24 Years Ago Today; Bill Watterson publishes the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip

[Dennis Donovan]

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Calvin and Hobbes @Calvinn_Hobbes

On December 31, 1995, Bill Watterson published the final 'Calvin & Hobbes' comic strip. For most of us, it was like watching our absolute best friend ever move to another continent! The hole in our hearts is still felt even now!



8:00 AM - Dec 31, 2019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes



Calvin and Hobbes is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995. Commonly cited as "the last great newspaper comic", Calvin and Hobbes has enjoyed broad and enduring popularity, influence, academic and philosophical interest.

Calvin and Hobbes follows the humorous antics of the title characters: Calvin, a precocious, mischievous and adventurous six-year-old boy; and Hobbes, his sardonic stuffed tiger. Set in the contemporary suburban United States, the strip depicts Calvin's frequent flights of fancy and friendship with Hobbes. It also examines Calvin's relationships with family and classmates, especially the love/hate relationship between him and his classmate Susie Derkins. Hobbes' dual nature is a defining motif for the strip: to Calvin, Hobbes is a living anthropomorphic tiger, while all the other characters see Hobbes as an inanimate stuffed toy. Though the series does not mention specific political figures or contemporary events, it does explore broad issues like environmentalism, public education, philosophical quandaries and the flaws of opinion polls.

At the height of its popularity, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. In 2010, reruns of the strip appeared in more than 50 countries, and nearly 45 million copies of the Calvin and Hobbes books had been sold worldwide.

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History

Development

"I thought it was perhaps too 'adult,' too literate. When my then-8-year-old son remarked, 'This is the Doonesbury for kids!' I suspected we had something unusual on our hands."
—Lee Salem, Watterson's editor at Universal, recalling his reaction after seeing Watterson's first submission

Calvin and Hobbes was conceived when Bill Watterson, while working in an advertising job he detested,[6] began devoting his spare time to developing a newspaper comic for potential syndication. He explored various strip ideas but all were rejected by the syndicates. United Feature Syndicate finally responded positively to one strip called The Doghouse, which featured a side character (the main character's little brother) who had a stuffed tiger. United identified these characters as the strongest, and encouraged Watterson to develop them as the centre of their own strip. Though United Feature ultimately rejected the new strip as lacking in marketing potential, Universal Press Syndicate took it up.

Launch and early success (1985–1990)
The first strip was published on November 18, 1985 in 35 newspapers. Watterson was warned by the syndicate not to give up the day job yet, but it was not long before the series had become a hit. Within a year of syndication, the strip was published in roughly 250 newspapers and was proving to have international appeal with translation and wide circulation outside the United States.

Although Calvin and Hobbes would undergo continual artistic development and creative innovation over the period of syndication, the earliest strips demonstrate a remarkable consistency with the latest. Watterson introduced all the major characters within the first three weeks, and made no changes to the central cast over the 10 years of the strip's history.

By April 5, 1987, Watterson was featured in an article in The Los Angeles Times. Calvin and Hobbes earned Watterson the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year category, first in 1986 and again in 1988. He was nominated another time in 1992. The Society awarded him the Humor Comic Strip Award for 1988. Calvin and Hobbes has also won several more awards.

As his creation grew in popularity, Watterson underwent a long and emotionally draining battle with his syndicate editors over his refusal to license his characters for merchandising. By 1991, Watterson had achieved his goal of securing a new contract that granted him legal control over his creation and all future licensing arrangements.

Creative control (1991–1995)
Having achieved his objective of creative control, Watterson's desire for privacy subsequently reasserted itself and he ceased all media interviews, relocated to New Mexico, and largely disappeared from public engagements, refusing to attend the ceremonies of any of the cartooning awards he won. The pressures of the battle over merchandising led to Watterson taking an extended break from May 5, 1991, to February 1, 1992, a move that was virtually unprecedented in the world of syndicated cartoonists.

Comparison of Calvin and Hobbes' following layout changes
During Watterson's first sabbatical from the strip, Universal Press Syndicate continued to charge newspapers full price to re-run old Calvin and Hobbes strips. Few editors approved of the move, but the strip was so popular that they had no choice but to continue to run it for fear that competing newspapers might pick it up and draw its fans away. Watterson returned to the strip in 1992 with plans to produce his Sunday strip as an unbreakable half of a newspaper or tabloid page. This made him only the second cartoonist since Garry Trudeau to have sufficient popularity to demand more space and control over the presentation of his work.

Watterson took a second sabbatical from April 3 through December 31, 1994. When he returned, he had made the decision to end the strip. In 1995, Watterson sent a letter via his syndicate to all editors whose newspapers carried his strip announcing his plans to end the strip by the end of the year. Stating his belief that he had achieved everything that he wanted to within the medium, he announced his intention to work on future projects at a slower pace with fewer artistic compromises.

The final strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995. It depicted Calvin and Hobbes outside in freshly fallen snow, reveling in the wonder and excitement of the winter scene. "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring!" Calvin exclaims as they zoom off over the snowy hills on their sled, leaving, according to one critic ten years later, "a hole in the comics page that no strip has been able to fill."

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I miss the strip...