Calvin & Hobbes creator speaks!!! (Sorta)

I can't fault Bill here. He did what he loved to do and he is a very private person. He just wanted to be left alone, which was difficult in a hot spotlight. I admire him for sticking to his guns.

Reminds me of this Calvin and Hobbes comic, which is also my favorite one:

 

I wanna know what Bubbler thinks.

 

No. The 50's were, greatly aided by newspapers' willingness to grant them sufficient space. Pogo and Li'l Abner were both brilliant
social satires, splendidly drawn (Walt Kelly trained under Disney, and say what you want about Capp's later politics, he drew the best-looking women in the history of the venue).
Dick Tracy's peak extended into the 50's.
Terry and the Pirates offered more great cheesecake. Charlie Brown and friends were just kicking into high gear. Beetle Bailey reigned as one of the greatest gag strips, ever.
Smokey Stover was remarkably wacky, a throwback to earlier days.
It's too easy.

C&H is head-and-shoulders the best of the post-Peanuts era. Trudeau's still great, especially since W re-galvinized him, and
Dilbert remains unparalleled, in its niche.
There's much more niche stuff out there.

There's more gold, the earlier you go. Much like American jazz, the originators of the form
blazed majestic trails. There has been nothing
before or since like Krazy Kat, nor will there ever be.

 

Have multiple C&H favorites, but the strips
employing C's detective alter ego, Tracer Bullet,
were some of the greatest stuff in the history
of the form.

 

Spaceman Spiff was great too.

There was a site somewhere that collected all the C&H snowman strips. That is some funny shit. I know a guy who got the complete C&H box set for Christmas one year and it is well worth the price - and the heft.

As for today's comics, only one I read regularly is Sherman's Lagoon.

 

This one?
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/zzaran/calvin.html

 

Oh yeah that's it. Just spent five minutes laughing like hell in the office.

 

"A philistine on the sidewalk."

That line always cracks me up.

 

If you guys are interested in some modern, non-newspaper comics, here's a list of some of my favorites. Some of these are like the bands that music nerds rave about but normal people don't like, but I think a lot of them have genuine broad appeal:

Note that most webcomics also have a special line of "mouse-over" text when you hold the mouse over the comic, often integral to the joke.


pbfcomics.com (The Perry Bible Fellowship. Definitely the more modern heir to Far Side. Defunct now but the archives are all still up. Fantastic)

asofterworld.com (the best dark humor comic ever. This:Far Side as South Park:Flintstones)

somethingpositive.net (one of the oldest on the web. Funny, dark, edgy humor mixed with ongoing stories that make the characters seem very much like real people. Been going for almost a decade now)

questionablecontent.net (individual strips aren't the greatest, but he does a great job of creating an ongoing world about a bunch of 20-somethings. Plus almost all the characters are hot women)

girlswithslingshots.com (another serial story, sort of a younger Sex and the City)

penny-arcade.com (mostly just for nerds and gamers, but consistently hilarious)

xkcd.com (science, math nerdery)

qwantz.com (Dinosaur Comic. appeals to only certain senses of humor. Uses the same drawings every day but replaces the text with just about anything).

 

Enthusiastically seconded. Any comic that includes Sagan Man is OK by me.

I would also suggest sinfest.net, even if it is a bit of an acquired taste.

 

If he ever decided to allow some of these strips to be made into movies or DVDs, it would rival Peanuts.

And nothing else comes close to Peanuts.

 

Delightful, beyond measure.