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-A comic strip, to me, is a story
and a real brief story.
It's like having the opportunity
to get a peek into people, characters' lives.
And they can make you laugh. They can make you cry.
They just have an impact on you.
For the time that you read it, it's a world unto itself.
-My mom was always trying to get me to read,
and I wasn't really into books with "words," so to speak.
-My dad brought home a couple of "Calvin and Hobbes" books.
-And he showed me some comic strips of "Calvin and Hobbes,"
and I was like, "whoa!"
-And I can remember opening it up,
I turned the page, and Hobbes wanted me to have this.
And from that point on, it was me, Calvin, and Hobbes.
-I met Calvin and Hobbes in the paper, I think, the way most people did.
-Looking through the comics,
and "Calvin and Hobbes" was always one that stood out.
-My grandmother is a huge fan of "Calvin and Hobbes."
-My first and only crime -- I shoplifted this book.
[ Chuckles ]
-And I found this book of "complete Calvin and Hobbes."
It was in English, but I said, "I don't care.
I'm gonna learn this language just to understand this book."
-I was babysitting,
and a couple of the kids that I babysat,
they had some books.
-All the books got passed to me
and ended up in my room for awhile.
You know, we'd be trading them back and forth.
-I hadn't seen the strip before,
but I saw the book in a bookstore.
-And it was on sale. It was like $3 or something like that.
So I was like, "all right. I'll look at it."
Pulled it open, and the first thing I saw was the snowmen.
-And I burst out laughing
and proceeded to get in trouble in English class.
-I remember just reading that thing over and over and over.
-Even now, I reread them, and I continue to reread them.
I discover so many layers now, and it's never boring or old.
It's just like a living thing,
and I just discover it and appreciate it more.
-Calvin is like the kid you want to be, you know?
Even if you're a 300-pound black kid,
I mean, you still want to be Calvin.
-Ididwant to be Calvin.
I felt like iwascalvin.
We were both six years old in 1985.
We liked tigers, space, playing in the snow,
had fathers who loved building character,
and I took pride in the fact
that my first hairstyle was quite Calvin-esque.
But the truth is that I don't really remember
when I first met Calvin and Hobbes.
I'd like to think I was a reader from day one,
but I know that isn't possible.
My hometown newspaper didn't even start carrying the strip
until spring of 1988.
The earliest memory that I can stamp with a date
would be third grade in Mrs. Smith's classroom,
when I saw a "Calvin and Hobbes" collection
in the scholastic book catalog.
But if I examine my books,
I find that the only one with a scholastic logo
is "scientific progress goes 'boink, '"
with a copyright of 1991.
If I didn't discover "Calvin and Hobbes"
until that late in life, I'm secretly embarrassed.
And I would also blame my parents.
-That little boy seemed kind of naughty,
and I didn't know
if I wanted my son interested in a naughty comic character.
-Apparently, no thanks to my mom,
Calvin and Hobbes were just always there,
and I don't really remember life without them.
I may have fallen in love with "Calvin and Hobbes" as a kid,
but it's one of those rare things
that still holds great significance to me as an adult.
I really can't think of anything else from my childhood
that has retained so much value.
I don't claim to be an expert on comics --
I'm not even close.
I never read comic books,
I haven't read the newspaper comics regularly for years,
and I'Ve only recently started to reacquaint myself
with what the comics have to offer now.
But for years, I read and reread my "Calvin and Hobbes" books,
which always put a smile on my face.
And the strip still holds meaning
for so many other readers around the world.
I know because I'Ve heard from them,
and they'Ve sent me their stories.
Many people have tried to track down bill watterson
over the years.
But I'm not so interested in the man himself
but why his simple comic strip about a boy and his tiger
could somehow have such meaning
and have had such a personal impact on so many people.
Just as people often find it a challenge
to describe the strip itself,
I think anybody would have a hard time
distilling the ingredients that made it what it is.
But we can be sure of one thing --
on November 18, 1985,
bill watterson's creation debuted
in just a few dozen newspapers,
and it left an enormous imprint on countless readers
from across the globe.
-Well, the very first "Calvin and Hobbes" strip --
Calvin off to check his tiger trap
that he rigged up with a tuna fish sandwich,
and sure enough, in the last frame,
we see that Hobbes has fallen for the bait,
and he has his very own tiger friend for life.
And that is our intro to "Calvin and Hobbes."
-I'Ve never met anyone
who doesn't like "Calvin and Hobbes."
So, I can't say that about any other strip.
And there are other strips that are very, very popular,
very successful.
Most people love them,
but, invariably, I'll run into someone that says,
"I just don't get that strip,"
or, "I really don't like that strip."
With "Calvin and Hobbes," it's different.
It just seems to appeal to all different audiences --
young and old and men and women
and people in the country, people in the city.
I mean, really, just all demographics.
It seems to speak to people.
-Everyone, you know, is united by their love for this strip,
but everyone has a specific thing that they love about it
or specific things that they love about it.
And it's not always the same thing.
-Well, I grew up in a Mexican neighborhood.
I went to a white school, and I was like 300 pounds,
so I didn't really fit in, but neither did Calvin,
and, like, it wasn't really a problem.
He was just, "I'm weird, and that's the way I am,
and that's the way I'm gonna be."
And I think that's one of the things
that really kind of attracted me to the character.
-What really resonated to me
was the whole imagination aspect of it
and how he just created it in his head,
and he didn't even see his teacher or his principal.
He just saw saw aliens, and he was spaceman spiff.
-It's a very deep, very philosophical experience
reading a "Calvin and Hobbes" book,
even though, on the surface, they're just cartoons.
-He's really created characters that, I think,
have a lot of depth and are interesting to read about.
- "Calvin and Hobbes" is such a subversive comic.
But it has a purity to it that most comics don't,
because it is so joyful
and very much in the imagination of this kid,
and yet he is hyperaware of world events
and pop culture and ironies and social concepts,
and I just found that really, really exciting.
-My mom died about 11 years ago of a heart attack,
and my husband is a huge fan of "Calvin and Hobbes,"
so he had a lot of the paperback collections
laying around the house,
and I would just sit at night and look through those.
And that's how I came to know "Calvin and Hobbes"
is through those first three or four months after she passed.
It's just finding a place to laugh again.
-So I moved down here in this brand-new state,
this brand-new house, brand-new neighborhood, and I knew nobody.
So I was looking for something
to gravitate towards or associate with,
and "Calvin and Hobbes" became something I could bond with
on a daily basis when the newspaper would come.
-I didn't understand, sometimes,
the significance of his statements,
but that really pushed me into research
and go to the dictionary or really looking for meaning.
-It's one of those things that,
when you find it, you want to share it.
And as soon as he could start reading,
I wanted to give him the books.
And just like I thought it would --
I mean, there's times now
where he'll be reading it in his bedroom,
and I'll just hear him laughing.
And just that simple act of hearing him laugh
as I know what he's reading, it's like, "there you go.
That's what I was hoping for."
-I don't know if you know how Israel was in 2002, 2001.
It was pretty crazy.
You opened the newspaper,
and you saw another bombing every day.
It was really intense.
So I looked forward to the Sunday paper
because they would run the strip,
and I'd cut them out and would hang them up on my wall.
Even if there was something horrible in the paper,
I would still get my smile and, you know, that good feeling
from just reading that.
It just relieves the stress of living in that kind of a world.
When we need something to smile about,
you just pull out one of the old comics,
and you just read it, and it brings you back.
And that's the beauty of comics, especially "Calvin."
[ Chuckles ]
-For those of you who don't know him,
Calvin is a 6-year-old
who some might call a bit of a troublemaker.
But he's also extremely intelligent,
with an endless imagination and an incredible lust for life.
Hobbes is his ballast, his voice of reason,
his coconspirator, and loyal companion.
There's mom and dad, susie, rosalyn, moe, Mrs. Wormwood,
and a few other characters.
But nobody else sees and understand Hobbes
the way Calvin does,
and it seems the reverse is probably true, as well.
-If I actually met someone
who had never read "Calvin and Hobbes,"
which does occasionally happen,
I would probably immediately just go to my desk,
pull a book off, and say, "here, take this.
[ Chuckling ] This will change your life."
It's so hard to just sum it up,
other than to say, "this is every one of US."
-Certainly, it's a family strip. It's a kids' strip.
In some senses, it's a gag-a-day kind of strip.
You know, there's always a punch line,
some kind of gag at the end.
But in other ways, I think it transcends all of those things,
because there is a little bit of philosophy in it.
There's a little bit of commentary about society.
Certainly, there is a lot of humor.
You know, it's a very funny strip.
So it really, I think, defies categorization.
[ Chuckles ]
-There have been a lot of strips out there
about younger people --
you know, "Dennis the menace" --
a whole school of strips that try to recall youth
and make it relevant to readers across different ages.
But bill's take was so fresh and so simple.
Here he just took this idea
and just blew it up into this wonderful relationship.
It's the only strip we'Ve ever launched
that we had editors who hadn't seen it yet, calling US, saying,
"hey, we'Ve heard about this thing called 'Calvin and Hobbes.'
we want to be sure we get to see it."
-I was just blown away immediately.
It was one of those things that was so much fun to read.
It drew me in right then.
I remember getting to the end of the set
and thinking, "where is the rest of it?
I want more. I want more."
-Here was a strip
that was much better-drawn than anything in the papers,
that had a really fresh perspective,
and it just took off.
Within less than a year, Calvin was taunting susie.
He was playing at being spaceman spiff.
I think it was within the first year that he started g.R.O.S.S.,
the get rid of slimy girls club in his tree fort.
And when you look at other strips,
it generally takes an artist much longer
to reach that kind of maturity and that kind of understanding
of who his characters are, what their strengths are,
what their potential is for humor and for interaction.
And watterson just, you know, had the penning equivalent
of hitting the ground running.
-This was my bedroom when I was a kid.
When I was like 10 years old,
my brother moved to another room in the house,
and this became my room,
and my dad put in this corkboard wall.
And I had it plastered with things
that sort of represented who I was.
And the main thing
was "Calvin and Hobbes" Sunday strips.
I would get the Sunday paper --
dailies, too, but mostly the Sunday --
and I'd go, and I'd get it right away
and cut out "Calvin and Hobbes,"
and it would go right on the wall.
And even at the end,
like the ceiling, like all along here,
this was all comic strips like the whole way
and even on the other side.
Oh, man.
Just plastered, plastered with "Calvin and Hobbes."
-You know, Calvin's world is just huge.
It doesn't stop.
There was spaceman spiff.
There was susie. There were the snowmen.
-I loved the snowmen stuff.
I loved the dinosaur stuff, totally.
-He turns into the t. Rex at recess a lot.
And then he's going...[ Roars ]
-Well, there were the snowballs, as well as the snowmen.
-Oh, and then there were
the mutant-killer-monster snow dudes,
and that just cracks me up.
-Oh, and then they're in the infamous red wagon.
-There he was getting jumped by Hobbes.
- Monsters under the bed. - Tracer bullet.
-And you see him in black-and-white with the hat on,
and, "the dame walked in. She was hysterical."
-He'd go on a space adventure.
-And the time-machine parts.
-Stupendous man.
- "Safari al." [ Chuckles ]
-Then you have the transmogrifier,
when he duplicates himself.
- There was g.R.O.S.S. - Get rid of slimy girls.
-Calvin going with his parents on vacation and going camping.
-Those soap-opera-esque ones.
-He would draw like "Mary worth" or "Rex Morgan, m.D."
Or some ultrarealistic comic.
-One of my favorites, actually, with the teacher
is, he's in the classroom, he's doing whatever,
the teacher calls on him,
and he's imagining, you know,
that he's being sentenced to death,
and he runs out of the classroom and hides in a cave.
And you see just his eyes and, you know, a black screen,
and he says, "what's the smell?" Or "what's that noise?"
And, all of a sudden, you just see the lights go on,
and there are like 10 hideous monsters behind him,
and he runs out.
Then it cuts back to reality,
and he's snuck into the teachers' lounge,
which he thought was a cave.
And there's just a little quote, you know, a little bubble
that says, "who was that?"
That stuff cracks me up because it's so dramatic.
Everything is so dramatic in Calvin's mind.
And to everyone outside,
it's just like, "what's that little kid doing?
That little kid's kind of weird."
-So many of Calvin's adventures take place in faraway worlds,
but his everyday reality looked so familiar to me.
His backyard and the woods he explored
probably looked just like home to a lot of readers,
and they looked a lot like the small town
that bill watterson grew up in, near Cleveland, Ohio.
We're just outside of chagrin falls,
and we're about to head to the fireside book shop,
where we are going to meet up with nevin martell,
who recently wrote a book about bill watterson.
And if you look around, this is the type of scenery
that you see in "Calvin and Hobbes" --
the landscapes, the trees, the colors, the hills.
I mean, these are the landscapes
as you see Calvin and Hobbes sledding
or, you know, wagoneering in their backyard.
It's just, you look around,
and it's like this is the strip in real life.
It's great.
-When I first drove into chagrin falls,
it was like walking into a "Calvin and Hobbes" strip,
because the road in which I happened to come in on
happened to be from the same perspective
of the image of Calvin rampaging
through the triangle at the center of town
while holding the popcorn shop above him
like he's a giant Godzilla.
So when I drove into town, I knew exactly where I was,
because I had seen that before,
except I had seen it as one of watterson's watercolors.
-The view is from above the clock tower here
at the south end of town, looking north.
Bandstand.
Fireside is roughly right here.
And popcorn shop, which is just around the corner,
on the same side as fireside.
And, you know, as is usual for bill,
he has almost completely done the architectural details
exactly as they are.
I'm not sure what's on fire back here.
But this is probably the most popular book we sell,
simply because of the local drawing on the back.
-You came to chagrin falls, the hometown of bill watterson,
as a part of your journey.
What was that like?
-When I had pitched the book,
I had always pitched it with the trip to chagrin falls.
And I always knew that I wanted to come.
When I had pitched it, it was just kind of like,
"and in a dream world, we'll go to chagrin falls,
and we'll knock on doors, and we'll talk to people,
and we'll see things that have never been seen."
And so I didn't really know what I was gonna get.
And it turned into a minor bonanza.
I mean, it was a major bonanza,
in terms of, like, insight and material.
Like, the book would have been thinner without it.
[ Chuckles ]
-We started the library here about three years ago.
And I walked into my office,
and turns out I'Ve got an original "Calvin and Hobbes"
about Calvin going to the library
and having an overdue book.
I was very excited to buy it.
And as you can tell, by looking at it really close,
you can actually even see wite-out on it.
-And this is the first original I'Ve ever seen.
- It's like the movement. - Mm-hmm.
-He decided that he didn't want you to see that.
-Mm-hmm.
-The size is so much bigger
than how they're printed in the newspapers.
You have no idea when you're reading them in the paper.
And there are papers
that would have printed them smaller than this.
-Than that. Yeah.
And there's some pretty cool stuff on the back, too.
-"Bill watterson grew up in chagrin falls.
"His otherwise civic-minded parents
"encouraged bill's slothful habits
"until the youth was fit for no respectable work
"and had to go into cartooning.
"'Calvin and Hobbes' was syndicated a year ago this month
"and now appears in newspapers across the world,
"wherever better comic strips are read.
Value -- $200."
And now it says $500.
-We have thechagrin herald.
They're bound newspapers from the '70s and earlier.
In the '70s, you'll find some of bill watterson's earlier work.
We'll go back here
and see what we can pull off the shelf for you.
So down here in the catacombs of the library.
-1976.
-Yes.
-Oh.
- It's a very early one. - Yeah.
-Well, "Thursday, August 26th."
-The kids were going back to school.
-So going back to school. Yep.
Coming straight from vacation, squealing into school.
I got you.
Calvin would be headed the other direction.
-[ Chuckles ]
-So this is January...
-'78.
- To December of '78.
- Oh. - There we go.
-Oh, look at that.
-"Watterson on watterson --
theherald sun'saward-winning cartoonist, bill watterson,
turns his satiric pen on himself."
Much longer hair then.
-Mm-hmm.
-Ink all over.
And "peanuts."
And then his signature.
That almost looks gothic in a way or something.
Do you have any 1982?
-Yeah.
-Oh. There we go.
-There you go.
-They pop out to you.
"He knew the risks when he put the garbage out early, ma'am."
This actually reminds me of the Sunday strip
when the deer pop in with rifles
and shoot bill or Phil or some guy.
His signature here
is a lot more like his signature with "Calvin and Hobbes."
-Mm-hmm.
-In the early '80s, watterson did have a few opportunities.
To showcase his drawing skills for various publications
while he endured repeated rejection from the syndicates.
But while he worked hard to make a living as a cartoonist,
his talents were often wasted on laying out advertising
in order to pay the bills.
Within months, however, of quitting that job,
watterson was becoming one of the cartoonists
who other professional and aspiring cartoonists
were looking up to.
-It's probably hard to name an artist
who came along in the 1990s, onward --
a comic-strip artist --
who wasn't influenced in some way
by "Calvin and Hobbes."
-You can definitely see his impact in comics today,
and it's not that anyone is copying his comic specifically
or trying to do exactly what he did.
But you can clearly see that the creators who are younger
and who are introducing new comic strips,
you can clearly see that they'Ve read "Calvin and Hobbes"
and are influenced by that.
-I can tell you when I saw Calvin --
I saw the very first day in thel.A. Times.
I liked it, and you don't like strips very often
from the, you know, first day.
-I remember looking at comics in the newspaper
and thinking, "you know,
I could probably write and draw as well as these guys.
I should give a comic strip a shot."
After "Calvin and Hobbes" came out,
I sort of modified it to,
"well, I could probably write and draw
as well as most of these guys."
-I had sort of written off the comic strips at that point.
And when "Calvin and Hobbes" came fresh on the scene,
it was brand-new, and it was funny.
It captivated me right off the bat.
I knew that was a good strip.
I said I knew it was a funny strip.
I couldn't wait to read that strip every single day.
-There was a unique perspective, a unique voice to it,
that it wasn't generic formula-gag stuff,
which permeates most of the comic page.
-And in every way, shape, and form, on every level,
it was like comic-strip perfection.
And it still is.
-One of my favorite lines came from Lynn johnston,
who was doing "for better or for worse."
And she said,
"you know, he inspires all of US to do a little bit better."
And I think that, on the one side,
was a beneficial impact that he had,
not only among the artists who were working at the time,
but on younger people who were reading comics,
that there was this opportunity
to do different things with the art
and try to push the boundaries a little bit.
-My initial impression when I saw him was,
"the guy is making it harder for the rest of US,"
'cause he is setting
this ridiculous standard of excellence
that hadn't been seen since the "pogo" years,
in drawing.
-Most of the time, I was just trying to meet my deadline.
For bill, it wasn't enough to just meet the deadline.
You had to sort of, you know, move the bar a little bit
over what you'd done previously.
-It was a completely different approach
to the traditional four-panel strip.
There was just something about it
that was just very, very magical --
the way he drew trees, the way he drew water,
the way he drew movement.
-The brushwork just continues to amaze me,
and his writing, which is so concise
and yet so deep and philosophical.
-You know, his approach at philosophy
and sort of representing the human condition
was something that was always bigger
than just a little comic strip.
The conversations had so many layers of meaning.
And if I could even come close to that,
I would be absolutely thrilled.
-Bill watterson showed me
that a great, amazing comic
is great writing that can stand on its own
and great drawing that can stand on its own.
You know, you take out either one of those
from a "Calvin and Hobbes" strip,
and it's still great to look at.
It's still funny to read.
Put them together,
and you have one of the greatest comic strips of all time.
- "Calvin and Hobbes," as far as a comic strip goes,
was such a huge influence on me wanting to become a cartoonist.
It was everything a comic strip should be.
It's very dynamic. It's funny. It's got a strong voice.
You know, the artwork is fabulous.
There wasn't anything not to like about it.
-If he's not the most cited influence,
he's certainly second, behind schulz and "peanuts."
But he's up there.
And I think we get so many submissions that say, you know,
"I'Ve always been a big fan of 'Calvin and Hobbes, '
so I wanted to try and do this."
-I think you can see
an influence of "Calvin and Hobbes,"
to a degree, in "zits," a strip I like very much.
There is a kind of Calvin-esque feel
to the way that Jim borgman and Jerry Scott
will play Jeremy Duncan's fantasies against the reality.
-As a professional cartoonist, I read it now,
and you just see a master at his craft,
you know, someone that [Chuckles] puts you to shame
as far as what you're able to do in comparison.
-I actually have a comic that I had to do for a class in college
at the school of visual arts.
So we had to do a comic about our biggest influence.
Of course, what else would I pick but "Calvin and Hobbes"?
One of the things that I feel that I gained the most,
as a cartoonist, from reading this strip,
is learning how to do such wild and crazy expressions.
And sometimes it's not just the writing.
It's just the simplest, crazy drawing
that will make you laugh or smile and really influence you.
So I was very happy to get my inner Calvin on
[chuckles] While working on the strip.
-I got a lot of attention
for a resemblance to "Calvin and Hobbes."
And some of it was very, very flattering,
and some of it was less flattering,
and some it was flat-out mean.
I tried not to take it personally.
I mean, the people who were outraged
that my strip might bear any resemblance
to "Calvin and Hobbes,"
I think that was done mostly out of a passionate love
for "Calvin and Hobbes."
And anything that you write is gonna be autobiographical
at its heart.
Same with "frazz." You know, frazz is me.
He's cooler than I am, because I can make him that way,
but he's me.
And, likewise, if I learned a whole bunch
from "Calvin and Hobbes," from bill watterson,
I'm not gonna cover that up.
Honestly, I think it would be rude
to try and say, "oh, no, I did this all on my own.
This is all me. I didn't learn this from anybody."
No. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants.
-Watterson certainly left US a legacy of great ideas,
great drawing, great, great comics,
but he was last in a long line
of really amazing cartoonists from the 20th century,
since the real blooming of the comic-strip art form.
And he very much valued the work of Walt Kelly,
one of the cartoonists that I loved to read when I was a kid.
If you look at "pogo,"
you can see that he very strongly influenced
not only bill watterson
but also Jeff Smith, who does "bone."
"Pogo" was this world similar to what watterson created,
where there were these animals and these characters,
and they spoke about things
much bigger than the swamp that they lived in.
They were possums and alligators and chicks and all these things,
but they were politicians and philosophers,
and they commented heavily on society.
So I can imagine
why watterson found "pogo" fascinating to look at,
and it's beautifully drawn, and Walt Kelly --
you know, just no end of genius in how he created "pogo."
-Schulz is, of course,
such an important cartoonist and such a great one
that, I think, pretty much any comic strip
that began after the early '50s was influenced by it.
The scale of the stories he would tell,
the intimacy of the strip and of the settings,
the observations of children's lives,
all I think, again,
can be seen as influences on "Calvin and Hobbes."
Just the notion of the world from a child's point of view
was something that schulz took,
and while other artists had done things with it before,
schulz did it so much better and had so much influence
that, once again, you can see it
flowing into "Calvin and Hobbes."
-Well, I don't know bill watterson,
so I don't want to speak to his motives,
but it appears to me, in reading his essays
and seeing some of his interviews about "krazy Kat,"
that "krazy Kat" set a bar that he judged his own work by
and would not be satisfied with his own work
if it wasn't as idiosyncratic, as imaginative,
as personal as "krazy Kat" was.
Watterson said, in his first hiatus,
he started paying more attention
to what herriman was doing on those full pages,
when the newspaper page was a blank canvas
and he could have form be dictated by content
instead of the other way around,
instead of saying, "you'Ve got eight panels here.
You know, that's gonna be your narrative."
Instead, he could blow it wide-open,
have the panels not be panels,
you know, have the adventure, the narrative flow
follow whatever course, artistically,
that he wanted to take.
All that stuff that herriman gave himself license to do
is right there on the page.
So I think, for a cartoonist, it represented freedom.
It represented personal, artistic, visionary freedom.
I think he saw that and saw this was what he could do, too.
-There is something else deep in the basement of the library
in chagrin falls.
Watterson lent his photography skills
to his high-school yearbook,
and his cartoons are scattered throughout.
One of his drawings
is a depiction of the four photographers on staff,
as the caption reads,
"watterson is the one on the far right, blinking."
Perhaps this drawing foreshadows watterson's future reputation
for being a man who shied away from the spotlight
and very much desired his privacy.
-I think, initially, he was pleased
that so many papers were signing on.
He started getting a lot of fan mail.
He got a lot of press attention,
and he realized, I think, pretty quickly on
that he had done something special.
And I think it didn't take him long
to become a little unnerved and taken aback by it.
-Even with a tiny amount of success,
it's a little daunting how much feedback and comment and request
you get from the general public.
So I can only imagine if I'm bill watterson
and I have millions and millions and millions of adoring fans.
-Nobody knows bill watterson.
There's like three people on the planet who have ever seen him.
He won't talk to anybody.
He's the sasquatch of cartoonists.
You know, people have seen his footprint,
but nobody has ever gotten a picture of him.
-He just wanted to draw his comic strip.
He didn't really want to be famous.
He didn't want all the trappings that went with it.
He just wanted to do a good job drawing a comic strip.
-Cartooning attracts solitary people,
quiet people, insular people.
Because, if you were gonna spend time at your drawing desk,
you weren't the kind of person that dated well in high school.
You know what I mean?
You weren't the kind of person
that was the captain of the football team.
For the most part, it's people that use their art
to make their voice to the world, you know?
So it doesn't surprise me that he errs on the shier side,
the introverted side, the reclusive side.
Because that's probably what his life framed him as, you know?
He was probably always shy and introverted and reclusive,
or else he wouldn't have spent the decades
crafting his abilities as an artist, you know?
He would have been out socializing
and become a regional sales manager
for midas car parts, you know?
I mean, it would have been a different path in life.
-Luckily, watterson didn't end up selling car parts
and he did create "Calvin and Hobbes."
By the end of its decade-long syndication,
it was in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide,
with a daily readership of millions.
Watterson won the Reuben award for cartoonist of the year
in 1986 and 1988,
the Harvey award for best syndicated comic strip
seven years in a row,
and "Calvin and Hobbes"
was loved by readers and critics alike.
18 "Calvin and Hobbes" book collections
have been published in the u.S.,
selling 45 million copies,
and dozens more have been published internationally
in at least two dozen languages.
There are frequent homages and spoofs on the comics pages,
and the strip has been referenced
in numerous American TV shows,
including "family guy," "the big bang theory,"
"parks and reaction," "portlandia,"
and "robot chicken."
But bill watterson doesn't seem to care too much
about the numbers or the awards or the accolades.
His focus was on the comic strip itself,
which, despite being something
that watterson has said he did for himself,
had become very important to readers worldwide.
-Bill watterson saved almost all of the original art
from "Calvin and Hobbes,"
both the dailies and the sundays
and all of the book art that he did,
and he put it on deposit here
at the Billy Ireland cartoon library & museum.
So were are the caretakers,
and we make sure that it's preserved and kept safe
and, also, that it's accessible to researchers and scholars.
So if somebody wants to come and actually see the original art,
they can come to our reading room and request it,
and we'll bring it out, and they can look at it.
So this is what we call the stacks,
and this is obviously where we keep all of our collection.
We operate like a rare-books room,
so nothing circulates,
nothing actually leaves the cartoon library.
If anybody wants to use something,
they have to actually come here and request it,
and then we bring it out, and you can look at it.
So we have over 400,000 original cartoons,
including, of course, the bill watterson deposit collection.
We have many, many books about cartoons, periodicals.
We have comic books.
We also have archival material,
so we collect the papers and letters of cartoonists
and other people related to the business.
This is gonna be all of your books about cartoons,
anthologies, reprint books, how-to books,
journals likepokkorjudgethat have a lot of cartoons in them.
And then, over here, we have our flat files,
which is all of the original art.
So, this is one of my favorite drawers.
This is our "little Nemo" by winsor mccay.
And these are just absolutely spectacular.
-That is massive.
-Yes.
Of course, the newspaper pages were bigger themselves,
at the time,
but it would have been smaller than he did it as the original.
"Little Nemo," of course, is a wonderful comic strip
about a little boy who goes to sleep every night,
and he goes to slumberland
and has all these amazing adventures.
And then, always on the last panel, he wakes up
and is back in his bed and is back into reality,
and so you can see how this influenced bill watterson
with "Calvin and Hobbes."
There are a lot of strips that are like that,
where he's in kind of a fantasy world,
and then, in the last panel, he wakes up
or comes back to reality.
-If you had the chance to view a selection
of "Calvin and Hobbes" originals,
how would you pick which strips to see?
Would you pick specific examples of panel layout
or use of black-and-white or line techniques?
Maybe a daily and a Sunday from each year?
Or would you just narrow it down to your absolute favorites?
No matter what you finally decide,
once you put on the white gloves and sit down with the strips,
I don't really think you can go wrong.
It's admittedly a strange experience.
You can examine each line and letter
and mistake and alteration.
And you can compare the originals
to the printed newspaper or book version.
The dailies look much as you might expect,
but the Sunday strips are another story.
You can explore watterson's lush watercolor art,
but the Sunday originals are black-and-white.
They're incredible to see, despite the missing color.
But the experience got me thinking
about the art of the comic strip.
Comics are a bit of a unique medium
in that it can be difficult to define
exactly what the final piece of art actually is.
Watterson's originals are probably worth
tens of thousands of dollars apiece.
But it isn't until
the Sunday strips are printed in the paper or in books
that they reach their final, intended state.
If you think for just a moment about how prevalent comics are
and how many millions of prints of each daily strip
are distributed across the planet,
it might be easy to understand
how comics might be often categorized as low art,
but it's hard to deny their high impact.
-I think he very quickly grew from,
"let me get a package together that a syndicate will pick up,"
to, "gosh, I got picked up, and I'm gonna be syndicated,"
to, "now I have this opportunity
to kind of explore these different artistic options."
But I think he quickly picked up the opportunities
with color on sundays,
the ability to push out the boundaries
on that piece of canvas on the sundays.
And, also, on the dailies,
he tried so many different things in the dailies
as just from the perspective of an artist.
-Cartoon art and comic art is something that, you know,
was originally seen as kind of trashy, populist stuff,
almost very childish.
And then, as the years have gone on,
you know, people have started to see the worth in it.
And that's because comic strips have tackled heavier subjects.
The artwork has been elevated to a massive degree in some cases.
-I don't understand the distinction that people make.
So you can have fine art.
You can have these amazing images that people acknowledge,
you know, can speak about any topic
and say great things
and reflect what the artist is trying to do.
You can have literature that does that, too.
You can have a great novel that people respect
and they understand.
But, somehow, if you combine the words and the images,
all of a sudden, all you get is something for kids.
And why is that?
If you read through all of "Calvin and Hobbes,"
you'll see that he really has very interesting things to say
about society, about humanity,
about relationships, about the world.
And there's no reason why he can't do that in a comic strip.
That's a perfectly valid form.
And I'm thrilled that he chose that form,
because I think he could have done probably anything.
He could have been just a fine artist.
He could have written books.
But he actually chose to do it as a comic strip,
and I'm grateful to him for that,
because he did it so well,
and he showed how it could really be done.
My favorite strip, which probably doesn't surprise you,
is the one where Calvin and Hobbes are looking at art,
and they're talking about comics versus art
and how you can have high art, like a painting,
and then you have low art, which is the comic strip,
and it's commercial and it's hack work.
And then he kind of shows how absurd that is
by saying, "a painting of a comic strip panel --
that's sophisticated irony, philosophically challenging.
That's high art."
And so then Hobbes says,
"well, suppose I draw a cartoon of a painting of a comic strip."
And, you know, at that point, it's just absurd,
but Calvin says, "no, that's sophomoric.
It's intellectually sterile. It's low art."
So he's commenting here exactly on this debate --
you know, what's high art? What's low art?
And why, just because it's printed in a newspaper and it's a comic strip,
is it automatically low art?
I don't think anybody would look at "Calvin and Hobbes"
and say that it's not art or say that it's low art.
But that seems to be a distinction
that comic-strip art has been stuck with.
-Comics are self-expression.
Self-expression is art.
I don't give a...
About what an art critic might say art is
because I know that I'm creating something.
Art is about creating something -- the end.
-If you actually still have a subscription,
you can probably tell newspapers are hurting
simply by stepping out on your porch to get yours.
Nearly 100% of the time,
it isn't the front page that greets me
but a full-page ad for a sports-equipment retailer.
Then, the state of the perceived value of the comics is clear
when you try to find the comics section.
When I was growing up,
depending on how your paperboy put together your paper,
the Sunday comics section was often the front page of the Sunday newspaper
when it arrived at your door.
It was the first thing you saw.
Now it takes me a couple minutes just to locate it.
In looking back at comics sections of the past
in comparison,
it's clear just how much the comics are being trimmed.
A typical "Calvin and Hobbes" from the 1990s.
Wouldn't even fit in todays Sunday funnies.
Watterson had more space on the page
than "stone soup," "in the bleachers,"
"candorville," "frazz," and half of "non sequitur" combined.
-The comics page was shrinking in the 1980s.
It was getting smaller and smaller and smaller,
and cartoonists were rebelling.
It was getting tougher and tougher
to fit really quality content into the strips.
-I typically avoided looking at comic pages
because I so hated how mine looked on a page.
Your strips look so beautiful as they head out.
You know, you draw them this big, and they're gorgeous.
And you see them, especially 25 years ago, 30 years ago,
reproduced this big on bad newsprint,
often out of alignment, and it was depressing.
It was like, "why am I in this business?"
-The smaller and smaller reproductions
meant there was less chance for visuals,
less chance to draw well,
less chance for the audience to appreciate
good drawing and imaginative visuals.
If you are working to create a graphic entity,
a pictorial representation of something,
you don't want to see it shrunk down to a postage stamp.
-Some of the first comic strips in america in the early 1900s,
some of those were like full-page comics.
And, like, those artists had just huge palettes to work with,
and the art was really, really important.
Whereas now, some people are working with, like, this,
and it's black-and-white,
and everything is about the simplicity of it.
-Clearly, his focus was on the sundays.
So he approached the sundays
as an opportunity to do some dynamite art,
which in the comics, has been a dying thing for decades.
-You almost cry a little when you look at the old comics,
when they had a full page to do whatever they wanted.
You know, again, the "Nemo" in slumberland,
I mean, good heavens, it was just unreal.
-When you look at the great strips of the past,
not only mccay and herriman and milt caniff and Walt Kelly,
the general standard of draftsmanship
used to be much higher.
You couldn't have "Terry and the pirates"
the same way you did in the '30s and '40s.
-The biggest and most popular strips were the story strips.
They needed that space to move the story along.
Well, as they shrunk the comics, there wasn't that space anymore
for both the art and the dialogue.
-Bill's particular problem was that, with the Sunday format,
it could be chopped up to fit different sizes --
either a half page or a third of a page or a quarter of a page --
and he felt trying to configure it
so that it fit into all those sizes
was really an obstruction for him.
So he came back with one-sized proposal, and that was it.
-Once the sundays were totally in watterson's control,
they didn't get moved around or chopped up,
or they wouldn't lose the top bar.
That really opened up a whole new world,
in the sense that the artwork could go to another level,
because he was working with a really huge palette
where it was uninterrupted, unbreakable half pages.
That was amazing to watch
because it really allowed him to work in a way
that just freed up his creativity.
-Every three years at Ohio state university,
the cartoon library & museum
hosts the festival of cartoon art,
which brings together scholars, cartoonists, fans,
and industry professionals from around the world
to celebrate comic creators and their work.
In 1989, bill watterson
was a featured speaker at the festival,
and he took the opportunity
to talk about the power and possibilities of comics
and how the current climate for cartoonists
was failing the art form.
-He gave a speech titled "the cheapening of the comics,"
which was really his way of drawing a line in the sand
and saying, "if we are to take this art form seriously,
if we are to serve it best,
these are the things that we should do."
And it was sort of a series of seven or eight or nine points
that says,
"look, you cheapen the comics when you commercialize it.
You cheapen the comics when you take the artist of the equation.
You cheapen the comics when you let it go on
a life beyond what it was intended to do."
"You cheapen the comics when you give the syndicate,"
which is the publisher and the distributor, "too much power."
"And if we are to truly serve this art form,
the artist has to come first, their voice has to come first,
and the art before commerce has to come first."
He was essentially throwing down the gauntlet
and said, "look, we'Ve lost something
"from the early part of the 20th century,
"where, you know, the art was beautifully displayed,
"the artists were given this truly unique voice,
"and we need to go back to a different time,
to a different way of cartooning."
-I think he took a very lofty, at times even philosophical look
at the art form.
There's nothing wrong with that,
because he held himself to those own standards,
and I have a lot of respect for him for doing that.
-I think it was kind of a brave speech
because mort Walker took it very personally --
of "beetle Bailey" fame --
and a few other bigger names in cartooning took it personally,
because they viewed it as a shot across the bow
of the way they handled their business,
the way they handled their cartooning.
-Within the crowd, my recollection was
that there was a strong split among those who were,
"yeah, go get them. Go tell them the way it is"
and the other side, which was, you know,
"who is this kid to tell me how to do my art
and do what I want with my life and my business?"
-Watterson was coming out of more of the artistic tradition
and just, "look, we can raise this art up."
And others were coming from, "look, it has always been
this intersection of art and commerce,
so you cannot deny that."
You know, I'Ve talked to Jeff Smith of "bone" about it,
and he said he literally walked out of that hall and said,
"I realize that 'bone' cannot be what I want it to be
in a comic-strip form.
I have to forge my own path.
I have to take 'bone' elsewhere."
-My relationship with bill was one of letters.
And it's not unique to cartoonists
that we draw in our letters to each other.
But it's unique that he would
spend as much time as he did on his drawings,
which is just like him.
He didn't do anything like I did,
which was by the seat of the pants
and extremely quickly.
The source of much of the energy
with the letters and the drawings,
to me, was at my expense.
He and I were the yin and the Yang
of the comic strips in the '80s,
because I was making these, and he was not.
And as he would draw me,
I was taking the money and buying gasoline with it
and pumping it into my speedboat,
which he used to put on the bottom
almost of each of the letters he wrote me.
And the person handing me the money was the syndicate boss,
who he had no appreciation for.
So that's how he saw me, and it's how he saw the syndicate,
and that's how he saw the exploitation of one's characters
in a comic strip,
all nicely personified in one drawing.
-We realized that "Calvin and Hobbes"
was gonna be huge in licensing.
'Cause we could just tell by the signs,
the response from the public.
But bill made it clear that he was just not gonna do it.
-Watterson, obviously, had very strong feelings
about merchandising and the commerce side of comics.
I mean, he participated in a way,
just being in a newspaper, as part of that.
But he clearly had very specific ideas
about how merchandising can change the characters
or change the art
or change the creator and what their vision is.
-The idea of, you know,
a stuffed Hobbes sitting on a shelf somewhere
would basically answer that question
that's always hanging over the strip --
you know, is Hobbes real? Is he a stuffed toy?
Well, there's a stuffed toy, you know?
-We have seen many comic-strip characters
go from being, you know, figures you see in the paper
that may give you a laugh,
to being kind of a national blight
in the case of something like Garfield,
that at one point was on, I think, 5,000 different products.
And the character becomes ubiquitous
and begins to feel like a pest or something you can't escape,
rather than something you look forward to encountering.
In a society that is as media-obsessed
and money-obsessed as ours is and was then,
his decision seemed strange, if not almost UN-American.
He walked away from literally tens of millions of dollars
in merchandising,
because everything that snoopy was on,
I'm sure he was offered for Hobbes.
- "Sparky" did feel protective
about being criticized for licensing,
because he said,
"people don't realize, you know, how it all started
and that everything was somebody coming to me,
wanting to use the characters.
I drew it for them."
And it had an aspect of kind of fun,
an entrepreneurialism about it
that was not to do with business.
It was to do with extending your art,
extending your sentiments.
-When "sparky" did what he did, "sparky" had no template,
and I'm talking about the licensing.
Like, Percy Crosby had licensed "skippy,"
and, you know, "blondie" had been licensed,
but nobody -- nobody --
had been licensed anywhere close,
before or since.
You know, you're talking $40-million-a-year empire.
In so far as that includes
a snoopy plush that a kid could hold,
that looks like snoopy
and doesn't have sort of a bullshit smile
that snoopy doesn't have,
it's great.
In so far as the "peanuts" characters speak for metlife.
Or any corporation, I always cringe.
It just strikes me wrong.
I don't want to see snoopy selling me insurance.
It's sort of like a cousin who got really close to you
and you spent all this time together
and you think you really know him,
and then you're fishing with him one day, and he says, "you know,
I never said this to you before, but I sell life insurance."
And your stomach would just drop,
because you'd say, "god,
has the whole relationship been based on that?
Like, were you building to this point?
Was it all b.S.?"
Something strikes you as false,
and you question the whole friendship.
And I think when a character advertises,
sells you insurance,
I think that hurts your relationship to the character.
When watterson did what he did
and he said no licensing whatsoever,
to the extent he meant,
"I don't want my characters speaking for everybody.
I don't want my characters
to be on every lunchbox and every shirt,"
I totally understand.
That makes a lot of sense, 'cause it lessens the character.
In so far as he took the stand, "there can't be a Hobbes doll,"
I will never understand that.
If they made a Hobbes doll and he had control over it --
it could look exactly like he wanted it to look --
every kid in the world would have loved it.
Has there ever been a character
who was more built for licensing than Hobbes?
It's a stuffed animal in the strip,
and the kid's imagination can make it come alive --
you know, the whole bit.
What would the harm have been in that?
And I can't see it.
This leads to my theory
of what it is that watterson might be doing,
and I suspect that some of it is about control.
Comic strips are all about control.
It's the one art form where you have full control.
It's not collaborative like a film.
It's not collaborative even like a book,
where your editor changes things.
I really don't even have an editor. It's just me.
It's not collaborative like a TV show.
It's not collaborative like a record album.
It's you -- it's just you.
When you wander into licensing, it becomes a collaboration.
Somebody at your syndicate has to approve it.
Somebody at your syndicate gives suggestions.
Somebody at your syndicate says, "you know, that's nice,
but it'd be better if he smiled on the package, right?
Smiling sells more."
Then it gets in the hand of the designer.
The designer has their own ideas how the character should look.
The designer knows what material sells.
The designer knows what materials are safe.
Then there's the designer's boss,
who may have different ideas,
'cause they gave it to the salesman,
and it didn't sell well.
So I'Ve just introduced seven people into my life
that weren't in my life before.
I don't particularly like any of them.
They're not my kind of people.
They're commercial people,
and they make your stomach hurt when you're with them.
So I'Ve introduced an element into my life
of a whole bunch of people I don't like.
I'Ve got to overcome them all,
even if it's so much as just saying,
"I don't think we should do this,"
and they say yes, I still have to do that to seven people.
And that's all a loss of control,
a loss of control that I never had before, right?
And imagine if he started licensing.
The first lunchbox would have sold nine billion, right?
The minute that happens, everybody is gonna be on him
for all the more, like this, that, and the other --
all represents a loss of control.
Then they all sit in your head.
Rather than go, as he probably did,
and walk through the forest that day,
he took six phone calls that he didn't want to take.
They interrupted his day.
They're floating around in his head.
That's all bad. You know what I'm saying?
And that's control.
That's not about artistic purity.
No, no. That's about control.
-Well, contractually,
we had the rights to license "Calvin and Hobbes"
to anything and anyone in the world.
We had calls from, you know, people like Steven Spielberg
and Disney studios and George Lucas.
I can go right down the line.
The potential for products worldwide, internationally
was, again, huge, and we recognized that.
Certainly, it would have been up there
with the licensing revenues from "Garfield" and "peanuts."
That was not money just for US.
I mean, all the revenues would be split 50/50 with bill.
So the fact that we were,
you know, turning down huge opportunities
also meant that he was turning down huge opportunities, too.
-Everyone has a different opinion,
but I think the number is -- oh -- very, very high,
depending on who you're talking to and what mood they're in.
I'Ve heard many people say $300 million to $400 million.
I wouldn't be surprised.
It could be more,
depending on how far, you know, bill was willing to go.
-Our discussions were very involved and sometimes heated.
It weighed heavily on him,
and I think it became apparent
in some of the ways in which the script was being worked out,
some of the story lines that bill employed,
and, you know, the question of commercialism versus art
and all this stuff
that it was clear that bill was sending some messages.
And, you know, we realized that we'Ve got to make a decision
as to, "are we gonna try to accommodate him and his interest
"in a reasonable way within the context of running a business,
"or are we gonna, in essence,
"beat up one of the most important cartoonists
of his generation?"
And we did what we could do
to try to work out the business arrangement,
and the good news was we got some more time from him.
But I do believe he did come close
to just calling one day and saying, "that's it."
-The cliché of building an entertainment franchise.
In any medium
is that you have to merchandise it.
Since he wasn't gonna do that, he had to confront the notion
that people were gonna be making their own merchandise.
-My friends and I even made a personal bootleg Calvin shirt
just for ourselves.
And then you started seeing Calvin being used
in both religious iconography on the back of gang vehicles,
I guess,
where it's Calvin like mourning the cross,
pouring some out for my dead homies
or Calvin peeing on whatever import car
the driver doesn't like.
But I just thought, "who has licensed this?"
And, of course, no one had.
-I remember when I was younger, thinking,
"I'm really kind of bummed that there aren't
any 'Calvin and Hobbes' toys that I can play with."
And I remember thinking, "I'm a genius.
People could actually make some money
if they made 'Calvin and Hobbes' action figures."
And, obviously, at the time,
I didn't understand that Mr. watterson had made a decision
to not license and market "Calvin and Hobbes,"
and as I'Ve grown up, I'Ve respected that,
and I realize that it would probably cheapen it
if Calvin and Hobbes' face were on my toothpaste or whatever.
Because now, for me, it exists solely in my books
and with me and my Hobbes in the backyard.
And I think that's one of my favorite things
is that it's alive to me like Hobbes is alive to Calvin.
-He made a point of letting the comic stand on its own.
I know the colors. I know the sounds.
I have that all in my head.
And I do really appreciate that it's remained that.
-It won't be in the public consciousness,
particularly with young people,
as much as we older folks think it should.
But it will be remembered in the "proper" way,
which is based on the work
and not because there are still Hobbes dolls for sale,
you know, at target.
-I definitely think,
by him not allowing anyone to merchandise it,
the mystique of it grows
and the desire for those kinds of things
or the care with which it's taken by people.
You know, people preserve the memory of "Calvin and Hobbes"
as something very precious and personal,
and I think that has a lot to do directly with the fact
that it wasn't exploited -- stuffed toys or cartoons
or post-it notes or sleeping bags or anything.
-It's pure in it's purest form.
It's just his lines and his words
and not somebody else's interpretation
of how it should look in plastic or plush or anything.
-I think it strengthened the strip,
and I think the legacy of the strip
wouldn't be as strong as it is
if he hadn't focused everything he had on making that strip
the absolute best strip that he could make.
-The fact that there isn't
"Calvin and Hobbes" stuff all over the place is really --
I think that's the reason why this strip
is still as popular as it is today.
-There are two ways to look at bill,
and I try to keep it as objective as possible
in the book.
There's the people that look at him
as a curmudgeon and somebody they resent
for not sharing himself when he was so famous
and somebody who did not give them what they wanted.
That might be like the fact
that he never made a, you know, Saturday-morning cartoon special
that they really wanted to see,
or they didn't allow a Hobbes doll to be made,
and they always wanted one as a kid.
There's that group of people.
And then there's the group of people that look at him,
and, you know, they respect his choices that he made
when it came to merchandising and licensing.
They love him as a writer. They respect him as an artist.
And those are the two people
that I was chasing at the same time.
You know, there was somebody who was incredibly principled,
who stuck to it,
and who also happened to be incredibly talented.
And then there was a guy that, like, really turns his back
on this whole public-persona machine
that we'Ve come to expect as Americans.
So, over the course of the journey,
I was rooting for the guy that was so principled,
and yet I was peeved at the guy
that was not giving me what I wanted.
It was frustrating, and yet, at the same time,
I couldn't help but root for him.
You know, I think that he made his decisions,
and I totally respect them.
And any personal wants that I have from him
are selfishly motivated,
and so that's up to him.
-I would say my favorite strips are on my arm.
I made sure I got some snowmen in there,
making fun of girls, the silly ones,
some of the imagination stuff, where he thinks
he's a crocodile here, and he's just swimming.
I try to get a little bit of everything -- stupendous man.
When I was getting this tattoo,
I knew a guy that could get phone numbers,
and I got bill watterson's phone number.
I wanted to get permission to get the tattoo
so I wouldn't be just as bad as the bootleggers.
But [clears throat] he didn't return my phone calls.
I did get it anyway.
But I feel like it's not a bootleg.
It's just a labor of love.
[ Up-tempo bluegrass music plays ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-People talk about kind of the death of cartooning
because of, kind of, the passing of newspapers.
But, really, we're in a time right now
where it's not just newspapers. It's media.
Like, media is changing,
and the way we make money from media is changing.
Newspaper comics are especially interesting, though,
because they used to be unified.
Like, every day, you'd open up, and your paper would have
one or two pages devoted to newspaper comics.
And, first of all, those pages
are getting cut down and shrunk more and more as time goes on
and as newspaper budgets keep getting cut.
So you're not coming to the same collective space every day
to experience the newspaper and comics.
You know, you can go online, if you're interested,
and either find the strips that you already like
or go discover new ones,
but it's not the kind of same thing.
You have to go to one page on gocomics.
For "Calvin and Hobbes,"
and then you go to another independent artist's website
for their web comic,
and then you go to another website for another web comic.
And, you know, you're surfing.
But you're never going to one place
to get all those different perspectives.
And that was the cool thing about comics.
Whether you liked "Garfield" or "family circus"
or the "wizard of ID" or "Calvin and Hobbes,"
you could come to one page in the newspaper
and experience them all.
And because that medium is disappearing or shrinking,
that experience is disappearing, as well.
-There is sort of a high point for mass distributed arts,
somewhere between the postwar era
and probably somewhere in the mid '90s.
And it's been a diminishment for TV, for films, for albums,
for cartooning, for novels ever since then.
Because the basic fact is, as a culture,
the means of distribution have been so filtered out,
and the means of creation have been so filtered out
that we're now getting tens of thousands of blogs,
tens of thousands of web comics, tens of thousands of small bands
that can distribute directly.
-There simply is no way to concentrate people's attention,
and when it gets concentrated on something,
it gets concentrated for a very short period of time,
probably very intensely.
Everybody is tweeting about it and watching it on YouTube,
and then it's gone, because the next thing has come along.
-You're getting all of these incredible voices
that you never would have gotten before,
but you no longer have those water-cooler pieces of art,
where everyone would know,
everyone would gather around at work
and say, "ah. Yeah. That's the one."
-There will no longer ever be a, like, rolling stones.
There won't be the Beatles.
There won't be an Elvis Presley
for the same reason there won't be another "Calvin and Hobbes."
The market is digitalizing, and it's atomizing.
So it's being spread over a far wider surface
but in a much thinner layer.
-If the "far side" started,
or "Calvin and Hobbes" started today in newspapers,
it would probably do well,
but I don't think it would have the impact
that it had in the late '80s.
-If you can name me a cartoon character
that's been invented since 1985, that's new --
from comic page, not on television --
if you can name me a cartoon character
that is a household term or a name
throughout this country, truly,
that my mother would know and that I would know
and that my kids would know
and anyone through Canada would know,
I would be very shocked.
And I don't think it's gonna happen again.
So I think Calvin and Hobbes
are the last great cartoon characters.
So he nailed that.
It's great to be first, but it's also good to be last.
- "Calvin and Hobbes" was of its age,
and you couldn't transplant it elsewhere, you know?
And, thankfully, itwasof its age,
which is another way of looking at it.
Thank god that itdidappear when it appeared,
and thank god that itdidrun when it ran and where it ran,
because I don't think it would have been near the success,
artistically or financially, for its worthy creator
had it run any other time,
which is both sort of amazing and kind of sad,
in a way, you know?
-If you were to ask me the question 10 years ago,
"how would his lack of licensing affect the strip,"
I would have said, "it's ridiculous. It's gonna fail.
It's gonna hurt the long-term legacy.
People will forget the strip quickly."
Because, you know, part of snoopy's enduring legacy
is that your 4-year-old can have a plush snoopy
and then learn about the cartoons and the strip.
They fall in love with the merchandising first
and then the characters and the content and the art.
So I would have said, "it's never gonna work.
"The strip is gonna go, vanish. We'll never hear from it again.
"And there will be people like me, 40 years from now,
"talking about it the same way we do
"about 'krazy Kat' and 'pogo' -- brilliant, wonderful.
The public has forgotten them."
Not with "Calvin and Hobbes." It's universal.
It has maintained its quality and integrity
to the point that kids today coming up are still reading it.
How did they learn about it? It's in their school libraries.
That was one of the breakthroughs,
is that "Calvin and Hobbes" wasencouragedby the teachers.
Teachers spotted the child who was Calvin
and said, "you're Calvin. I want you to read this."
And it got them reading. And parents encouraged it, too.
So I think that that made up for a lot of the merchandising
that would have helped carry it on.
That made up for the animation that never happened,
is that the comic was just that good
that it could survive without it.
I don't know that there is a lot like that.
-I'Ve lost track of the number of 6- and 7-year-olds
who list "Calvin and Hobbes" as their favorite comic strip.
And they know about the transmogrifier,
they know about the time machine,
and they know how to
turn a cardboard box into absolutely anything.
I think there's even a generation of kids named Calvin
because people my age are starting to become parents.
And all it takes, really, is seeing that dog-eared copy
of "something under the bed is drooling" or "Yukon ho!"
At your public library or on your school bookshelf.
-I'Ve heard questions like, "why are people still reading that?"
Or "why are the books still so popular?"
You know, "he hasn't been in newspapers in 15 years.
Why are people still talking about him?"
And it's like, "'cause it's transcendent."
That's the beauty of it.
And that's, I think,
why Calvin will be around 10 years from today, 25,
because he talks to US on a deeper level
than just a punch line.
-It's kind of reflected in the fact
that people can go back to "Calvin and Hobbes"
and read them over and over and over and over again,
and they're always joyful.
Even when you know what the punch line is gonna be,
it's still funny. [ Chuckles ]
-I feel inspired when I read a "Calvin and Hobbes" strip.
You know, as a human being, I'm just like,
"Calvin's enjoying life so much.
I want to go out and enjoy life that way."
-It can't really be contained by print or panels.
It's a living, breathing thing, and I think it always will be.
He used ink and brushes and some watercolors,
but, you know, he created life with that,
which I think is what every cartoonist aspires to,
but not many of US ever get to achieve it.
- "Calvin and Hobbes" -- there is not a single element in it
that isn't kind of as current as it was when it came out.
It's all about being a kid. It's all about imagination.
Every single thing's referenced.
I don't have to explain the context to my kids.
They actually live it in the same way I did.
It's not changing.
And, you know, to read "doonesbury"
or to read "bloom county" or the other, you know,
for me, the most important things growing up,
you need to have a sense of the history.
You need to understand the pop culture of the time
in a very specific way.
And "Calvin and Hobbes"
just kind of requires that you're alive.
[ Chuckles ] And it is quite an achievement.
-You know, I'Ve been fortunate
to work with some wonderful cartoonists,
and, you know, certainly, at the top of that list has to be bill,
because he was so different, so challenging.
He really caused US as a company and me as an individual
to rethink the ways we dealt with cartoonist
and, you know, what our role was
in helping them get their work out into the public.
His creativity and the result of his efforts
were, you know, up there
with probably the two or three or four greatest strips
of all time.
I think "Calvin" is something that will last.
And, heaven forbid,
if newspapers were to disappear tomorrow
and books were not to be printed,
there would be some way people would want to find his work
and read it again,
because I think it's that strong
and that enduring and that special.
-Over the years,
my favorite "Calvin and Hobbes" strip has changed.
When watterson was still writing and drawing,
my favorite might change weekly,
especially as he continued
to put out some of his greatest work
in the last few years.
I have my collection of "Calvin and Hobbes" strips
that I love for one reason or another.
But looking back at it all,
as much as I love some of the strips for the humor
or the adventure or the amazing art
or the imaginative place that the strip took me,
the strip that I can't really forget
is one that nobody else has ever mentioned to me
as a favorite or even a notable one.
When I'Ve described it to other fans,
I don't often get a look of recognition.
But for me, it's unforgettable, and it has a special meaning.
I'll never know exactly what bill watterson's intentions were
with this strip.
I, myself,
can see a few different possible interpretations.
But I can no longer look at it
without feeling like I'Ve glimpsed beyond the surface
of a comic strip filled with imagination
and magic and joy and adventure and friendship
and seen instead a hint of tremendous disappointment
and loss.
Watterson conceived of this strip.
He wrote it, drew it, and inked it
using the simplest of tools --
Bristol board, 2h pencils, a sable brush, and India ink.
He handed it over to his syndicate
for publication in newspapers worldwide.
And millions of readers discovered it
in the paper or in one his books,
where we all brought our individual experiences
and perspectives into the equation.
And bill watterson has repeated this process 3,160 times.
Each of these strips holds the potential
to touch someone somewhere in a unique and personal way.
Many of watterson's strips mean something special to me.
Some bring a huge smile to my face,
some challenge me to think, and a few are more melancholy.
I see some strips differently now than I did as a kid.
And for me, looking back,
this strip foreshadows the end of "Calvin and Hobbes."
-I just remember the announcement.
I remember reading the final comic.
I remember knowing that that was going to be it
and that it was a really poignant way to end it
and true to everything he'd built up before it.
-I certainly remember opening the comic page
that last Sunday in thechicago tribune
and seeing it and being like, "wow. It's over."
You just weren't used to comics ending, you know?
Like, they kept going. That was part of the deal.
-The final strip was the last draw.
All the elements that made the strip wonderful were there,
including the drawing that was so much a part of it.
There were very few words.
-Everyone who was a "Calvin and Hobbes" fan
remembers two strips.
One is that one that spoke to them individually
and the last one -- "let's go exploring!"
And it was just a wonderful way for him to end it.
-The way he handled it was so wonderful
with, you know, the toboggan ride,
which was very much a staple of the strip,
going off into just wide-open.
It wasn't nothingness, as I saw it.
It was everything-ness.
You know, white is not the absence of color.
White is all colors.
And you could make whatever you wanted
out of that final episode.
And, honestly,
how else is a cartoonist going to see the world?
It has to be a big, wide-open world,
because until you draw your very last strip,
you'Ve got to come up with a brand-new story
out of that world every single day.
-You know, it was an end posed as a beginning, basically.
-There's just something magical about that particular strip,
where, you know, it really is
just looking at the world afresh.
I imagine that's what bill watterson must have felt like, you know,
when he finished that last strip --
"it's a magical world. Now I can move on. What's next in my life?"
-He's trying to show US all
that, you know, there's more to life than a comic strip,
I think,
and trying to make US feel a little bit better,
but it doesn't work.
It doesn't work at all. [ Chuckles ]
-It gave the impression
that he was going to be exploring [laughs] new things,
and he probably is exploring new things,
but he's not sharing those publicly,
and so [chuckles] that's too bad.
-The final strip, for me,
is bittersweet in the sense that it was the end,
but the thought that, at the end of it,
you're being told, "let's go exploring,"
which is something I think watterson did
throughout his time in the strip,
whether it was making leaps in the artwork
so you had to kind of think what was happening
in the little white space between the panels,
or whether it was the fact
that an adventure didn't necessarily end succinctly
at the end of a strip
so you had to kind of imagine
what might have happened afterwards,
he was always telling his readers to explore.
-There is still magic in everyday life
if you know where to look.
And maybe if we look in the right place,
there is something else as wonderful as "Calvin and Hobbes"
or something that will give US that daily magic.
But we have to find it.
It may well be out there, as Calvin said.
It's up to US to look for it and to discover it.
-There is that saying that all good things must come to an end,
but I'm not sure I believe it.
As long as there are new readers
being introduced to "Calvin and Hobbes,"
watterson's legacy will live on.
And with those final three words
that almost every fan can recite,
so many new adventures will begin.
-So here is a question for you --
have you guys or have you written a letter to watterson,
and if so, you know, what was the experience like?
-I never have -- not when I was younger, not now.
-Mm-hmm.
-I have a word file on my computer,
and it's one line so far.
All it says is, "dear Mr. Watterson."
-[ Laughs ] Very fitting.
- There is nothing else. - Very fitting.
-Not another word.