Posted on 10/22/2005 10:27:04 PM PDT by Charles Henrickson
Maybe someday, officials will put up a statue marking this quaint village as the birthplace of "Calvin and Hobbes."
Just don't expect cartoonist Bill Watterson to attend the unveiling ceremony. It's been nearly 10 years since he abruptly quit drawing one of the most popular comic strips of all time. Since then, he's been as absent as the precocious Calvin and his pet tiger, err, stuffed animal, Hobbes.
Some call Watterson reclusive. Others say he just likes his privacy.
"He's an introspective person," says his mother, Kathryn, standing at the front door her home, its yard covered by a tidy tangle of black-eyed Susans and other wildflowers. It's where Watterson grew up. Calvin lived there too, so to speak. Watterson used the well-kept, beige Cape Cod-style house as the model for Calvin's home.
You might even expect Calvin to come bounding out the door with Hobbes in tow, the screen door banging behind them. After all, the guy on the front porch kind of resembles Calvin's dad. Readers will remember him as the exasperated patent attorney who enjoyed gummy oatmeal and jogging in 20-degree weather.
Sure enough, Watterson's father, Jim, has a sheen of sweat on his neck, not from a run but from the 73-year-old's three-mile morning walk.
Watterson has acknowledged satirizing his father, who is now a semiretired patent attorney, in the strip. Jim Watterson says whenever Calvin's dad told him that something he didn't want to do "builds character," they were words he had spoken to his cartoonist son.
After "Calvin and Hobbes" ended, Jim Watterson and his son would paint landscapes together, setting up easels along the Chagrin River or other vistas. He laughed that sometimes they'd spend more time choosing a site than painting. But they haven't painted together for years.
So what's Watterson been up to since ending "Calvin and Hobbes?" It's tough to say.
His parents will say only that he's happy, but they won't say where he lives, and the cartoonist could not be reached for an interview.
His former editor, Lee Salem, also remains mum, saying only that as a painter Watterson started with watercolors and has evolved to oils.
"He's in a financial position where he doesn't need to meet the deadlines anymore," Salem says.
Watterson's parents respect — but have no explanation for — their son's extremely private nature. It doesn't run in the family. Kathryn is a former village councilwoman and Jim is seeking his fourth council term this fall. Their other son, Tom, is a high school teacher in Austin, Texas.
Bill Watterson, 47, hasn't made a public appearance since he delivered the commencement speech in 1990 at his alma mater, Kenyon College. But he recently welcomed some written questions from fans to promote the Oct. 4 release of the three-volume "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes," which contains every one of the 3,160 strips printed during its 10-year run.
Among his revelations:
• He reads newspaper comics, but doesn't consider this their golden age.
• He's never attended any church.
• He's currently interested in art from the 1600s.
Salem, who edited thousands of "Calvin and Hobbes" strips at Universal Press Syndicate, says that Watterson is private and media shy, not a recluse. Salem didn't want to see the strip end, but understood Watterson's decision.
"He came to a point where he thought he had no more to give to the characters," Salem says.
"Calvin and Hobbes" appeared in more than 2,400 newspapers during its run, one of the few strips to reach an audience that large.
Its success was rooted in the freshness of Calvin — an imaginative 6-year-old who has the immaturity of a child and the psychological complexity of a 40-year-old. As for Hobbes, the device of Calvin viewing him as alive and everybody else seeing him as a stuffed animal was simply brilliant, Salem says.
Their all-encompassing bond of friendship — being able to share joy and have fun together, yet get angry and frustrated with one another — was another reason for the strip's success.
Universal would welcome Watterson back along with "Calvin and Hobbes" or any other characters he dreams up. "He knows the door's open and he knows where we are," Salem says.
There are few signs of Watterson or "Calvin and Hobbes" in Chagrin Falls, a town of 4,000 that has evolved from a manufacturing hub centered on its namesake falls to an upscale area of stately homes and giant maple trees.
A Godzilla-sized Calvin is depicted wreaking havoc on Chagrin Falls on the back cover of "The Essential Calvin and Hobbes," released in 1988. He's carrying off the Popcorn Shop, where sweet smells have flowed from its spot on the falls for about 100 years.
Fireside Book Shop, located just out of earshot of the water's roar, carries 15 different "Calvin and Hobbes" books — customers used to be able to find autographed copies. Store employee Lynn Mathews says Watterson's mother used to deliver the signed copies to raise money for charity or just to help the book shop. That ended when the cartoonist discovered that some ended up on eBay, she said.
The demand remains, though.
"I get a couple e-mails a month from people looking for signed books," said Jean Butler, Fireside's officer manager.
Watterson and his wife, Melissa, moved earlier this year from their home in the village — a century house on a hill between downtown and the high school, where the mascot is a tiger.
As a child, Watterson knew he would be an astronaut or a cartoonist. "I kept my options open until seventh grade, but when I stopped understanding math and science, my choice was made," he wrote in the introduction to "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes."
He loved "Peanuts" as a child and started drawing comics. He majored in political science at Kenyon. Thinking he could blend the two subjects, he became a political cartoonist but was fired from his first job at the Cincinnati Post after a few months. So he took a job designing car and grocery ads, but continued cartooning, even though several strip ideas were rejected.
But Universal liked "Calvin and Hobbes" and launched its run Nov. 18, 1985, in 35 newspapers. Calvin caught Hobbes in a tiger trap with a tuna sandwich in the first strip. He spent the next 10 years driving his parents crazy, annoying his crush, Susie Derkins, and playing make-believe as his alter egos Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man.
Many of the best moments, though, were time spent alone with his pal, Hobbes.
"The end of summer is always hard on me, trying to cram in all the goofing off I've been meaning to do," Calvin tells Hobbes in an Aug. 24, 1987 strip, the two sitting beneath a tree.
Watterson ended the strip on Dec. 31, 1995, with a statement: "I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises."
The last strip shows Calvin and Hobbes sledding off after a new fallen snow. "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!" Calvin says in the final two panels.
Fans cried out in letters for Watterson to change his mind. Some, like Watterson's parents, say the funny pages haven't been the same since.
"It was like getting a letter from home," Jim Watterson says of reading his son's work each morning.
People continue to ask the Wattersons if their son will ever send Calvin and his buddy Hobbes on new adventures.
"He might draw something else, but he won't do that again," Kathryn Watterson says.
He looks like Calvin's dad, but with a mustache!
Another thing that I admire about him is that he really stuck to his guns when it came to what he considered his artistic integrity. He didn't allow merchandise, didn't allow his strip to go on after the felt it was finished, and held fast on the way his Sunday strip was to be published.
I always liked the strips where the family car was falling off a mountain... with the last panel showing Calvin holding a Matchbox-sized car.
Thank you.
I notice that the "you don't get it" defense tends to sprout up when people are trying to defend something trite as being a work of high art. They can never actually tell you what you're not getting, and they demand that you spend 20-30 hours of your life watching/reading it before you may dare comment on it.
Mr. Watterson apparently decided that he had acquired sufficient money to live a life doing what he wants to do as he wants to do it. Likely his income was invested well and provides him well. I saw no reference to wife and/or progeny. Perhaps there is no one to leave it all to. That is certainly not how I would proceed in such circumstances but I certainly understand and appreciate it. By not allowing further commercialization he leaves his strip untrivialized (understanding here the inherent triviality of a comic strip)and now somewhat legendary.
There isn't a single creator. They're bootlegged by a lot of different people that have small presses, and sold independently. Since Calvin's not marketed with the dolls, stickers, etc., it doesn't really hurt anyone economically, so there's not a lot of incentive for the legal copyright owners to try and shut them down. There have been a few cases where Calvin stickers have been confiscated from auto shops, but it's been half-hearted enforcement, at best.
Oh, I forgot Baby Blues. Wonderful strip!
I never saw that one. Pretty good.
Yup. Life's too short to spend 6 months finding out how Shakespearian a juvenile comic strip is.
I've got better things to do with my time.
You may be on to something.
The correct response, apparently, is to bow down in obeisance and to graciously and profusely thank him for opening up your puny, little, narrow mind to something as wonderful, awe-inspiring and life-changing as the work of genius that is Achewood.
Personally, I'm still with you. Achewood ranks right down there with Nancy and Sluggo.
Is contrived "humour" funny if it does not make you laugh ... ?
Yep Danae is one funny little kid......
May I politely ask that we give the Achewood bashing/Achewood promotion bit a rest?
One element of comedy is our familiarity with it, our comfort level. Lines like Steve Martin/Dan Akroyd’s “We are two wild and crazy guys!,” Jackie Gleason’s “One of these days, Alice . . . bang! zip! pow! To the moon, Alice!,” Don Adam’s “Would you believe . . . ,” or Bill Dana’s “My name Jose Jiminez,” aren’t funny the first time we hear them but become funny because of their association to funny things we've seen in the past. Three of those (all except “would you believe . . . ,” in context) aren’t remotely funny on their own, yet people laugh when those lines are merely uttered.
I’m guessing one of the hardest things for a comic strip writer to do is to preserve the familiarity of the characters without getting into a rut.
With Calvin, you knew to expect a selfish little boy, fond of all things disturbed and gross, with an amazing sense of imagination, and the ability to state things with an awareness beyond his years without actually being aware of whatever it was he stated (if that makes sense). There were repetitive themes, like the snowmen, but as a whole Bill Watterson wrote Calvin & Hobbs in a way where you know what to expect but didn’t know exactly what you were going to get. The same was true with The Far Side, Peanuts, etc.
Sometimes, a creator seems to get bogged down and preserves the familiarity of a character to such an extent that he/she can’t seem to create new jokes. Cathy, to me, is an example. It seems like each joke is either about (a) new women’s fashions, (b) Cathy’s desire to eat food without gaining weight, or (b) how men and women think differently. Garfield, to me, is always about (a) eating lasagna, (b) sleeping late, (c) making fun of a dumb dog, (d) bothering a spider, or (e) making fun of Jon’s lack of a love life.
With Calvin & Hobbs, I knew what to expect but was always surprised. With Cathy and Garfield, I knew was to expect and was rarely surprised. Does that make sense?
As I stated above, we all have a distinct sense of humor, and the fact you may find Garfield (or even Nancy & Sluggo) funny does not make you any better or worse than me. It just makes you different.
I tried the Achewood test, reading several months. I noted some inconsistency on the part of the cartoonist – he doesn’t know exactly what kind of comic strip he intends to draw, because the direction the jokes go is all over the map. Some of the strips were funny (to me) on their own merit. A couple of the strips were VERY funny (to me). I don’t care who draws it, the following strip (I’m paraphrasing) was funny to me:
“What did you give John for his birthday?”
“A short respite on his journey to the grave.”
“Oh. I gave him an Etch-A-Sketch.”
I thought it was great and can see it, slightly re-worded, as an exchange between Suzy and Calvin, or Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt (or Peppermint Patty and Marcie). My wife didn’t see the humor at all.
Some of the Achewood strips were puzzling. Many of the jokes are the “we are two wild and crazy guys” jokes, where you are required to know the characters and be familiar with the repeated use of lines to find the humor, if any, in the strip. That’s not unique to Achewood. Garfield’s lasagna jokes are (ostensibly) funnier because you know Garfield likes lasagna. Calvin’s tormenting of Susie is funnier if you’ve read a dozen strips on the same subject. The same holds true for Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.
I don’t think Turbopilot’s trying to be like the elitist artists, trying to convince you that the reason you don’t “see that the single blue brushstroke represents man’s inhumanity to man” is because you’re not intellectual or sensitive enough. My guess is he shared something he thought was funny and realized was an acquired taste. It’s just a case that ONE element of SOME humor is familiarity, hence the need for the acquired taste.
I think the whole Achewood discussion has gotten out of hand. As a Freeper, I’ll defend your right to continue bashing or promoting Achewood, but I would politely suggest you either read and enjoy it or ignore it.
All in all, I think most of us miss Bill Watterson and Gary Larson, who drew comics were you always knew what to expect, but were always surprised and never disappointed by the quality.
I don't remember the Kimba/Simba lawsuit, but Calvin and Hobbes are almost certainly trademarked properties (if not the publishers are idiots); since the works are still in print, the trademarks should still be active. The design of the "whiz kid" is certainly such that an ordinary person familiar with Calvin and Hobbes would recognize it as Calvin. I'm not familiar with the "Kimba/Simba" lawsuit, but I would guess the issue there is whether the character design in "The Lion King" was sufficiently distinctive as to render it trademarkable. Calvin certainly should be.
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