The Who2 Blog
Bill Watterson Interview
Cartoonist Bill Watterson, the creator of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, has given his first interview in many years to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Watterson talks about the success of Calvin and Hobbes and his feelings about ending the strip at the top of his game:
"It's always better to leave the party early," he says. "If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now 'grieving' for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them."
Here's the interview, with John Campanelli.
Here is Campanelli's accompanying article about the strip ending fifteen years ago.
And here is a slideshow of editorial cartoons by Bill Watterson, from early in his career.
3 comments
Godblesshim for the great strip, and full respect to his right to start and stop his strip any time he wants. But that's a pretty lame-o interview.The questions are poor, granted. But it bugs me a little bit that Watterson won't acknowledge how unusual his choice was. His attitude towards his readers comes off as a lot more callous than he probably intends. His take on his audience boils down to, "We didn't really share anything in common back then, and if I'd continued they'd hate me now."I can't believe that's how he *really* feels about it.As an aside, 500,000 copies of the new book at $150 per book = $75 million. Here's hoping he scored at least $15 million of that action.
You're right about that interview. It's more "Bill Watterson answered a handful of my e-mail questions" than an interview.I don't know how exactly you're supposed to answer a question like "why do you think your stuff was so popular?"The obvious answer is "because it's good stuff." But I suppose you can't say that without sounding like an arrogant cuss.I understand not wanting a lot of publicity, sure. But at this point Watterson's starting to sound Salingeresque in his cagey-ness.I'm just not sure how that works -- that you get into the business of mass produced entertainment, only to say "I'm a private person."It naturally invites a situation where you become "famously reclusive," which is a little wacky.Nonetheless, as a fan of the strip I'm always glad to at least see it mentioned now and then.And he's right, if he were still doing the strip, he'd be in Charles Schulz territory for me. Once a fan of PEANUTS, now I read it and have a hard time grasping how it was ever so popular.
Agreed about Schulz. You want to think "Watterson wouldn't have gone south," but he's undoubtedly the best judge of his enthusiasm and keenness.My mom was reading a few comics to dad the other day, while he was lounging in his hospital day-surgery bed, and the Peanuts entry was embarrassingly punchless. (A Peppermint Patty-Marcie interaction, no surprise.)For someone as self-aware as Watterson, he doesn't seem to savvy about media. He should think to himself, "If I just do a friendly interview twice a year -- a half-hour a pop -- everyone will quickly lose interest and I can have the obscurity I want."