Why Bill Watterson Vanished
theamericanconservative.com
theamericanconservative.com
As I get older, some of the jokes and commentary age to that of coming from a younger person who still is grappling with the world, unaware of the commentary that could be said in ernest against it. The self reflection is mostly done via Hobbes, and sometimes he is not enough, too much in agreement. Luckily, it mostly never verges on insulting, but it's introductory to the issues he attempts to grapple with. As a reflection of a young child it will work forever, but as a reflection of Watterson, it shows a stall in development. Instead of accepting the world or at least challenging his initial revulsion, I worry he retreated and became a hermit out of depression.
The cynicism and story of the abrupt end of the comic, leaves an ambiguous hole in the story of Calvin. Those next stages of dialogue, that a child such as he must go through to continue. The author's hermiting, who is Calvin, gives that a possible outcome for Calvin, is to not to succeed but to retreat or worse. If you like Calvin, you don't want that, or for his author.
It is a sad backdrop that colors the work, especially near the end of the run. I'd feel better about it if Watterson went on to new pursuits rather than going silent for years. That is was a good time to try something new, rather than a depression induced rage to end it.
He could still have dropped Calvin and Hobbes, but done anything with visual art and it would have been amazing.
Agreed. I like to think the boy who cried wolf is not about a dumb kid but a kid trying to do right thing with the only language a child has and warn about a wolf the adults were too arrogant to believe they’d missed and a child noticed.
And so, we'll never get to see the live action Calvin and Hobbes starting MacCauley Culkin and Jim Carrey as a wise-cracking tiger, nor any of it's sequels.
And that's why it was so much money, not from the strip itself. I'm pretty sure no one has ever made that kind of money just from a comic strip and reprints in books.
But it was pretty well known that Watterson was pressured to do similar merchandising and he steadfastly refused. He had a strong distaste for such things.
Just to be more precise about what Watterson was turning his back on. It's very sad for us as his audience that he ended his strip, but I can see his point about the merchandising.
I remember reading about one of the great English middle-distance runners of the 80s, Coe or Ovett, that one day he had finished a workout, and understood that he wasn't going to get any faster, that he had peaked. He quit that day, and didn't run again.
The comics pages, if you can still find them, are full of strips by people who ran out of ideas twenty or thirty years ago but keep on publishing. I think that Charles Schultz hit his peak about 60 years ago, but not even his death could prevent the publishers from keeping him in print.
By the way, for all you comic-book nerds out there, Watterson contributed a few strips (three?) to Stefan Fatsis's "Pearls Before Swine" a few years ago.
But I often find myself feeling like I wasted myself by not pursuing medicine; I had the grades. Instead I've pursued illustration. I haven't made any seriously good work, but that's not what bothers me. I often wonder " what if illustration was a less worthwhile pursuit, right from the outset? What if I made the very best works possible in illustration-- they're still not saving any lives.
I found a lot of comfort from that just now with the thought: "what if Bill Watterson had chosen medicine?"
It's just human nature.
Whatever you choose to do in the moment (continue illustrating, stop illustrating and go to medical school, some third thing), pour your heart into it, and you can find satisfaction in that.