Inspirations - Bill Watterson

Calvin and Hobbes - By Bill Watterson

(This is the first in a series of posts about people that have influenced my artistic endeavors in one way or another.)

Bill Waterson

For those of you not familiar with Bill Watterson, you may be familiar with his comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. The strip, in essence, was about a six year old boy (Calvin) and his stuffed tiger (Hobbes) and their everyday real life and imaginary adventures. The “gimmick” of the strip was that Calvin saw his stuffed tiger as a living being, while everyone else viewed Hobbes as a stuffed animal… an element that Watterson obviously avoided explaining. It was just a law of that universe that he created, like gravity. The strip’s imagination, perspective, well developed characters and artistic style are things I still reflect on today. His work and story taught me valuable lessons of life and art. Of character integrity and what it was like to defend your ideals. And it’s not too far of a stretch to say that Calvin and Hobbes was one of the main reasons I started drawing in the first place many years ago.

I can’t remember the first time I read a Calvin and Hobbes strip. I was young, still in elementary school. I do remember getting my first Calvin and Hobbes collection book from one of those Scholastic Book Fairs that would visit our school from time to time. I read it cover to cover, and every time the book fair would come around, I’d find a new tome of strips that I didn’t have. Of course, they were all ones that I had read before in the paper, but I had to have them. At the time, I didn’t have the maturity or the understanding to know why Watterson’s work stood out to me so much. My favorites were the long stories that stretched across days, sometimes even weeks. I’d sit at the table eating breakfast, and pick up right where the last one left off. While other strips were doing commentary about recent events, golf jokes, or the same characters doing the same old things, Calvin and Hobbes seemed more interested in creating an entire world within each panel. And the Sunday strips (which I’ll get to later) were masterpieces. Towards the end of his comic strip career, Watterson reigned in stories that paled every other strip in the paper. Sometimes without a single line of dialogue. His landscapes were so vivid, his characters were so believable, and his honesty and timing were so amazing… it felt like I was peering into another world altogether every single day.

I learned later about the struggle for freedom within that Sunday format. That comic strip artists were forced to miniscule proportions and carefully plotted panel arrangements. These were great for an editor to place as many strips as he could in the space allowed, but not very conductive for telling a good story. Even still, in order to allow a newspaper editor the freedom to shrink down the strip even more, newspapers reserved the right to remove the first two panels of a Sunday strip. Take a look at your Sunday funnies next time. Many of the longer strips’ first two panels can be scrapped right out of there without damaging the “main strip’s” story at all. The artist, knowing full well that the first two panels will be tossed out of many newspapers, is forced to draw throwaway gags and one-liners. Watterson campaigned to have the freedom to break the panel restrictions and draw the strip the way that he wanted to, within the correct proportions. And though a few of the newspapers cancelled his strip altogether, many kept the new format, and then a world of possibilities opened up. In the end, he fought knowing that there would be cancellations and size reductions which equaled less money in his pocket. But in sticking to his guns, he showed what was truly important to him: The ability to tell his stories his way.

Bill Watterson fought to be able to format his strips in a way to best tell the story

The other major battle Bill Watterson went through, was with his syndicate and their desire to license Calvin and Hobbes for merchandising. You see all those Garfield greeting cards, Snoopy T-Shirts, etc.? Ever notice that even in it’s prime, Calvin and Hobbes never had any stuffed animals, coffee mugs, or the like? I can imagine that it felt like a gold mine that Watterson’s syndicate was just sitting on. The strip was one of the most popular ones on the market, and I bet that they were just aching to slap a whole bunch of Calvin and Hobbes stickers on everything from pens to snow sleds and watch the cash pour in. But Bill Watterson resisted. Resisted against licensing. Resisted against merchandise. Resisted against making more money. I can’t pretend to know exactly every motive he would have, but in the 10th anniversary book of Calvin and Hobbes (Coincidentally this is where I sourced a lot of my information. Pick it up to learn more ), he mentioned his many arguments against licensing. Even though I am not a comic artist, this quote still rings in my head from time to time:

“When a cartoonist licenses his characters… The characters become ‘celebrities,’ endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses deeper significance.” – Bill Watterson “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book”

When I read the story about his fight against licensing, I was amazed. I’ve heard the word “artistic integrity” before, but this was the FIRST time I’ve seen it in practice. And at such a high cost. There was “trainloads of money”… millions at stake, and for the sake of the integrity of the world he created and the characters that inhabited it, Bill Watterson refused to cash the check. It’s easy to say money isn’t everything, but seeing it in practice on such a large scale… seeing someone act with the understanding that your greatest asset as an artist is the integrity that your work represents. And no dollar amount should ever pull you away from defending that…. It blew my mind. It still does today.

taken from It's a Magical World. The last strip ran Dec 31st 1995

15 years ago, due to the constant struggle against his syndicate, Watterson retired from writing Calvin and Hobbes. The door to that wonderful universe has been closed for years now, and from time to time, when I read the funnies, I get a little sad about it. Watterson created characters that I connected with on one level or another for years and years. I felt like I knew them, that I hung out with them every morning. They made me laugh, they made me think, and they let me retain my imagination well into my current years. I still crack open a Calvin and Hobbes book from time to time… sometimes when I’m sick, or laying around the house, or when I’m cleaning and happen to find one of the dusty tomes atop my bookshelf. It’s like flipping through a photo album from years ago. I turn the pages, the rest of the world stops… and I get to visit my old friends… a six year old boy and his tiger.

Bill Watterson has since sought the confines of privacy, declining all interviews and contact from the outside world. Knowing full well that he may never read this, I still want to extend my thanks to him for creating Calvin and Hobbes. It has sincerely changed my life for the better. As an artist and a human being.

<3 Mynt