A lot of things have to go right all at once. Calvin is autobiographical in the sense that he thinks about the same issues that I do, but in this, Calvin reflects my adulthood more than my childhood. I suspect that most of us get old without growing up, and that inside every adult sometimes not very far inside is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way.
I use Calvin as an outlet for my immaturity, as a way to keep myself curious about the natural world, as a way to ridicule my own obsessions, and as a way to comment on human nature. He goes on that he made sure Hobbes, despite acting human-like, kept many of his feline qualities, like his demeanor and prideful attitude in being a cat.
In terms of the overriding question of the comic strip — if Hobbes is real or not — the author again attempts to clear it up, but not in the way that most would think. Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way. I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. None of us sees the world exactly the same way, and I just draw that literally in the strip.
Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than about dolls coming to life. By , Calvin and Hobbes was one of the most popular comics in the world, syndicated in over 2, newspapers worldwide with more than 24 million copies of the 14 book collections having been sold.
In November of and at only 38 years old, Watterson announced his retirement from creating Calvin and Hobbes comics, stating publicly,. I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness.
I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises. I have not yet decided on future projects….
So what has Watterson been doing since then? Salinger of Comics. Beyond painting, he also for a time would secretly autograph copies of his books at Fireside Bookshop in Ohio, but ceased the practice when he found that people were just buying said copies and then selling them online for high amounts.
Beyond this little pastime, he has occasionally published or contributed to books examining Calvin and Hobbes , such as the excellent book, Exploring Calvin and Hobbes — An Exhibition Catalogue. That said, 15 years after retiring, in , he did give a rare interview and was asked if he ever regretted calling it quits on Calvin and Hobbes at the peak of its fame.
Following his graduation, Watterson was immediately offered a job as an editorial cartoonist at the Cincinnati Post. His editors were unimpressed with his work, however, and less than a year later Watterson found himself unemployed and living back home with his parents.
He decided to abandon political cartoons he was not particularly interested in politics anyway and return to his first love: comic strips. The next few years proved mostly discouraging. Watterson sent his strips to countless newspapers and received nothing but rejection slips. For a time, he took an unhappy job designing advertisements for car dealerships and grocery stores.
This period in his life was important, he later said, because it proved to him that the substance of his work mattered more than money. After experimenting with several different characters, Watterson developed a strip called "Calvin and Hobbes. Universal Press Syndicate bought the strip in , giving Watterson, then just 27 years old, a national audience. Readers loved "Calvin and Hobbes"—Calvin's flights of wild imagination, often undertaken while clad in rocket-ship underpants; Hobbes's wry observations; and the sensitive, wise, literary voice of the strip itself the main characters were named after theologian John Calvin and philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson tiptoes back with new comic. Bill Watterson, at work on a Calvin and Hobbes strip in Photograph: AP. Topics Comics and graphic novels blogposts. Reuse this content. Other cartoonists, such as Bill Keane, used younger versions of himself and his family as inspiration for The Family Circus, or fellow Universal cartoonist Lynn Johnston used her family as model for her strip For Better or For Worse.
However, due to her heavy dependence on copying her real-life family, Johnston drew sharp criticism that she was making a fast buck off the misfortunes of her husband and children by having her cartoon family perform corresponding embarrasing stunts. As Bill Watterson is against merchandizing, he has never exploited his friends or family in said manner, and barely made reference to real people, only in having Calvin's dad remark on "building character" or working as an attorney the elder Watterson's career.
Watterson also said that in college he made a strip for a German class called Raumfahrer Rolf, about a cigar-smoking space adventurer, which later became the basis for Calvin's " Spaceman Spiff " persona. Many of Watterson's Calvin books are dedicated to his family or close friends. It is well-known of Watterson's stance against merchandising, preferring to profit solely from the strength of his work through publishing and collection issues, instead of trying to make a fast buck off trinkets and other paraphernalia of his characters.
This was somewhat similar to Walt Disney's outook, who had the attitude that he would do a good job in his work and the money would take care of itself. In , Bill Watterson battled Universal Press Syndicate when it was discovered his contract allowed for merchandising. Although ultimately victorious, the legal bickering had taken its toll on Watterson, and he took a sabbatical.
Most goods featuring Calvin and Hobbes are knockoffs. Some, such as college T-shirts showing Calvin and Hobbes binge drinking or leering at women or dancing to a record, or car window decals showing Calvin urinating on a logo, are blatantly unauthorized and in violation of Watterson's stance that the strip is not meant to show vulgar behavior.
Bill Watterson has let it be known of those who would display Calvin performing vulgar acts, stating "only vandals and thieves make a fast buck off Calvin". Since Watterson's retirement, he had been known to ship random autographed copies of his Calvin books in the hopes of surprising a few lucky fans.
Bill Watterson terminated this gesture as well when he learned that his autographed books were fetching top dollar at auctions. In a brief letter newspaper editors made public November 9, , Watterson announced his retirement:. The last strip of Calvin and Hobbes was published on December 31, Since retiring, Bill Watterson has taken up painting, often drawing landscapes of the woods with his father.
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