Calvin & Hobbes creator speaks!!! (Sorta)

Exactly what I thought.

Now THAT'S brilliant!!!

 

While I also wish the question had been asked, what Waterson is doing now doesn't appear to be the point of the Q&A. It was a sidebar to the main story looking at C&H's appeal 15 years later. The article also explains that those stickers are bootlegs, so Waterson isn't seeing a dime of that. He missed out on a lot of money when he refused to go the merchandise route with the comic.

http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/fans_still_pine_for_calvin_and.html

 

1. Me, too. Can the Thomas Pynchon interview be far behind?

2. None, I'm pretty sure. But he doesn't seem to have any interest in quashing their production/distribution, either.

 

He hated that stuff with a passion, according to his book. He actually hated the licensed merchandise too, and fought his syndicator tooth-and-nail over it.

He also hated his syndicator, the newspapers his strips ran in, and the fact that he had to write the strip on a daily basis.

 

Actually, Salinger was checking out. <begin groans here>

 

Well, he's essentially a genius, so it's not a surprise he's a bit of an oddball, in relation to our notions of how a celebrity should act.

Here's his commencement speech from Kenyon College, way back in 1990.

http://bebekim.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/commencement-speech-bill-watterson/

 

I'm guessing, however, he tolerated the large checks that rolled in every month and allowed him to live this reclusive lifestyle in comfort.

 

2. I'm thinking none as well.

 

Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Fox Trot ... was the early to mid-90s the golden age of the comic strip? Whenever I go to the morgue to look something up from that period, I inevitably spend an extra 10 or 15 minutes reading the comics and still laughing every time.
Doesn't seem like there have been that many truly outstanding strips, at any one time, before or since.

 

Poor fucking guy. We should all hate our jobs that much.

 

We're in the golden age of comics right now. They just don't need newspapers anymore. Webcomics offer a whole new world. There's a lot of garbage, but there's also a ton of gold.

 

From the Q&A -- ouch!