It must have been recently: There was a Far Side page-a-day calendar in the main office last year, but not this year.
And I think that C&H could have stayed worthwhile for another 5 or 10 years, but then, I’m not the artist, and if he thought it was starting to get stale, I’m not sure what position I’m in to argue.
I’d wager that most cartoonist have this ability.
Odesio
In a way he’s like Salinger. Found a way to live the life he wanted to live, gave the world something special, and had the integrity to keep the promises he made to himself when he started the journey. I sense less crazy from Watterson, though some of Salinger’s crazy might have come from the impossibility of being left alone.
Maybe the interview was flat but I’m not sure what you’d want from the guy. I say it’s part of his integrity. He’s into his work, not himself. He hasn’t cultivated a fascinating persona for interviews.
The comic strip that does the best job capturing C&H today is Frazz. And I have always wondered if it is a coincidence that Frazz looks like an adult Calvin.
Some quirky takes on things, for sure.
I’ve always thought that “Frazz” tries a little too hard to be like C&H. The art style is similar, Caulfield clearly shares some overly-smart-for-his-age DNA with Calvin, and, yeah, Frazz looks a lot like a grown-up Calvin. (I also note that Watterson was an avid bicycler, while Jef Mallett is an avid triathelete, and those both come through in the strips.)
Frazz is often funny, but it’s no Calvin and Hobbes, IMO.
Peanuts is fucking gold.
[QUOTE=Fenris;12063983
Geez…Watterson gives…what? One interview every 10 years? And these are the questions we get? How about "What strips from other authors influenced you?[/quote]
Every interview of Watterson ever published disappoints me (for lack of info), but he hasn’t made a secret of what inspired him.
Krazy Kat, Pogo, and maybe Peanuts.
Read his manifesto in the C&H total collection.
…I still feel like pontificating more on the greatness of C&H
Watterson badly wanted to have a graphic novel. At the the time, he may not have been familiar with this term. Or even knew what it meant.
Earlier comics (see Pogo and Krazy Kat) had achieved this. But the newspaper medium had left this option behind.
God bless him - he pushed as hard as anyone could against this transformation. The “comics”, or “funnies” had withered beyond a full page or two that allowed this to a restricted space that allowed only the lazy, talking-head garbage of Garfield, Marmaduke and The Family Circus.
It cost him dearly. He could have made 10x the money he ever made if he had been willing to whore C&H out to merchandise, which was becoming the standard model.
He refused. He drew a line in the sand. He won some limited freedom. Within this limited form, he made magic. Nothing ever topped his strip.
Reading it fifteen years later, it’s still sublime. Beautiful, organic and sparse. Clever, funny, and often melancholy.
C&H was the last great newspaper comic strip.
I actually stopped reading the comics altogether after Calvin and Hobbes went away.
Peanuts stopped being funny when Schulz’s kids grew up. He said, he used to get a lot of ideas from his kids, and it’s apparent the older they got the less funny Peanuts was.
I don’t know that it’s prime appeal was being funny (although it often was).
IMO, Peanuts lost its soul when it became a brand. You know, Snoopy pimping Met Life. Charlie Brown and Lucy on grade school posters urging me to brush my teeth.
And that’s a real pity. I think Peanuts was one of the greats, for a time. It was sad and funny at the same time. Even the later TV specials kept this balance - Great Pumpkin and Christmas are still wonderfully melancholy but beautiful.
Our mileages varied. For me, Peanuts was funny and inspired for about ten years. By the time Snoopy became “The Red Baron”, Peanuts had jumped the shark, and never stopped declining.
.
Eh, I don’t know.
As someone who has read every strip a gazillion times (as all the books do rotation in my bathroom as reading material, sorry if that’s TMI), I think that Watterson started to get repetitive somewhere between/during Attack of the Deranged etc etc etc and The Days are Just Packed, so, somewhere between 1990 and 1992. It’s still good stuff, and there are occasional gems, but major themes start to be repeated at this point. He quit at the right time, because Calvin can only flee Miss Wormwood’s classroom so many times before the minor differences between strips blend together.
Watterson’s one of the greats…
For me It’s always
Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Foxtrot, Peanuts, Doonesbury (only for the epic storylines), and then as a runner up to the top 5: Dilbert.
Those are the 5 greatest strips I’ve been reading since I was a kid, and I remember being so angry and frustrated when C&H and Farside stopped going to print… :le sigh:
Now of those, only Doonesbury & Dilbert are still around but I don’t really find the time to read them…
Several years ago I read a newspaper story that said people of course recognize him, but for the most part they don’t bother him. Sounds too good to be true, but that’s what it said. He has his regular stops (ice cream cone shop, for example) where he’s treated like a normal person.
Agreed. For Chrissakes, he already gave us ten years of Calvin and Hobbes! – We should never stop thanking him for that. How can people whine about wanting more from the guy? He wants to be left alone, and has certainly earned that privilege.
Exactly correct.
Nitpick: Snoopy was the World War 1 Flying Ace. The Red Baron was his nemesis.
Except that isn’t really the way a comic strip is intended to be read. A certain amount of repetitiveness is fine, if you’re only reading one strip a day. It’s only when you read them more quickly that it becomes a problem. Or, I suppose, when you’re making your living by drawing them, which is probably why Watterson thought it was starting to stale before most of his fans did.
I agree. He could have controlled the merchandising so that it remained in good taste, still made a lot of money and made his fans happy. And of course he could have donated the money to whatever causes he supports. But ultimately I respect his choice to stand by his principles.
Watterson has discussed the series and individual strips in various collections. Obviously he doesn't have much else to say about it and there is nothing wrong with that.