On Bill Waterson's Upcoming Book - And Why He Vanished (theamericanconservative.com) 77
In 1995 Bill Watterson walked away from "the madness that had consumed him for practically his entire adulthood," writes the American Conservative.
Though everyone loved his Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, "I had virtually no life beyond the drawing board," he said of the years leading up to the decision... So it came as some surprise earlier this year when Watterson's publisher announced his first new book in nearly thirty years. The Mysteries is a "modern fable"... ["For the book's illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration," explains the upcoming book's web page. "Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate — a mysterious process in its own right."] At seventy-two pages, the book itself is a slight thing, in no way a return to the daily grind of the funny pages. It is being sold exclusively in print. And, typical of Watterson, press access is limited. [Publisher] Andrews McMeel is not sending review copies until the week of its publication in early October...
In the years since the strip's end, Watterson has indicated that there was something false inherent to Calvin and Hobbes, some impurity either in his approach or encoded in the strip itself that made it impossible to continue in good faith. That, combined with the fight over licensing with his syndicate, crushed him. "I lost the conviction that I wanted to spend my life cartooning," he remembers realizing in 1991, four years before he ended the strip. Beyond stray comments such as this one, he has never forthrightly explained where exactly he went wrong. But I think I have an explanation...
"Work and home were so intermingled that I had no refuge from the strip when I needed a break," Watterson recalls. "Day or night, the work was always right there, and the book-publishing schedule was as relentless as the newspaper deadlines. Having certain perfectionist and maniacal tendencies, I was consumed by Calvin and Hobbes." By Watterson's own admission, he cannot accurately recall a whole decade of his life because of his "Ahab-like obsession" with his work. "The intensity of pushing the writing and drawing as far as my skills allowed was the whole point of doing it," he says. "I eliminated pretty much everything from my life that wasn't the strip." While Watterson's wife, Melissa Richmond, organized everything around him, he furthered his isolation, burrowing ever more deeply into the strip's world. There was no other way, he believed, to keep its integrity absolute. "My approach was probably too crazy to sustain for a lifetime," he says, "but it let me draw the exact strip I wanted while it lasted...."
But Watterson had designed a world for himself so self-contained that any disruption could mean its destruction: "I just knew it was time to go." This much became clear in the middle of the licensing fight. It took up so much of his energy that he lost his lead time on the strip and found himself in a situation where he was drawing practically every single comic on press night. After a few weeks of this, he broke down. "I was in a black despair," he says. "I was absolutely frantic. I had to publish everything I thought of, no matter what it was, and I found that idea almost unbearable." His wife saw him spiraling out of control and drew up a schedule that helped him slowly, over the course of six months, rebuild his lead time. Not long after, Watterson crashed his bike, bruised a rib, and broke a finger. He was so afraid of losing his lead again that he propped his drawing board on his knees in his sickbed and drew anyway. That freaked him out, too, and so gradually he scaled his life down to the point where nothing unpredictable could happen...
Watterson compares ending Calvin and Hobbes to reaching the summit of a high mountain... He had no desire to return whence he came. And he couldn't go any higher; no one can ascend into the air itself. So he took his next best option. He jumped.
Though everyone loved his Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, "I had virtually no life beyond the drawing board," he said of the years leading up to the decision... So it came as some surprise earlier this year when Watterson's publisher announced his first new book in nearly thirty years. The Mysteries is a "modern fable"... ["For the book's illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration," explains the upcoming book's web page. "Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate — a mysterious process in its own right."] At seventy-two pages, the book itself is a slight thing, in no way a return to the daily grind of the funny pages. It is being sold exclusively in print. And, typical of Watterson, press access is limited. [Publisher] Andrews McMeel is not sending review copies until the week of its publication in early October...
In the years since the strip's end, Watterson has indicated that there was something false inherent to Calvin and Hobbes, some impurity either in his approach or encoded in the strip itself that made it impossible to continue in good faith. That, combined with the fight over licensing with his syndicate, crushed him. "I lost the conviction that I wanted to spend my life cartooning," he remembers realizing in 1991, four years before he ended the strip. Beyond stray comments such as this one, he has never forthrightly explained where exactly he went wrong. But I think I have an explanation...
"Work and home were so intermingled that I had no refuge from the strip when I needed a break," Watterson recalls. "Day or night, the work was always right there, and the book-publishing schedule was as relentless as the newspaper deadlines. Having certain perfectionist and maniacal tendencies, I was consumed by Calvin and Hobbes." By Watterson's own admission, he cannot accurately recall a whole decade of his life because of his "Ahab-like obsession" with his work. "The intensity of pushing the writing and drawing as far as my skills allowed was the whole point of doing it," he says. "I eliminated pretty much everything from my life that wasn't the strip." While Watterson's wife, Melissa Richmond, organized everything around him, he furthered his isolation, burrowing ever more deeply into the strip's world. There was no other way, he believed, to keep its integrity absolute. "My approach was probably too crazy to sustain for a lifetime," he says, "but it let me draw the exact strip I wanted while it lasted...."
But Watterson had designed a world for himself so self-contained that any disruption could mean its destruction: "I just knew it was time to go." This much became clear in the middle of the licensing fight. It took up so much of his energy that he lost his lead time on the strip and found himself in a situation where he was drawing practically every single comic on press night. After a few weeks of this, he broke down. "I was in a black despair," he says. "I was absolutely frantic. I had to publish everything I thought of, no matter what it was, and I found that idea almost unbearable." His wife saw him spiraling out of control and drew up a schedule that helped him slowly, over the course of six months, rebuild his lead time. Not long after, Watterson crashed his bike, bruised a rib, and broke a finger. He was so afraid of losing his lead again that he propped his drawing board on his knees in his sickbed and drew anyway. That freaked him out, too, and so gradually he scaled his life down to the point where nothing unpredictable could happen...
Watterson compares ending Calvin and Hobbes to reaching the summit of a high mountain... He had no desire to return whence he came. And he couldn't go any higher; no one can ascend into the air itself. So he took his next best option. He jumped.
TL; DR (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:TL; DR (Score:5, Funny)
In honor of which, my favorite Far Side cartoon [quoracdn.net].
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In honor of which, my favorite Far Side cartoon [quoracdn.net].
I've owned dogs most of my life, and it's taught me that strip is spot-on.
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93 Escort Wagon confessed:
In honor of which, my favorite Far Side cartoon [quoracdn.net].
My favorite has always been this one [thefarside.com].
Not that it's an easy choice, mind you ...
Re:TL; DR (Score:4, Interesting)
The actual 'news' content had all but disappeared; the only reason I subscribed to 'the paper' was to get my dose of crossword puzzle and critically the comic page featuring Calvin & Hobbes, Far Side, and Bloom County: https://www.berkeleybreathed.c... [berkeleybreathed.com]
I even sprang for the sunday edition so I could see their amazing evolving presentations in color.
The local paper (used to be papers) went from 1 to 2 to 3 pages as these artists amassed huge followings.
Seems like all three were able to survive by 'taking a break'.
They were and are amazing.
Excelsior!
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The actual 'news' content had all but disappeared; the only reason I subscribed to 'the paper' was to get my dose of crossword puzzle and critically the comic page featuring Calvin & Hobbes, Far Side, and Bloom County:
Frank and Earnest had some good panels as well. One that has stayed with me throughout my life was a panel where Frank and Earnest were angels looking down on the Earth and you could see the rest of universe beyond with Frank saying to Earnest, "That sure is a lot of atoms." (paraphrased)
And my mind was blown.
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Don't know if I have a favorite Far Side, but "Tyrannosaurus Mex" always makes me laugh.
However, there was no question that, on the south side of the river, the land was ruled by the awesome Tyrannosaurus Mex.
And my wife, who was a Gifted Education teacher, had a copy of the "Midvale School for the Gifted" panel, with the kid pushing on the door that says "Pull", on her classroom wall.
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And my wife, who was a Gifted Education teacher, had a copy of the "Midvale School for the Gifted" panel, with the kid pushing on the door that says "Pull", on her classroom wall.
Oh god, as someone one who was in gifted programs in elementary school during this era that strip was utterly beat to death by the adults running said program. Don't get me wrong, it was funny the first few times I saw it, it just stopped being funny a few dozen uses in.
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You probably will like this one as well [smbc-comics.com] then, which seems to be a homage to that one (but SMBC style).
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Thagomizer.png
But I consider Calvin and Hobbes to have been so much better than any other comic strip, that it flirts with being better than all the other comic strips that have ever been produced, combined.
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"Jumping The Shark" refers to reaching your pinnacle, not declining in quality.
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Oh dear child, I too remember being confidently wrong when talking to my elders.
The only chance you'll ever have to grow up is if a person you're attracted to calls you on it and you have the depth of character to be both embarrassed, and also inspired to do better.
Otherwise you won't grow out of it at all, you'll simply become a bitter neckbeard who is withdrawn enough from society that it only happens online, because that's the only time you attempt communication. Hopefully you're not already there, but t
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First, I'm turning 40 this year. Not a child.
Second, the episode where Fonzi waterskis and jumps over a shark, the eponymous "jumping the shark", is regarded as the best episode of Happy Days, when the show reached its zenith.
Re: TL; DR (Score:2)
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The term is widely misunderstood and usually used incorrectly. But so are the phrases "begging the question" and "exception that proves the rule". That doesn't alter what those phrases actually mean. It just means that most people are wrong about common phrases with great frequency. If you want to make a descriptivist argument about the phrase, go ahead; frankly, I'm generally sympathetic to the descriptivist perspective. That does not alter either the origins or the original meaning of a phrase.
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Not sure it's widely misunderstood, but it's certainly misunderstood by you.
And bzzzt! It's "Fonzie" not "Fonzi." We would also have accepted "The Fonz." "Arthur" is also acceptable, but only if you're Mrs. C.
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Here. This 2010 LA Times article [latimes.com] was penned by the writer of the Happy Days episode in question. He defines it as
"a moment. A defining moment when you know from now on it’s all downhill it will never be the same."
For a writer being accused of creating the episode you view as the pinnacle of Happy Days, he doth protesteth much.
Let me clarify for you: It is not the point at which all subsequent episodes decline in quality. Reread the definition. It is the point when the viewer knows, for certain, the show is on the decline.
TV Tropes Jumping the Shark Re:TL; DR (Score:2, Interesting)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm... [tvtropes.org]
TV Tropes - Jumping The Shark Analysis
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm... [tvtropes.org]
Caution: TV Tropes is nicely addictive.
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I wonder if he considered hiring help for parts of the process?
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He was also more than a little full of himself.
Cant they spell names right (Score:5, Informative)
in the headline
Calvin & Hobbes web site (Score:2)
Two T's in Watterson: Bill Watterson.
Re:Normal story, really (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bit cynical. Not everything is about money and Calvin & Hobbes is a testament to that.
Re:Normal story, really (Score:5, Informative)
You really don't know much about Wattersons fights with his syndicate, do you? Because if you knew, you wouldn't claim that he is coming back for the money. Your post stinks of cynical ultra-capitalism, and anyone that has looked into an iota of what Watterson is about realizes that you are talking out of your ass.
At the height of popularity he opposed merchandising C&H, despite it would make him incredible amounts of (more) money. When the syndicate said that is wasn't his decision to make, he said he wouldn't continue to draw the strip. They countered with he was contractually obliged to, so he said that they could try to force him. In the end the syndicate saw reason and no official merchandise was made. Also, he didn't like the strict format of the sunday strips since it limited his artistic freedom with the two panel pre-gag that could be cut to reflow the strip. The syndicate said that this is how sundays strips must be. Watterson stood his ground. In the end the syndicate budged and found a compromise that allowed him to draw the strips as he wanted to. It is very apparent and you can see a strict demarcation line between his early and later sunday strips.
While I love C&H for the art and profound messages, my admiration for Watterson as an artist is even bigger. He has integrity and vision that he does not compromise with. I am just sad that he had such an awful burnout and felt the need to hide away.
If he is returning, I am utterly convinced it is because he found a project he deeply believes in, and I look forward to reading it.
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Your post stinks of cynical ultra-capitalism
Some fauxtistic nerds basically mistake reactive cynicism with profoundness. Anything at all, if they put a cynical spin on it, they think they've reached some profound truth, when in fact any dumb AI can be trained to do the same thing.
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Off the top of my head, the first changed-layout Sunday strip was Hobbes ambushing Calvin, all seen through Hobbes' eyes, right?
Could never appreciate it (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a whole bunch of kids around me who just loved C & H. My sister and brother-in-law still love to read it. I somehow never could appreciate it. Somehow a mischievous kid with an imaginary living tiger never sat with me. Even the superhero comics, with them wearing their undies on top of their trousers, never sat well with me.
But I loved Dilbert and I still do. The pointy haired boss, the cynical Wally, the megalomaniacal Dogbert and the all agreeable Asok, sat very well with me from the start. And now I meet all those characters at the office in real life too.
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I never got it either. Seems stupid.
By the time Dilbert started doing the office stuff I was already neck deep in it in real life. To me it wasn't satire, it was depressing so I never read it.
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Even now that Dilbert is subscription only?
Re: Could never appreciate it (Score:1)
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You used to be able to read every comic for "free" from dilbert.com daily. The site eventually became infested with ads, but using an ad blocker helped with that.
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When you could go to comics.com or dilbert.com and read the entire archive for free online.
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Dilbert was the 1st syndicated comic on the internet. It was in a usenet newsgroup and your newsreader would decode it.
This was before web browsers existed.
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But I loved Dilbert and I still do. The pointy haired boss, the cynical Wally, the megalomaniacal Dogbert and the all agreeable Asok, sat very well with me from the start. And now I meet all those characters at the office in real life too.
Interesting. My guideline was always whenever my job/work/office started to resemble Dilbert, it was time to start looking for another job. :-)
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But I loved Dilbert and I still do. The pointy haired boss, the cynical Wally, the megalomaniacal Dogbert and the all agreeable Asok, sat very well with me from the start. And now I meet all those characters at the office in real life too.
Interesting. My guideline was always whenever my job/work/office started to resemble Dilbert, it was time to start looking for another job. :-)
The problem being, of course, that there will be fallible humans at the new job too (including ourselves) :)
Dilbert is about the foibles of people at work. We are all people.
Re:Could never appreciate it (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw Calvin as something completely else, a kid with boundless imagination and unrelenting curiosity. A lonely kid with few, if any, real friends, and a kid hating to conform to societal expectations. He was never intentionally, maliciously mischevious. He just used imagination to escape boredom, loved being outdoors and creating things. Sometimes this got himself into trouble. Perhaps I saw a little of myself in him, IDK. I started reading it at an age older than Calvin and looked back at my own childhood through it.
Dilbert on the other hand was fun in the beginning, a bit of chuckle about stereotypes. Then it got real stale after a few years. Dilbert is just about the stereotypes and you can only tell that story so many times. A decade in and the same kind of jokes gets repeated and rehashed over and over. The hero is faced with impossible situations by an incompetent boss, and either ridicules the boss in a way that goes over his head or maliciously complies. Fun one time, two times, then yawn. Let us interleave those stories with the incompetent co-workers...
When Scott Adams outed himself as a douchebag, reading it just gave a bitter aftertaste and it felt good stopping to give him money. Given the outrageous and sometimes agressively marketed merchandise, Dilbert with its no art and all money, is pretty much the antithesis of Calvin & Hobbes.
Even though Dilbert is the one comic cut from newspapers and pinned to cubicle walls, above water coolers and coffee makers, it is in a completely other league than Calvin & Hobbes. After getting some distance to Dilbert it feels like its only selling point is as a minor rebellion against your bad workplace and/or stupid boss. Having unfortunately ended up in such a work environment the correct way is to quit, not comply and "complain".
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He was never intentionally, maliciously mischevious.
Dude. C'mon. Susie was a perpetual target for pine cones and water balloons, though her worst crime was just existing. Calvin most definitely had a maliciousness to him that wasn't reactive to something mom, dad, Rosalyn, or Moe did. I mean, sure, it wasn't seriously harmful, but he's no angel. He's us. We've all wanted to ding someone with a relatively harmless object to start shit for the lulz. I still do, my prime target being my adult kid, who is definitely Hobbes to my Calvin.
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He's us. We've all wanted to ding someone with a relatively harmless object to start shit for the lulz. I still do...
No, healthy people don't do that. When healthy people fantasize about "dinging" someone, it is someone bad, and they're doing it out of a desire to create justice.
Healthy people imagine being batman, not the joker. Luke, not Vader.
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Good thing I'm not healthy, then. Batman is fucking boring. The Joker has depth.
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I understand what you're saying.
You feel you lack depth, and you're striving for it.
It's good that you're trying, but you're just gonna make yourself suffer more by trying to be an edgelord.
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You're just making yourself look silly trying to brand me as an edgelord based on a single comment.
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I was only trying to be an edgelord when you called me on it, I'm not actually succeeding
Did you have a point?
Re: Could never appreciate it (Score:2)
I started a Dilbert wall in a hall of the cubie complex that I worked at. I even saw the boss one day stop and look at some of them. I couldnâ(TM)t quite decipher the look on his face. By the time I left that place, all CEOs had been briefed about Dilbert walls, and I never saw another one again.
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I always really appreciated that Hobbes and whether he really came to life or not was always left pretty nebulous so the reader more or less decided (or didn't) themselves.
Basically, I don't think there's a "correct" answer as to whether Hobbes coming to life is real or not and I love that!
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...because real tigers talk and don't eat human children.
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Real tigers do communicate vocally, and do not typically eat human children.
Also known for giving its drawings to a museum (Score:3, Informative)
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Oh shit, I'd don't know that existed. Great call out.
Another suggestion in this vein for enthusiasts is the 10th anniversary book where Waterson features many of his most popular strips along with commentary from himself on the influences behind them or just his thoughts on them in general.
It also features a truly excellent essay on the history of newspaper comics, focusing on those Waterson found most influential to his own work.
Joy (Score:1)
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Meanwhile at Chez Dilbert... (Score:1)
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Scott Adams [peering out through one of Dilbert's eyes in a Dilbert shaped facade]: LOL -- I kept this up for decades and I'm fine
For some definition of "fine" I suppose. He got dropped by many (most?) newspapers after going on a racist tirade, then he pulled Dilbert off the general internet and eventually re-launched as a subscription-only strip on Rumble, a conservative platform popular among the (ironically named) Right. Oh well, plenty of other comics to read...
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No it was actually pretty racist.
The creator of the Dilbert comic strip faced a backlash of cancellations Saturday while defending remarks describing people who are Black as members of “a hate group” from which white people should “get away.”
https://apnews.com/article/ani... [apnews.com]
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It's right in your (clearly not POV-free) story. Adams was responding to a survey that showed that 26% of blacks hated him just for being white.
The backlash began following an episode this past week of the YouTube show, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams.” Among other topics, Adams referenced a Rasmussen Reports survey that had asked whether people agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.”
Most agreed, but Adams noted that 26% of Black respondents disagreed and others weren’t sure.
The Anti-Defamation League says the phrase was popularized in 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the discussion forum 4chan but then began being used by some white supremacists.
Adams, who is white, repeatedly referred to people who are Black as members of a “hate group” or a “racist hate group” and said he would no longer “help Black Americans.”
Agree with him (that if over 1/4 of a group hates you for your skin color that they are a hate group), disagree with him, or whatever, but there is no thinking man's universe in which that (Adam's statement) is just plain racist. It is "racist" - portrayed, labeled, used as fodder and packaged as a substitute for real racism, to alleviate the Left's racism shortage.
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You really should read how the survey in question was conducted. The results are dubious at best.
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[peering out through one of Dilbert's eyes in a Dilbert shaped facade]
Peering out through one of the PHB's eyes is more like the reality of it...
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Dilbert is not even vageuly in the same category as Calvin & Hobbes. It re-hashes basically the same ideas over and over and over, doesn't do meaningful character development even one strip out
Calvin & Hobbes is Fight Club (Score:2)
I did enjoy Calvin & Hobbes, and I also enjoyed Fight Club, so imagine how pleased I was to come across this essay some two decades ago that perfectly connected those dots. https://everything2.com/title/... [everything2.com]
Doesn't get old.
Glad it's print only (Score:5, Insightful)
It is being sold exclusively in print.
While reading on a big monitor is fine, there's nothing which can replace the sensation of having a book in hand, turning each page to see what comes next, the scent of the paper itself.
Even better, no one can change it once you've bought the book. Unlike in digitial format.
Love C&H (Score:3)
I don't think the level of obsession Watterson describes resulted in the kind of art he describes as the goal.
The bratty kid having flights of imagination, teasing the girl next door he obviously liked but didn't know how to handle that, building those awesome snowman dioramas, the simple joy of doing something stupid with his imaginary best friend - those are the strips that get remembered fondly. Those are the core ideas that grabbed us and didn't let go.
The style was nice, the stories generally sweet - but it was the fundamental ideas behind them that made them so memorable. The art is not significantly above and beyond that of other cartoonists, I think it's loved because it's C&H. The stories had lots of repetition, it's not like every strip was unique.
Art [Re:Love C&H] (Score:2)
...The style was nice, the stories generally sweet - but it was the fundamental ideas behind them that made them so memorable. The art is not significantly above and beyond that of other cartoonists.
I would say to the contrary, the art was not merely perfectly adapted for the story, Not up to the art standards of Prince Valiant, but significantly better than pretty much any of the other strips on the page at the time. Compare any random Calvin and Hobbes to Dilbert, for example.
Watterson also often amused himself by varying styles to fit content. Tyrannosaurs in F14s, for example: https://i.pinimg.com/originals... [pinimg.com]
or emulating the use of light and shadow of noir PI film https://www.reddit.com/media?u [reddit.com]
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That's like comparing a Chinese ink on rice paper painting to a French Realist oil on canvas. Simpler doesn't equate to easier or less worthwhile. What matters is the feeling you can evoke in the viewer.
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I politely disagree, I found the Sunday comics were often visually quite impressive, especially if your newspaper wasn't one of the ones that cut out the intro panels. It's all done in watercolor which isn't everyone's jam artistically but I always enjoyed his art.
Some strips were nothing more than talking heads to be sure but some of my favorites for his comics were the Sunday editions of Spaceman Spiff or any of the elaborate fantasy scenarios Calvin's imagination would run with. They gave great art along
Tech News? (Score:2)
While I found TFS interesting, what does it have to do with tech? He's an artist that got unhealthily obsessed and burnt out. As superfans like me of Calvin and Hobbes know from interviews/other sources, there was tremendous pressure because of the 'negative space' (my term) around the story. For instance, the mother and father are never named... Watterson claimed that the visit by the Uncle nearly caused him a nervous breakdown. Considering that by far the most important secondary characters are the mo
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While I found TFS interesting, what does it have to do with tech?
Slashdot is "news for nerds." Sometimes that means tech. Sometimes that means other aspects of life that many nerds had/have as part of their lives. As seen from the comments to this thread, Calvin and Hobbes is definitely something that many slashdot readers would consider to be "news for nerds."
Calvin and Hobbes! (Score:1)