Looking for Calvin and Hobbes - Nevin Martell

 

I’ve been a comic strip reader as long as I can remember, starting with all the classics of the 1950s when I was just a kid. At some point in the eighties, my taste in comics switched over to those strips with more sophisticated artwork, or the ones that addressed my more adult concerns. But really, it was always about cartoonists who could actually make me laugh out loud on a regular basis. So, for years, my favorite comic strips were Dilbert, The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes. Sadly for many of us, the cartoonists responsible for both The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes shut the strips down way before fans were ready to see that happen. I grieve the loss of those two strips to this day. Dilbert, on the other hand, is still out there, having long outlived the period in my life during which I actually read a daily newspaper.

 Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip was written by superfan Nevin Martell and published in late 2009. I recently watched a documentary in which Martell explored Bill Watterson’s decision to disappear from public view. That’s, in fact, how I became aware of Martell’s book. When he began the book, Martell still hoped that he would be able to convince Watterson to give him an interview that he could use to close it out. But Watterson, being the recluse that he still is, never responded to the author’s letter or attempts to reach him through third-party friends or business associates. Still, Martell does manage to end the book in an interesting way by visiting Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Watterson’s hometown, where he managed to snag a rather pleasant interview with the cartoonist’s mother.

 

Calvin and Hobbes was a daily comic strip for ten years if you count the two nine-month periods in the nineties during which Watterson took much needed sabbaticals from the grind and pressure of producing a comic strip under such tight deadlines. The strip went into rerun mode during those eighteen months. Then, in October 1995, Watterson ended the strip for good. And he never looked back.

 

Bill Watterson (left) hates fame; he wants absolutely no part of it, even refusing to let his cartoon characters be licensed for sale as stuffed animals, dolls, toy figures, or anything else. That decision cost him and his syndicator millions and millions of dollars over time, but Watterson never wavered in his determination to keep the strip pure to his vision. Bill Watterson accomplished more with his 3,160 comic strips than most other cartoonists can only dream about. He greatly influenced his cartoonist contemporaries - setting such a high bar that he probably made his competitors better than they would have been without him - and the generation of cartoonists who followed him. But he was such a private man, that it is hard to find anyone except for perhaps his friends from high school and college who can claim to really know the man. Watterson’s reclusive lifestyle makes J.D. Salinger’s look like that of a carnival husker in comparison.

 

Martell sums of Watterson’s impact on the world this way:

 

            “Even though Watterson hadn’t set out to create something with mass appeal, Calvin and Hobbes did ultimately attract an audience that was without age limits or cultural boundaries. It was universally understandable without becoming meaningless or trite. It’s attractiveness never detracted from its artistry or depth. In that way, the strip was the ultimate piece of pop art.”

 

I couldn’t agree with him more. Bill Watterson has a very rare talent, and it’s a terrible shame that he didn’t share it with us longer than he did.

 

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