Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' interview.

[Swede]

Has it been 15 years. Seems like forever.


This marks the 15th year since "Calvin and Hobbes" said goodbye to the comics pages. Creator Bill Watterson, who grew up in Chagrin Falls and still makes Greater Cleveland his home, recently answered some questions via e-mail from Plain Dealer reporter John Campanelli. It's believed to be the first interview with the reclusive artist since 1989.





http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html

[Flying Dream Blues]

1. Thanks for posting that...count me as one of the most enduring

fans of the "6 year old and his tiger." I have heard that Bill is very reclusive but not surprisingly, he is also a wry and funny man as well. And humble. Though I miss C&H, he left us with a treasure trove to console ourselves with, and I wish him all the best.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. He's always struck me personally as a major prick.

Don't get me wrong, the strip itself was a classic. But never cared much for the man.

[gratuitous]

3. Not so much prick as prickly

His last collection of Sunday Funnies, he was doing commentary and observations to his own strips. He had one Sunday comic reproduced, and mentioned how much he really like the color wash of an alien landscape he'd done. I thought at that moment that maybe Mr. Watterson's little red caboose had gone chugging around the bend. In looking over some of his other commentaries, I found numerous confirmations.

He took a justifiable pride in his strips as little masterpieces, and some of his storylines were more ingenious than a John Dickson Carr detective novel. But he also seemed unaware that for about 98.7% of the newspaper reading public, any particular comic strip is meant to be glanced over on your way to the next one. I appreciated the effort he put into Calvin & Hobbes, but I also knew that any satisfaction he himself derived from the strip was going to have to be self-generated. I think by the end of his run he was just not getting any bang for his creative buck, and he quit. I also think he was a little surprised by the passivity of the reading public, but he really shouldn't have been.