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Comment by Tyr42 | Hacker News Reader

Man, I always wonder what would have happened if Bill Watterson had been around for the era of webcomics. Much more creative freedom, and no editor or syndicate to tell you how to layout your panels. Would he have loved it?

Or would he have hated it? He certainly wouldn't have wanted to build a website for it.

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There are some absolutely fantastic web comics out there but none of them have had the cultural impact of Calvin and Hobbes. I don't see how any of them could, to be honest. Even though the technical means of distribution are there at near-zero cost, there's no logistical way in practice to get a webcomic in front of a vast cross-section of society for an entire decade.

We can never go back to a pre-internet/streaming era.

While that means it's pretty isolating to find favorite media (hard to talk about something like "Solo Leveling" with anyone that's not into that sort of thing). What it also has meant is an explosion of new media to tickle almost anyone's tastes. It's as if everything has become "underground music".

Hipsters got jobs in tech and now every band is a band no one has heard of?

The monoculture is dead for better or worse.

For me, it's hard to imagine him giving up the printed newspaper strip's connection to the physical world. Calvin and Hobbes is filled with references to the basic elements of physical reality: dirt, rocks, water, snow, speed, collisions, temperature, light, sound. Webcomics exist in a world of pure information.

Webcomics exist in the physical world because they appear on screens, which are just as physical as paper. Neither newspapers nor screens usually come into contact with dirt, rocks, water, snow, or collisions. Newspapers make more noise than screens, but screens emit more light. Printed cartoons exist as pure information too, in the sense that they can be copied and printed on different things.

He's had more than 2 decades to reject that opportunity.

Yeah. He's not dead. He could have gone into webcomics if he had wanted.

I think he's a product of his time (pre-internet). He stopped because he felt he hit the limits of what he could create, and while a large part of it was the restrictions the newspapers put on him, it was also that he was running out of ideas. It's something he's specifically said in his very rare interviews, and he seems to enjoy living a very quiet life.

While webcomics are thriving, they don't quite have the same cultural impact that every kid growing up had for a few decades where the newspaper would be out on the kitchen table and the kids would nosedive for the comics. When I think about it, it was a brilliant move for newspapers. As I got older and closer to being an adult, I started reading the rest of the paper.

There were several excellent comics, but only C&H has stood the test of time and I am so proud that my 8 year old daughter recently pulled down the books are started getting lost in them. Sometimes the restrictions and limitations produce creativity in their own right, and I often wonder if something like C&H could even make it in today's cultural environment (both from a political point of view and in the modern social media landscape).

TIL that Bill Watterson is still alive.

I think it's because he retired relatively early. He was 37 when he ended Calvin and Hobbes. And he's always been relatively private.

He published a book not too long ago.

FYI Berke Breathed (Bill's contemporary, occasional collaborator and pen-pal) is still posting new Bloom County comics on his Patreon.

I think he would have enjoyed the creative freedom, run with it, and maybe even have managed to make some interesting new expression, say something along the lines of:

https://xkcd.com/1190/

(which won a well-deserved Hugo if memory serves)

I've been on something of a webcomic kick for a while now, and while I'd love to shill for _Girl Genius_ https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104 (oops, guess I just did), the artist whom I find most striking and who best epitomizes the evolution of webcomics (Kaja and Phil Foglio have their origin firmly planted in traditional print work) is "Tailsteak":

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6852154.Mason_Tailstea...

who has gone from: 1/0 https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=1

to Leftover Soup: https://www.leftoversoup.com/first.php

and is now working on: https://forwardcomic.com/firstpage.html

where each is published once a week or so, with a story plotted out to run for 1,000 strips --- ~two decades each --- curiousity over what other such stories are out there has me searching/reading a lot, and a "Webcomics" browser bookmarks/favorites folder which is beginning to scroll....

Oh my god, 1/0 is an absolutely brilliant piece of art and I recommend everyone here to check it out. It starts out unassuming, but that's part of the point -- it ended up becoming about the author's growth through talking to characters he himself made up (and the characters talking back in protest), and he also ended up meeting his wife through it :)

I guess if I had to sell the idea... in its own words: it's as far removed from the average sitcom as possible. It's not at all like anything else you have ever read. (https://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=961)

Thank you for the link to 1/0 — it had a link to Absurd Notions that I had been searching for to read again but couldn’t remember the name of!

I don't get the first one.

There's an explanation here: https://explainxkcd.com/1190

Originally, the frame at the xkcd link changed once per 30 minutes, now if you click the comic you can read it as an archive.

See my other comment. Webcomic creators got their own problems that aren't much different than his were. Be it having to deal with Social Media algorithms, or working for a recently-public company that wants to force people to an app, or having to be both a web designer AND a comic writer/drawer (smbc-comics /still/ having problems with their commenting system on their website comes to mind).

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