HD Simpsons. It has what I call "Futurama Humour". It seems too scripted. Nothing is random, except when it's painfully forced. It's like a sitcom - setup-onelinerpunchline, setup-onelinerpunchline. The Simpsons used to be like a comic book, now it's like an episode of Joey.

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Which episode did Groening write? I'd like to know this.

Re:Wise words

[Captain Splendid]

Garfield was ever good?

When you're 10 years old and you've just discovered the first couple of collections, yeah, it's great. Fast-forward a couple years, with that fat orange ass literally stuck to everything, not so much.

Disclaimer: YMMV. I love lasagna and hate getting out of bed.

Re:Wise words

[danlip]

I wish someone had mentioned that to Matt Groening.

I wish someone had mentioned that to Charles Schulz. 40 years ago.

Re:Wise words

[nmb3000]

Peanuts is still being published 10 years after the creator's death!

While I don't care for Peanuts very much, I'd rather have reruns of a classic comic than the absolute drivel that Garfield has been for the last 10 years. I can only fathom that A) newspapers can't find anything else to fill that space, or B) nobody dares get rid of such a "classic" strip like Garfield. Jim Davis doesn't even try to be funny anymore.

Of course no criticism of Garfield is complete without referencing both Garfield Minus Garfield and Garkov. The saddest part is that G-G is significantly funnier than the "legitimate" strips published every day and most of the time the Markov-generated strips in Garkov are indistinguishable from what Jim Davis writes.

I suppose this means that Jim Davis fails the Turing Test.

Re:Wise words

[Martin Blank]

Considering the fuss that is made by fans whenever Zippy the Pinhead is nixed by some paper, Garfield is set to continue for eternity.

Re:Wise words

[camperdave]

Garfield lost it when he stood on his hind legs.

Re:Wise words

[Tomfrh]

Groening ran it early on when it was good.

And he admits the shows gotten worse...

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Matt's just acting stupid. Homer humor.

It gets dull after a while, though.

Re:Wise words

[damnbunni]

I'm not particularly fond of Garfield, but Davis has said he freely repeats jokes because he gets a new audience every seven to ten years. Kids love it.

He's also said in an interview that he thinks Garfield Minus Garfield is really funny.

Me, I still can't wrap my mind around Jon actually dating Liz.

Re:Wise words

[bpgslashdotaccount]

I'd rather have reruns of a classic comic than the absolute drivel that Garfield has been for the last 10 years.

Amen, bruthah!

But, only the last ten years? I stopped reading it as soon as it became a strip about a furry person instead of a cat. He should have always walked on all fours. Garfield constantly walking on two feet was the end for me.

Re:Wise words

[roystgnr]

Futurama is not great. No-one (other than nerds) thinks it is funny.

A joke isn't any less funny just because someone who doesn't understand the language won't laugh at it.

Re:Wise words

[Jonner]

If you're not a nerd and look down on them for their poor humor, what are you doing wasting your time posting on Slashdot? Did the cool blogs kick you out?

Re:Wise words

[elrous0]

The Babysitter Bandit episode in the first season (co-written with Sam Simon).

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

Comic strip memories... I used to love Garfield, but back when he had an edge. When he was the biggest, meanest cat on the block. When John and Odie would feel his wrath at the drop of hat. Then the kitten came along - Nermal?? - then Davis did that farm strip and it went downhill fast...

Bloom County, Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, early Garfield - made the comics page the first thing to grab out of the paper.

Re:Wise words

[elrous0]

If it were one line, yes I would think he was joking too. But when he interrupts the writer to go off for several minutes about the animation in an episode for about the 3rd time, it's clear that's he's not joking. The man really has no appreciation of what made the Simpsons so revolutionary. You've got a group of people watching some of the greatest episodes of all time and all Groening is doing is complaining about Homer's hair or how the Koreans screwed some storyboard up. I swear you can even sense the others' embarrassment when he talks.

Re:Wise words

[Anonymous Coward]

I always assumed that Garfield had been written by ghostwriters for the last ten years.

Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[jeffb (2.718)]

It's just a darn shame that the end couldn't have been thirty or forty years further out.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[DoofusOfDeath]

It's just a darn shame that the end couldn't have been thirty or forty years further out.

Consider Garfield and Peanuts. After a while, they just don't have anything new to say.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Dahamma]

Are you kidding? Garfield is more brilliantly insightful than ever. You just have to know how to read it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Garfield and Peanuts? That might just work.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Tynin]

Are you kidding? Garfield is more brilliantly insightful than ever. You just have to know how to read it.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

For some reason that is incredibly funny in a schadenfreude kind of way. I really loved the description the site provides:

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

By the time I got back to Sept 25th I was sure that Jon had hung himself, and it all made sense. Great laughs, thanks!

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Anonymous Coward]

The one think he didn't do right: how did he let those f***ing "Calvin peeing on stuff" stickers" get made? Seriously!!!

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jim Davis has explicitly stated that Garfield is a job, not a work of art.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Mursk]

RTFA. Those are "counterfeit." Watterson had nothing to do with those.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap! Today's comic (Feb 01) on that site is classic. I almost snorted water out of my nose.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[spartacus_prime]

I would disagree with regard to Peanuts. While Garfield reuses the same old jokes every week (not that I don't find Garfield entertaining), Peanuts was a strip that we could all relate to. Calvin & Hobbes is still edgy after all these years, but Peanuts is timeless. Granted, Charles Schulz didn't tackle contemporary issues in the later years that he did in Peanuts' heyday (New Math, school prayer, introducing an African-American character when nobody else had one, etc.), but Peanuts always made people smile. And it also made us think.

The final strip of Peanuts was one of the more touching things I've read in the comics section, moreso than the last strip of the first For Better or Worse run. When Peanuts ended, it was like the death of a older relative -- you knew it was coming, but you didn't want it to end so fast. The last Calvin & Hobbes strip did not end on that sort of cathartic note; rather, it ended on an uncertain note, as if Mr. Watterson was leaving it up to the reader's imagination what happens next.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[TACD]

It's like The Secret Life of Adam West or something.

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[dcollins]

Also:

http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/

Re:Yeah, he did it right, beginning to end.

[ffflala]

Nice, but I find it more satisfying to simply refer back to the formula behind every Garfield strip ever made.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=garfield_sucks

You insensitive clod

[goldaryn]

Calvin and Hobbes is amazing. Bill Watterson is a creative guy, a talented artist, and perhaps more than anything else, fought for his artistic integrity (see merchandising debacles) to the end. And he gave us the "insensitive clod" meme. What a guy.

Re:You insensitive clod

[Junior J. Junior III]

I thought insensitive clod came from Mad Magazine.

Re:You insensitive clod

[Arthur Grumbine]

I don't know about Mad Magazine, but here's the C&H origin.

Re:You insensitive clod

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Mad Magazine, but here's the C&H origin.

So does that mean the real reason we troll each other on slashdot because we are incapable of expressing our true feelings for each-other?

One thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about all those rednecks with decals of Calvin peeing on Chevy/Ford logos? That must be irritating as hell.

Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[uglyduckling]

I don't think I've ever seen a photo of Bill Watterson, but having just seen the article, I have to say... Bill Watterson looks like Calvin's Dad! Or, rather, Calvin's Dad looks like Bill Watterson. Maybe this is old news, but it's news to me :D.

Re:Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[goldaryn]

but having just seen the article, I have to say

As long as you only looked at the pictures. This is /., we have standards!

Re:Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[Hatta]

Calvin's dad looks like Watterson's dad, which would explain the resemblance. Watterson himself looks much more like Uncle Max.

Re:Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Calvin's dad is modeled off Bill's dad (at least in personality) so I guess we can say Bill probably designed him to look like his father too.

And Bill looks similar to his father?

Re:Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[Vintermann]

I think Watterson looks like Calvin's uncle Max.

Re:Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[Sique]

Calvin's dad looks like Bill Watterson's dad actually.

Re:Bill looks like Calvin's Dad

[uglyduckling]

Hmm.. based on that photo, maybe Uncle Max + Calvin's Dad's glasses would be about right.

Scientific Progress ...

[gurps_npc]

... definitely goes Boink.

As an amatuer author, I understand some of where he is coming from. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. The end generally signifies the part where writing about it any more would be boring. Which little girl truly wants to hear about how Snow White had to change dirty diapers for her children? Or who really wants to hear about how Wendy and the lost buys grows old while Peter Pan is all alone with tinkerbell?

Yes, sequels are instant money makers, because we all want to read/see MORE from a good writer, but the truth is if you have said all you had to say, then there is no more.

It's kind of like going to the Grand Canyon and tring to dig it deeper with a shovel. Yeah, it's 'more', but it's not the same thing, and quite frankly, the quality of workmanship goes down.

Re:Scientific Progress ...

[ChrisMaple]

Actually, Peter Pan did go on past Wendy & Co. going home. Wendy did return for some spring cleanings, but Peter, just being a boy, eventually forgot and Wendy grew old, too old to fly. She had a daughter and when Peter eventually remembered to come again to the Darlings, he confused the girl for Wendy. Wendy graciously allowed the daughter to visit Peter for spring cleaning...

Presumably there is no global lack of lost boys to populate Neverland...

Jeez, this is sad. It hurts to type this.

Re:Scientific Progress ...

[Trillian_1138]

Actually, Peter Pan did go on past Wendy & Co. going home. Wendy did return for some spring cleanings, but Peter, just being a boy, eventually forgot and Wendy grew old, too old to fly. She had a daughter and when Peter eventually remembered to come again to the Darlings, he confused the girl for Wendy. Wendy graciously allowed the daughter to visit Peter for spring cleaning...

I'd argue that a Peter Pan/Calvin and Hobbes comparison is more apt than the GP intended, as both really allow for differing perspectives as the reader ages. As many have commented in this thread, it's possible to read Calvin and Hobbes as a child (as I did) and say, "Oh, wow! What a fun, silly comic!" It's also possible to (re)read it as an adult (I'm not yet there, but sooner than I'd like) and say "Yeah, that's what my kid is like. And that's how childhood felt, even if I see things a bit differently now... (Also, wow. What a fun, silly comic.)"

For Peter Pan, it's a story that appeals to children because the characters go have adventures and still return home safely. For parents (or older readers), it's all that and a story about how childhood ends and children always do have to grow up. I don't have kids, but I cried the first time I read Peter Pan, at 23, because it's a fun adventure story and a really bittersweet and poignant look at the cycle of childhood into adulthood.

I'd contrast Calvin and Hobbes or Peter Pan with something like Fox Trot or Harry Potter. Both Fox Trot and Harry Potter are fun, and both offer something for multiple age levels. I'd even say both stand rereadings (to greater or lesser degrees). But I'd argue that neither have the same depth or subtlety that Calvin and Hobbes or Peter Pan do; neither allow for such drastically differing perspectives when read as a child or as an adult.

Just my two cents as a performer who thinks way too much about the power of narrative and story...

-Trillian

Re:Scientific Progress ...

[houghi]

Look at movies where they tell what happend to the main characters. Look at e.g. LotR that did not end when the ring was destroyed (Oops, spoiler.) I like it to see what happens afterwards, unless it is the sole purpose to make you think what might have happend.

It all depends on the story that is being told. Some are just good enough to make it as a one timer, others turn into series, like Calvin and Hobbes. It did not end after the first one. It went on.

Most often a series will not change that much. The 'bald and the plentifull' can be seen after three years and not much has changed. What is hard is to change genre. e.g. your snowwhite example. One is a ferry tale, the other a more realistic genre. And at some point, the new ideas are just not good enough anymore. That is the time to stop, like e.g. Monthy Pyton did.

Re:Scientific Progress ...

[acheron12]

Or who really wants to hear about how Wendy and the lost buys grows old while Peter Pan is all alone with tinkerbell?

Wasn't there a movie about that?

Missed opportunity

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I wish they had asked him what he thought of the Adult Swim version of his strip. I wonder if he would have balked at the initial silliness of it, or pondered it for a bit and said "you know... that's exactly how Calvin would be treated these days".

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars is amaaaaaaaaaazinnnngggg!

Thats it? That was the Interview?

[WarlockD]

Meh. Seriously, no questions on "What are you doing now?" "Have any new projects?" "Are thee any comics you are looking at now a days?"

All these questions are just rehashed from previous side remarks he has stated. He has always been a recluse so why is he doing an interview now?

These things drive me up the wall. Fine, its a puff piece because you don't want to scare the guy off, but I am truly interested in what he has done in all that time.

Disappointing interview

[Hatta]

Those last couple questions were really wasted. Why not ask him what he's been doing for the past 15 years? Does he ever think about doing another strip, or any sort of art again?

You know, he could do one strip a week, any subject he wanted, any format he wanted, post it on the web (editors? who needs them?) and it would be huge. He'd have complete creative control. Would that sound appealing to Watterson? Or would that cut too much into his golf time? We'll never know because this journalist squandered this opportunity.

Re:Disappointing interview

[Wyatt Earp]

Did the journalist squander the opportunity or did Watterson only answer what he wanted to answer?

Reading about the guy, its obvious he wants his life to be private, so the interview is just those questions and answers Watterson wants to give.

Not the journalist's fault.

Re:Disappointing interview

[MBCook]

• Have any web comics caught your attention? What comics do you like?
• Are there any comics that you think are relatively groundbreaking today, doing something really innovative?
• Do you follow comics much?
• Ever think of doing a graphic novel about something? A normal novel?
• What subjects interest you today? (Iraq war, plight of the mango tree, ancient Chinese cookware, whatever)

There are some questions you could ask, this was basically a fluff piece. There is no substance in it. The only useful thing is that Watterson stopped before Calvin got bad, and he said that 15 years ago.

Re:Disappointing interview

[Wyatt Earp]

Have you read anything about Watterson?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson#Since_retirement

He doesn't give interviews much and he doesn't talk about his personal life at all.

So its just a piece about what he will talk about.

Re:Disappointing interview

[Anonymous Coward]

He sure could. And you could pay his web hosting bill and pay him for his time too. Oh, you thought that was all free? Yeah, you know - you don't actually make any money by renting some web server space, paying for some bandwidth, and then spending time drawing comics and posting them to the web. Someone needs to actually pay you or you are just going broke doing it.

Re:Disappointing interview

[fm6]

Please. Not covering all the territory you think it should cover doesn't make it a "fluff piece". It's too short, and doesn't cover a lot of ground, but that's obviously Watterson protecting his privacy. I thought the comments about why he shut down the strip when it was still popular were very interesting. I'd like to know more about a guy who had the balls to walk away from a profitable enterprise while it was still churning out money, but Watterson has no obligation to tell us.

Re:Disappointing interview

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know that the interviewer didn't ask those questions? The interview was by email, so I wouldn't be surprised if Watterson just picked what questions he wanted to answer.

some others should take note

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them."

Hear that, Crapfield and Family Crapcircus?!?

Re:some others should take note

[eln]

While I agree with you where Garfield is concerned, you're sorely mistaken as far as Family Circus: That strip was never any good.

Re:some others should take note

[Locke2005]

I don't know about that, I've always kinda liked Dysfunctional Family Circus!

Re:some others should take note

[MBCook]

What do you have against Garf-Eel?

Re:some others should take note

[Rob the Bold]

RobTheBold is "busy" sleeping it off. Today's post is written by his one year old daughter:

famasily ciurcs is sucsks!112!

Re:some others should take note

[DerekLyons]

You forgot the real Living Dead of the comics pages - Blondie. Eighty years of recycling the same material over, and over, and over...

Re:some others should take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when was garfield ever good?

Re:some others should take note

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Family Circus is often really sad (the feelings it invokesm and not just the comic itelf.)
Just ignore the ones where he shows the kid who is supposed to go do something and wanders all over the place with the dotted lines (they were funny at first but have been repeated WAY too many times) and pay attention to all the ones where he shows some parent grieving for the lost days of their kids being young or the grandparents heartbroken as the family leaves to go back home somewhere far away. As a parent of a young child, I take those as strong reminders that a day will come when I will regret all the time I spent doing something else (readings Slashdot, etc) instead of spending time with my son.

Re:some others should take note

[PachmanP]

Well since we're trotting out our favorite comic addendums...try Nietzsche Family Circus

Re:some others should take note

[zurkog]

Oh, I don't know... 50 years (?!) ago, it was at least humorous. Having just taken two toddlers to see the circus last weekend, I found this one especially funny.

Re:some others should take note

[kaatochacha]

"It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them."

Hear that, Crapfield and Family Crapcircus?!?

That's Family Crapicus to you.

Re:some others should take note

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the real Living Dead of the comics pages - Blondie. Eighty years of recycling the same material over, and over, and over...

And yet even with all the recycling, you have to actually research beyond the comic to know that there was a premise beyond a very anachronistic portrayal of married domesticity. Originally it was about the life of a young and very independent (for the time) single woman who was a flapper and dance hall aficionado. Eventually she does get married to a privileged industrialist's son (Dagwood), but the Bumstead family disowns him for it, so Dagwood has to go from life of leisure and affluence to that of a working stiff. So there is some pathos in that both Blondie and Dagwood have sacrificed quite a bit for their relationship and despite the difficulties they they are content with their choice of each-other over the lives they lead in the past. Knowing that context I'm sure it was engaging stuff for some readers in the first several years of its run, but now it's just to riddled with terminally cliched in-jokes and temporal inconsistencies to work well on any level.

Re:some others should take note

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you all have seen the brilliant "Nietzsche Family Circus?"
http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=36&q=107

A true Calvin Story

[notaspy]

I used to read the strip, and being a newly minted patent attorney, appreciated all the great b.s. that his dad in the strip would just make up. "What a great kid!" I would think while reading Calvin's adventures and inventions, "I'd love to have a kid like that!" So my second son is named "Calvin." And by cracky, he was JUST like the comic kid, in looks and temperment! How lucky could I have gotten? Then, in something like 1990, every comic strip in the paper on December 3 (my birthday) had a birthday theme! WFT? It was uncanny; obviously somebody involved in comics had a birthday conspiracy. Well, every strip except one. Calvin and Hobbes did not relate at all to birthdays, but it contained the biggest present, as it was the strip which made it clear that Calvin's dad was, in fact, a patent attorney! In the strip, his dad is reading some sort of pleading or opinion regarding patent infringement.

As it turns out, I understand Watterson's dad was and still is (?) a patent attorney, and many of the stories in the strip were based on his own childhood.

My Calvin is now 21 years, so as much as I love the comic, I at least have the certainty of knowing how Calvin turned out. He's OK!

Re:A true Calvin Story

[wrygrin]

beautiful story - thanks!

Re:A true Calvin Story

[fm6]

being a newly minted patent attorney, appreciated all the great b.s. that his dad in the strip would just make up.

My favorite: Calvin asking why old photos are black and white, and Dad explaining that color itself is a recent invention! There's a logical flaw in this explanation, which Calvin quickly spots.

A True Artist

[Foobar of Borg]

He left Calvin & Hobbes while it was still good and he had something meaningful to say. He didn't do what a lot of people do and drag it out so he could suck out every last possible penny. He left a meaningful corpus of work that we can all appreciate.

Calvin and Hobbes quotes

[skyriser2]

"I say, if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life."
- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

More Calvin and Hobbes quotes on QuoteAddict:
http://www.quoteaddict.com/quotes?search=calvin

Newspaper Sales

[kdogg73]

Is there a correlation to newspaper sales drop and when was Calvin and Hobbes retired? I'm sure there is. I often thought Larson and Watterson were the best newspaper salesmen out there.

Glad He Left!

[filesiteguy]

I am in my home office writign this and can look up at my bookshelf towards the five "Calvin and Hobbes" anthologies I have. Great comic. However, I think of it every time I read the sunday funnies with my kids. Watterson, along with Gary Larson (The Far Side) left when the time was right. I see comics like "Drabble" and "For Better or Worse" lingering on. They aren't even funny or relevant. C&H will always be relevant.

In fact, my nine-year-old recently took out one of the books and remarked that I looked a lot like the "dad" character.

I mentioned to him how I'd once convinced him for a few weeks that the reason grandma's pictures were all in black and white was because the whole world was in black and white.

Re:Glad He Left!

[Anonymous Coward]

For Better or Worse died off already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_better_or_for_worse

Re:Thats it? That was the Interview?

[sopssa]

Maybe he wants to keep some of that mystery alive. If he made a "comeback" now, even with a different comic, I doubt it would be nearly as successful and would most likely just fail, big part in that being because people would expect him to deliver moon from the sky.

Timeless stuff!

[Phizzle]

I loved it growing up and my kids love it now! Thank you!

The J.D. Salinger of his genre

[grapeape]

Watterson's reclusiveness can easily be compared to Salinger's and its arguable that his creation was just as impactful. For my generation there were 3 strips that defined the era, Far Side, Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes. I guess its better to go out with fans wanting more than to keep going until the strip becomes a parody of itself (Garfield, Ziggy and Family Circus...im looking at you), but their absense did create a void that was hard to fill. Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy have become my more recent favorites but I would still give just about anything for one more visit with Steve Dallas or Spaceman Spiff.

One thing I never understood was the marketing, while I respect and understand the desire to keep his creations from being diluted and tarnished by garbage, the other two I mentioned managed to have at least something for fans to hold on to (T-Shirts, Mugs, Stuffed toys) without cheapening their legacy. In fact it could be argued that the lack of "stuff" has cheapened it through the proliferaton of bootleg things like those insepid peeing, praying or bird flipping calvin stickers, cheap t-shirts and low quality Hobbes clones they give away at carnivals. He could have chosen to simply keep a tight reign on it and maintained control while giving fans something they obviously clamor for. Ahh well at least im getting a stamp.

Re:The J.D. Salinger of his genre

[PhantomHarlock]

He must made have enough money off the strip and the books to not care? And also to retire early. We have seen no output from him since, so either he is living off the book royalties or he is secretly the real author of Frazz, heh.

It's nice to be successful enough to have options.

Re:The J.D. Salinger of his genre

[Arthur Grumbine]

We have seen no output from him since, so either he is living off the book royalties or he is secretly the real author of Frazz, heh.

Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one who's seen/felt the similarities between Frazz and C&H!

Re:The J.D. Salinger of his genre

[tbuskey]

I was lucky enough to view Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County in my (free) college paper. I'm surprised Bloom County didn't get mentioned until this far down.

C&H was loved by everyone and I think everyone will agree it's the top one. Bloom County was definitely a product of its time. I don't think I'll ever be able to relate how relevent and timely it was to someone who didn't live through the era. Even if you did, it loses a bit if you didn't read it then. It hasn't aged well. But it's still one of my favorites.

C&H is something my kids will be able to read and relate to. Like Peanuts, Dr. Seuss and Bugs Bunny.

Re:Copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no.

It was always copyrighted, but he never licensed C&H for merchandising so the bootleggers made their own. The strip was already wildly popular by the time the bootleg merch started showing up.

a testament to C&H

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Every few months I have this dream that I go to a book store and find a new Calvin and Hobbes book that has been 15 years in the making. Each comic is rendered in full color using water-colors. The layout for each comic is tuned, not for the newspaper it would have been printed in, but to the story that he's trying to tell. Each comic was written based on inspirations he found over the last 15 years, ensuring that the final comic would be the best of the best of the best and not just some skimpy idea rendered to make a deadline. Each time I go to the store and find this, I open it up and it starts with a series of Calvin's snowmen and a poem. I then put the book into it's bag and drive home. As soon as I get home and get the bag out.. *bam* I wake up.

I'll never forgive Bill for this torturous dream.

Re:a testament to C&H

[Anonymous Coward]

That's weird... I had a dream about fucking his mom. As soon as I was about to come, *bam*, I wake up.

Re:a testament to C&H

[g253]

mod +1 touching

Re:a testament to C&H

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I thought I was the only one.

Re:a testament to C&H

[zeugma-amp]

I'll never forgive Bill for this torturous dream.

That's not a dream. It's a nightmare.

I love the snowmen cartoons as well. My favorite is the one where Calvin builds one being run over by a car, with horrified onlookers. Dad's comment is "I think we'd better get that kid to a psychiatrist."

One of a very short list

[Leo Sasquatch]

There have been a handful of geniuses, who've happened to work in the comic strip field. George Herriman, Walt Kelly, Berkeley Breathed, Garry Trudeau, Maurice Dodd and Dennis Collins, and Bill Watterson. Why such a small number? Because true genius is rare and special, whatever field the artist is working in.

I don't count Gary Larson in the same field - he was quirky and brilliant, but there's no continuity in his works - there's 5,000 individual gags, but no heart, nobody there we care about. I also don't count Charles Schulz - Peanuts is simply the nastiest strip ever written. It's cold, and bleak, without an ounce of love or sweetness about it. Nothing good ever happens to anybody - it's existentialist horror.

Calvin's world wasn't perfect - Moe was a bully, school was appalling, and things sometimes went wrong. There was fear and loss from time to time, and nobody else ever saw the world quite the way he saw it. But there's magic there, and adventure, and love in a variety of flavours. They are books I could sit and read with my child when he was Calvin's age and younger, because they are good art, excellent stories and a total blast for the imagination. The Sunday strip poems often featured wonderfully whimsical language and the wordplay in the strip itself was second only to The Perishers.

I'm delighted that Bill Watterson stopped when he thought he was done. Delighted he chose not to let MegaCorp plc rape his creations, and slap them on underpants, lunchboxes and disposable cups from the burger joint. Delighted that Calvin and Hobbes didn't get shoe-horned into some Moral of the Week shitty TV show, with a cute catchphrase, and cheap-as-chips animation. What he created is art, and it's a minor miracle that he managed to resist the dollar signs, and what must have been startling numbers of zeroes after them, in order to keep the tale of a boy and his tiger real and magical.

If he ever comes up with another story he really wants to tell, I have no doubt he will.

Re:One of a very short list

[ColdWetDog]

I don't count Gary Larson in the same field - he was quirky and brilliant, but there's no continuity in his works - there's 5,000 individual gags, but no heart, nobody there we care about

I take it that you are not of the biological sciences persuasion. The Far Side's protagonist was nature her/it self. That was the underlying thread between his many dis separate jokes and themes. I'd put him right up there with the others you mention.

YMMV, of course.

Re:One of a very short list

[Anonymous Coward]

I also don't count Charles Schulz - Peanuts is simply the nastiest strip ever written. It's cold, and bleak, without an ounce of love or sweetness about it. Nothing good ever happens to anybody - it's existentialist horror
 
Depends on how you look at it. Charlie Brown is really the only character for whom life is truly bleak, yet he is also the most hopeful. No matter how many times he gets his socks knocked off at the pitcher's mound, no matter how many times his team loses, no matter how many times Lucy yanks the football (honestly not very often if you read the entirety of the strip), Charlie Brown gets up, dusts himself off, and goes back for more, because he truly believes that this time it might get better. It's easy to hope when the world goes your way often enough, but to have hope like Charlie Brown does is truly extraordinary.

Re:One of a very short list

[Leo Sasquatch]

I should have been clearer in my distinction. It may seem as though I didn't rate Larson - I do. I have all the books and can probably quote half the jokes from memory. But there has never seemed to me to be a relationship there. Krazy has Ignatz, Pogo has Albert, Wellington has Old Boot, and Calvin has Hobbes; from those relationships, much of the humour flows naturally, just from the inherent nature of the characters. That is what I see at the heart of a true strip. I know many of the Far Side gags rely on knowledge of scientific details ("Surely you know I would only devour my own husband!"), and they are almost all superb, but I don't see the heart in them that I do in the other strips.

I must say, I'd never considered nature itself as the protagonist in TFS - I'll bear that in mind when I re-read them next.

I have yet to see anything as wonderful in any other strip as the Eyeballs in the Sky sequences from The Perishers. One joke running in the top half of the strip, and phenomenally detailed and complex crustacean insanity scuttling along the bottom of the strip. Unfortunately, there is almost none of Dennis Collins' beautiful artwork available on the web - the few strips online seem mostly to be later ones by Bill Mevin.

http://themagicrobot.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/eyeballs22.jpg

http://www.shadowgallery.co.uk/perishers.html

I admire Bill Watterson's skill at depicting wildlife and woodlands - some of his coloured Sunday pages are tone poems to foliage, but the world that Dennis Collins drew is the one I grew up in.

Re:One of a very short list

[Arthur Grumbine]

...but to have hope like Charlie Brown does is truly extraordinary.

But to watch that hope get crushed day after day with no expectation of satisfaction of the hope is, well, depressing. To enjoy the spectacle, seems to me, slightly sadistic.

Re:One of a very short list

[Bagels]

There's an unauthorized play with the Peanuts characters called "Dog sees God" that does rather a lot with the theme of Charlie Brown's hopefulness. Some of it's just for shock value (Linus has become a stoner, Pigpen develops a nasty mean streak), but the show is worth it for the ending, where CB's hopefulness is, after sixteen or seventeen years of repeated disappointment, vindicated just a tiny bit.

Re:One of a very short list

[khallow]

I don't count Gary Larson in the same field - he was quirky and brilliant, but there's no continuity in his works - there's 5,000 individual gags, but no heart, nobody there we care about.

Continuity? Why should we want continuity? No heart? We disagree. If you wanted a comic strip with no heart, then just take a gander at Doonesbury. I have no idea why Garry Trudeau bothered with continuity. It's just a political cartoon (like Oliphant) in comic strip format with some extraneous soap opera about people I simply can't care about (technically, so was Bloom County, but that worked). Peanuts provided a better experience (especially, the early years when the strip was actually being creative).

Or how about Bill Griffith with Zippy the Pinhead? He was very sparing in his use of the continuity crutch, yet he somehow managed to come up with likable characters that we can care about.

Re:One of a very short list

[TheoMurpse]

Peanuts is simply the nastiest strip ever written. It's cold, and bleak, without an ounce of love or sweetness about it. Nothing good ever happens to anybody - it's existentialist horror.

People said the same thing about Camus and Wilder. It's hard to deny their genius.

The Far Side and the "Geek Cred"

[Jonathan]

I think a major reason for the Far Side's popularity among science and engineering types is that Larson used science as the basis for many of his strips. Because of this, even when the joke wasn't that good, people in the relevant field would tape them up on lab doors, just because they were amused that anyone would make a comic about their field. Perhaps xkcd is the modern equivalent (although THe Far Side seemed to focus more on the biological sciences, as Larson had a zoology background, and xkcd is more physics/math)

Re:The Far Side and the "Geek Cred"

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find sad now is that the engineers and scientists now identify more with Adams' Dilbert than The Far Side, I think it says a lot about how far we've fallen.

Re:The Far Side and the "Geek Cred"

[Ethanol-fueled]

Because of this, even when the joke wasn't that good, people in the relevant field would tape them up on lab doors, just because they were amused that anyone would make a comic about their field.

True, and Bill Watterson, in a way, used the same basic principle - that things are more funny when they're specific*, because they appeal to a niche or appear to be "in the know" to the layman. That's one of the core tenets I adopted for composing Slashdot trolls.

* Paraphrased from his commentary in the Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book.

Re:The Far Side and the "Geek Cred"

[barzok]

Larson used science as the basis for many of his strips.

And science returned the favor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni
http://www.janegoodall.org/product/far-side-t-shirt-front-cartoon

Re:The Far Side and the "Geek Cred"

[Ihmhi]

So basically, xkcd is like Far Side 2.0?

Or maybe Far Side was xkcd v 0.72.10.11b.

Re:The Far Side and the "Geek Cred"

[darthvader100]

Poll for best webcomic:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/01/the_best_webcomic_its_time_to.html

My dearest Bill Watterson,

[joeszilagyi]

May I please have a Pixar animated film adaptation of Calvin and Hobbes?

Re:My dearest Bill Watterson,

[Ahnteis]

Toy Story?

Re:My dearest Bill Watterson,

[Arthur Grumbine]

Leaving aside the question of whether or not the greatness of Calvin and Hobbes was inextricably tied up in the style of medium (i.e. as a comic strip) - what Pixar film could you possibly be thinking of that would make you believe that they could do Calvin and Hobbes justice?!

Re:My dearest Bill Watterson,

[vonsneerderhooten]

No.

Re:My dearest Bill Watterson,

[Fantastic Lad]

May I please have a Pixar animated film adaptation of Calvin and Hobbes?

I think when people go to Hell, that's the in-flight movie.

-FL

Re:My dearest Bill Watterson,

[Changa_MC]

Up

Re:My dearest Bill Watterson,

[TheRaven64]

Luxo Junior!

Should have kept going...

[Sponge Bath]

We could then follow Calvin's exploits as an unemployed, overweight 30-something living in his parent's basement and posting to Slashdot while Hobbes hooks up with Susie Derkins after an ugly divorce from Calvin.

Re:Should have kept going...

[locallyunscene]

So you think Jack from Fight Club could be Calvin too?

Re:Best part of the story is the lack of copyright

[SwordsmanLuke]

Ummm... what? Mr. Watterson still retains copyright over his characters, which he has sued to protect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes#Merchandising

Re:Thats it? That was the Interview?

[Culture20]

but I am truly interested in what he has done in all that time.

Just guessing, but: Fishing, watching his (grand)children grow up, changing the oil in his truck. My bet is he's reclusive because he doesn't want to bore us with the details. If C&H is any indication, he's a guy that enjoys *life*, not attention.

Re:Copyright

[Lunix Nutcase]

Part of Calvin and Hobbes' popularity should be contributed to the lack of copyright in the beginning.

What the hell are you talking about? These are the first month of the comics and you can see an explicit copyright on all of them.

Re:Thats it? That was the Interview?

[ColdWetDog]

Berkeley Breathed did that. After dropping Bloom County, he came back intermittently with Outland and some books. Aside from a couple of strips, he never really caught his previous edge and wit. But I love his children's books.

Hurray, my sig is appropriate!

[BertieBaggio]

N/T

Re:Best part of the story is the lack of copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, are you far off the mark. Not only is it copyrighted, but it's the copyright (and trademarks) that gave him the ability to resist the commercialization of Calvin's and Hobbes' images.

Imagine if it had been CC-by -- we would be utterly swamped in low-quality, tasteless C&H merchandise, and a small amount of wonderful, creative, innovative material.

However much we don't like IP protections in general, they gave him the control over how his work was used and abused. And he used that power well.

My Take Home

[DynaSoar]

"What readers take away from it is up to them." Quite so.

Taken away by a neuroscientist whose work covered both cognitive and physiological aspects of language acquisition, comprehension and production: 'Verbing weirds language.'

You're Grounded!

[fm6]

I'm not sure "being grounded" is the right term. Frankly, I've never thought the guy was that good on his own. Making a movie is usually a big collective process, and that often allows the director to claim credit for things that really came out of the heads of other people. Film critics have complicated theories that justify this BS, but I've never bought it.

So back when George Lucas was just another newbie director, he was forced to accept all kinds of creative input. And he was also able to get away with stealing scenes from famous movies. But when he became the Great Creative Genius, he couldn't do that, and had to fall back on his own creativity. Which, it turns out, he never had.

Re:You're Grounded!

[Desprez]

I don't find your linked stolen scenes to be a very convincing example.

The only similarity it bears is that there were 3 people walking through a formation of soldiers, which on its own seems to be a pretty generic event. As to how that event was portrayed, the scenes could have hardy been more different...
The emotion was different, the camera work was different, the pacing was different, the overall event was different, the scope of the event was different, the arrangements were different, etc. The list goes on.

Re:You're Grounded!

[fm6]

There's a lot of people who don't see the similarity. But others do. And there are a huge number of "quotes" like that in the movie. A film buff could tell you more, and would probably even claim that Lucas is a genius for recycling material that way.

Re:You're Grounded!

[lawpoop]

Yeah, but Watterson talks a lot about the classic cartoonist who inspired him. In fact, artists are usually quite straight forward about who their influences are, who has inspired them, and who they look up to. All the ones I've met are eager to position their work in some school or movement in art, or describe how it "kind of takes from X artist" -- basically describing their work as a mash-up of different "issues that other artists have dealt with". I've never heard anyone say that "This is like nothing else, completely original." It seems to be only naive outsiders who think of great works of art as results of solitary, isolated genius.

Re:You're Grounded!

[fm6]

There's inspiration, and then there's "quoting", which is what Lucas does. Watterson certainly owes something to older cartoonists, but the man is original. I can't think of any other comic strip where you so often have no idea what's really happening and what's just a figment of the heroes imagination. (And often, both premises are contradicted in a single strip!) George Lucas never had that kind of imagination, and even if he did, he wouldn't have the balls to actually put that kind of story in his movies.

Lucas's one accomplishment is revive the pre-television B movie, the kind with lots of action and not a lot of logic. That's a formula for getting folks into the theater, but it's still just a formula.

Re:You're Grounded!

[Hognoxious]

I'm not sure "being grounded" is the right term.

In the context of Lucas it is. Otherwise there's no point connecting the live cable.

Re:You're Grounded!

[fm6]

I often wondered what the deal was with his hair. Thanks for making the connection for me...

(Connection, get it?)

There was another...

[Anonymous Coward]

comic that I also long for. I really miss Bloom County. When he killed that and went to Outland, it was really diminished. Eventually he brought most of the cast back, but it was just never the same.

No no no, this was no mere 'comic'.

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

Calvin is not a precocious child, he is an adult living in a childs world. He is you and me, without all the responsibility. For comparison, in 'Peanuts' we see adults living in an adults world (although portrayed as children). Calvin and Hobbes was not just a great comic, it transcended the genre. This was philosophy; this was art. What other comic has ruminated on the artistic validity of its genre while maintaining a wry humour? (I refer of course, to Calvin and Hobbes looking at artwork of comics, and comics of artwork). It belittles his work to think of it in the simple terms of humour for children. This was a philosopher who was able to reach a mass audience in an unprecedented fashion. I like to think that future generations will look back and recognise this work for what it is. Art.

Re:No no no, this was no mere 'comic'.

[X'16435934]

True, but let me summarize your paragraph for you -
"Whoosh...!"
--
umm..., Let's KISS....

Calvin as a teenager?

[Anonymous Coward]

I drew this a good 18 years ago:
http://www.rayb.com/cartoons/calvin.jpg

Makes ya wonder if the strip could have aged along with Calvin? (Probably not)

By the way, Bill looks like Kip from Napoleon Dynamite!!

Re:Copyright

[bonch]

Lack of copyright? What are you talking about?

Re:Best part of the story is the lack of copyright

[bonch]

This is the second time I've seen someone falsely claim he didn't copyright his work. Bringing up fair use and DRM...could you be any more of a typical Slashdotter?

One Word

[m.dillon]

Robot Chicken.

Oops, that was two words.

-Matt

The "Fab Four".....

[IHC Navistar]

The "Four Great Cartoonists":

1) Bill Watterson

2) Berke Breathed

2) Gary Larson

3) Jim Davis

(in no particular order)

I'm sure some of the older folks will have favorite cartoonists that some of us are still way to young to remember, but in terms of being able to relate to a strip, both personally and in everyday life (as a sort of 'social commentary'), I think that these four magnificent cartoonists have managed to hit the nail on the head.

I've got to admit, though, that Bill does have a great attitude towards fighting Universal whenever they try to license and merchandise the hell out of his creation.

Re:The "Fab Four".....

[MightyMartian]

Despite Peanuts later failings, I think most cartoonists would put Schulz at the top. Davis, yawn. Garfield was mildly amusing 25 years ago, it long ago ceased to be.

To my mind, the best are (in no particular order)

Charles M. Schulz
Bill Watterson
Gary Larson
Garry Trudeau

Re:The "Fab Four".....

[Bagels]

...Jim Davis? Really? I can see making an argument for the first three on that list, but Davis has long since given himself over to hackdom. The best thing he's done recently is let the "Garfield without Garfield" book be published. I can remember some ingenuity in his early strips, but he has largely been recycling the same joke templates for years now, and his characters rarely if ever show any interesting new facets. Why not Schulz, or (if we're not limiting ourselves to American cartoonists) 4-koma master Kiyohiko Azuma?

Re:The "Fab Four".....

[IHC Navistar]

OMG I almost completely forgot Charles Schultz.

Replace Davis with Schultz! .....Good Catch.....

Re:The "Fab Four".....

[Fantastic Lad]

I'd also mention Lynn Johnston, (For Better or For Worse) and more recently, Scott Adams, (Dilbert).

Jim Davis DID rock the world, but he made that mistake Watterson talked about. He didn't know when to quit. He became a vulgar reminder.

And those four guys were also from a specific era; the one which flourished at the final height of the Newspaper Strip. Those heights will never be reached again, (and looking at the fare offered by the current team of cartoonists, thank goodness! It's like the brains of today's strip cartoonists melted into derivative pablum before they even left the starting gate. Strange; even the 'good' strips are barely worth reading. I think this is because the real cartoonists got into making their own comics. Jeff Smith turned down King Features, (or the other one) and just did it himself.

The generation of greats before Watterson included, in my opinion,

1) Charles M. Schulz

2) Walt Kelly

Just my opinion.

-FL

Re:The "Fab Four".....

[The_mad_linguist]

The whole point of Garfield was to become a money-making franchise. That's how it was initially pitched, that's what he angled for, and in that respect he succeeded wildly.

I think Bill looks like Hobbs.

[porky_pig_jr]

Smiling, but there is something inside ... ready to jump at you ...

Best Calvin and Hobbes strips NOT by Watterson

[argent]

Calvin on ritalin: http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/01/08/calvin-and-hobbes-now-with-ritalin/
Calvin & Hobbes grown up: http://onceuponageek.com/images/calvin_hobbes_grown.jpg

Re:Best Calvin and Hobbes strips NOT by Watterson

[drsmack1]

The Ritalin brought a tear to my eye; no joke.

Re:The "Thrilling Three".....

[Arthur Grumbine]

The "Three Great Cartoonists":

1) Bill Watterson

2) Berkeley Breathed

3) Gary Larson

(in no particular order)

Sorry to be a grammar nazi, but you have a couple major typos. I fixed them for you.

You people...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Never cease to amaze me. Let's see: George Lucas, versus some random fool on Slashdot.

I'll stick with Lucas. Because, he, you know, actually DID stuff.

Loser.

Now I know who Calvin's dad is

[GodfatherofSoul]

Pretty funny how he basically drew himself!

G.R.O.S.S.

[DrugCheese]

Get Rid Of Stupid trollS

I came here...

[McD]

...just to get my sig into the thread. :-)

Reference to Garfield

[Cinnaman]

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

He's definitely taking a shot at Garfield and Jim Davis there.

JD Watterson?

[ScottCooperDotNet]

Sounds like public relations rather than journalism. Asking him what he is up to currently is a valid question.

Rather sad that copyright has allowed the talented gentleman to turn into the comic version of JD Salinger.

Re:JD Watterson?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like public relations rather than journalism.

No it sounds like a man who values his privacy above self-promotion, which is his right even though it is very uncommon in the modern entertainment and artistic spheres.

Asking him what he is up to currently is a valid question.

True, but not answering the question is certainly a valid response. Just because we may be curious about his life after he quit doing Calvin and Hobbes, he is under absolutely no obligation to tell us about it. Unlike those that actively seek fame and celebrity (therefore having less expectation of privacy), Bill Watterson has retreated from public life (at least from the small extent he ever was part of it) and we should respect his wishes.

Rather sad that copyright has allowed the talented gentleman to turn into the comic version of JD Salinger.

While Bill Watterson has had his own issues with copyright, copyright by itself had little to do with his decision either to end the strip or start another one. However since we are on this tangent... I for one, I'm glad that "Calvin and Hobbes" wasn't ever licensed beyond the books and web distribution, despite his syndicate at times begging and arguing for the ability to plaster "Calvin and Hobbes" on every conceivable product. We have the comics in far less perishable media than newspapers, so they won't be lost through negligence by the time they enter public domain. This is all we can really demand of any creative work, that it is preserved and available in either the original or similar format. He has no moral obligation to his fans to either produce more or further commercialize his work if he doesn't want to!

How funny...

[koick]

I attended The Evergreen State College in the mid-90s. Matt Groening was there in the 70s. One day I was deep cleaning out some lab space and came across an old mock newspaper Matt had done when he was a student there. In the comics section there was a Family Circus; the mom was in the background in the kitchen, and the kids were in the foreground gathered around the TV. On the TV was a man's ass, and the caption was "Shut the fuck up mommy we're watching TV".

I'm glad to see others making fun of such an easy target.

Garfield Had It's Place

[baptiste]

A lot of people, rightly so, hate what Jim Davis has done or allowed to happen to Garfield. But it too was once a great comic strip - if you were 10. Those of us who grew up in the 70's were lucky as we had two new comic strips that fit our age perfectly. We got Garfield before we were teens and C&H when we were teens, old enough to look back on our recent childhood and see parallels as well as possibly learn some life lessons to us in upcoming adulthood. C&H is the best strip IMHO - hands down. It appealed to me as a teenager and also an adult. But the early Garfield strips are also timeless. When I was growing up, I loved Garfield - read it religiously in the paper. Every Christmas my mom had a standing present - whatever Garfield collections that had been published that year. I think I have 1-30. A while back while sorting through my old things, I found them and put them where my kids could read them. They read them cover to cover, multiple times. My eldest, now barely a teenager has moved on, and checks out C&H books from the library (since I can't find my entire collection - it's in my old stuff somewhere) But the youngest, just learning to read, is having fun reading about the big 'fat cat' and lasagna. Those old books are worn, in cases shredded held together with tape, but adored by my four kids. I'm sure C&H will be too. So while I agree that Garfield today is a mere shell of it's old self. There was a time it was worth reading as a kid and even an adult.

I think he underestimates the strip's influence.

[jonadab]

When the reporter asks about the strip's legacy, Waterson talks about how fans remember the strip. I think that misses the point.

If I were asked about the legacy of Calvin and Hobbes, I would talk about some of the ways the better comic strips now are different from any of the comic strips in the eighties. I think Calvin and Hobbes has had a more substantial influence on other cartoonists and their work than probably any other single strip in the history of the funny papers.

First Far Side...

[SoTerrified]

I still remember the first Far Side comic I saw, of the truck smashed into a single palm tree in the middle of a desert. It was so bizarre, so absurd that I laughed out loud.

Isn't Far Side strange that way. I still remember the first one I ever saw too. It was the one where a beggar was on the street asking "Spare Armadillo?" and the panel picture has a man in a suit walking by with an armadillo under each arm, and thinking "What do I do, What do I do?"

That just blew my mind at the time. It was so surreal, and yet it's look at the real issue of resource distribution.

And the moderation continues

[drinkypoo]

There is absolutely no way the GP comment should be Insightful if my above comment is Offtopic. Moderating this comment offtopic when the other, more speculative replies to the same parent go unmoderated is clearly a personal attack. I have to wonder if the management is simply failing to regulate moderation (which is a known quantity) or if I'm actually under attack by one of them.

Spaceman Spiff

[DarthVain]

I remember at school in creative writing (grade 7 I think) I used to write stories about "Spaceman Spiff".

I found a bunch when I was at the parents home this past Christmas, I didn't read them, but I put them with some things to be sent to me (parents cleanin' out my old room apparently). While I am sure they are just awful, I am sure it will be good for a few laughs...

Creating a life....

[braindrainbahrain]

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. "

From the Kenyon College Commencement Address
May 20, 1990, by Bill Watterson

I think Bill Watterson succeeded in his pursuit of that rare achievement.

I'm sure many of us have been asked what we'd do if you saw XXX in person. If I saw Bill Watterson, I'd just pay his dinner tab and give him a tip of my hat.

Thank you Mr. Watterson.

Weltanschauung denied

[epine]

In other words, the thing that makes it great is often something the artist can't even articulate to himself, at least not in words -- instead, he articulates it in his work.

That Watterson gives rare and rather boring interviews is a point in your favour. But for the rest, I don't buy it.

From Wikipedia:

Watterson also lampooned the academic world. In one example, Calvin writes a "revisionist autobiography," recruiting Hobbes to take pictures of him doing stereotypical kid activities like playing sports in order to make him seem more well-adjusted. In another strip, he carefully crafts an "artist's statement," claiming that such essays convey more messages than artworks themselves ever do (Hobbes blandly notes "You misspelled Weltanschauung").

Few great artists work backwards from the desired effect on the audience. What you end up with is the worst of the early Woody Allen. He saved himself by turning the lens on his own pathetic need to hit the funny bone.

For that matter, there's not 30 seconds in Young Frankenstein where Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks are less than 1000% aware of their own humour, but it still works. No-one makes movies like that anymore, because it's impossible to translate schwanzstucker into German.

Here's Vonnegut from Man Without a Country (small, but well worth owning). He doesn't seem to lack for insight into his own process.

It's damn hard to make jokes work. In Cat's Cradle, for instance, there are these very short chapters. Each one of them represents one day's work, and each one is a joke. If I were writing about a tragic situation, it wouldn't be necessary to time it to make sure the thing works. You can't really misfire with a tragic scene. It's bound to be moving if all the right elements are present. But a joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.

Watterson had a keen ear for language, the emotional colour of a word employed for mischief. He'd fail to write a textbook on the subject, but I don't he suffered for lack of clarity in his own mind.

Unable to articulate to himself? Artists are writing about life. I can't articulate life, not in full measure, which doesn't mean I'm lacking in the articulation department. He could probably say more, but has the taste to stop while he's ahead, which is not my strong point.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch
Oblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world--
woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the
morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered
sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for
person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long
sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side
and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up
on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

"Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream.
"Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at
Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but
then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner
on glass tables, and the tables sang, _Il mio tesoro_--not _Il mio
tesoro_ though, but something better, and there were some sort of
little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he
remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a
smile. "Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal
more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words,
or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake."

Inarticulate or ineluctable? It's too bad Tolstoy neglected his own wisdom later in life.

Orwell on Tolstoy on Shakespeare:

My favorite adaptation :D

[Rexdude]

In AD 2101, war was beginning...

Re:Copyright

[joeme1]

You're right, I just pulled out one of his books and reread the section on licensing. It was copyrighted, he just hated to license the characters.