Originally published at: What techniques did Bill Watterson use to make Calvin and Hobbes a masterpiece? | Boing Boing
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For me the main technique Watterson employed was an amazing ability to tap into and depict the vivid wonders of childhood imagination. That comic often brought back some of my own fanciful prepubescent flights of fancy.
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They have lasting power, too. I have the first three compilations, and my 6- and 9-year-olds keep begging me to buy the rest.
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Watterson is basically my role model. He created a beautiful thing that endures, by himself, in near total anonymity. He made more than enough money to be comfortable but doesn’t seek more than that. No merchandise, no cartoons, etc. Doesn’t do interviews or otherwise seek fame. He just did this one great thing. I’m always striving for the same.
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Definitely not a fame-seeker but he usually grants an interview maybe once every five years or so.
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Totally agree. I thought that they might reveal that he had an amazing ability to show the internal workings of an imaginative child mind, in his interactions with his favorite stuffed tiger. But he also managed to delve deeply into the human condition and social craziness. Bottom line of course-they’re funny.
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My kid was a reluctant reader. A pile of Calvin and Hobbes books in the house literally resolved that issue. Largely because he was (and is) the 21st century avatar of Calvin in many ways.
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I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Watterson acknowledge the influence of Winsor McCay and “Little Nemo in Slumberland” on “Calvin & Hobbes”.
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Yes, Watterson wrote about those influences (along with other strips like “Krazy Kat”) in the introduction to at least one of his collected volumes. He never claimed to be the first.
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So what?
“Rembrandt is fantastic, but people were doing portraits in chiarascuro before him.”
“Bach is fantastic, but the idea of even temperament was done before him.”
Whether or not every detail and aspect was original of itself, he studied it, incorporated it into his style, and created masterworks.
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It has to do with idea that some folks think comics are at death’s door, as Devin says. Folks have done fantastic work before him, so why not after?
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And folks have done fantastic work after him.
Just not, any more, primarily in newspaper syndication.
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Which is a real shame, as technological advances in what we can do with the internet have opened many doors to bringing back that level of sophistication and beauty to the comics that is generally seen today in forms like graphic novels.
I honestly doubt that was ever true. National syndication of comics in newspapers happened almost immediately, so you were getting a cross section of the same dozen-or-so major comics in every newspaper in the country. There may have been a few exceptions with a few local papers running local artists, but by and large we all got the same ones. The only changes were really generational. Older readers had more Andy Capp, Dagwood, and Doonesbury, while younger readers saw more Family Circus, Far Side, and Garfield.
Much like syndicated television, comics were chosen to be mildly amusing, but most of all uncontroversial and sure not to upset conservative white people in the Midwest.
Honestly, to folks like BBers, it was not the least bit surprising when Adams backed Trump. Adams is a garbage human being and we’ve known it since the very start of his blog many years ago. Almost immediately he started writing about “men’s rights”, “reverse racism”, transphobia, and all sorts of other Dark Intellectual shit you’d hear from Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan. We talk about him a fair bit here, as a good test case of whether you can love the art but hate the artist. For me the answer was no. My love of Dilbert was instantly ruined when I learned what an asshat Adams is.
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Ass-bert. /s
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Same. It goes to illustrate how complex people can be. From Dilbert I’d assumed that Adams was a dude of the “good” people, but wow was that off the mark.
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I managed to separate Adams from his art until the Dilbert comics became openly transphobic.
I think he may have been once. Certainly, in his first book, The Dilbert Principle, he came across as sensible and humane, iirc. But while much of his second, The Dilbert Future, was the same, the final chapter was … odd. Not bigoted, but a non sequitur of a chapter exploring theories and speculations that could be described as fringe at best. E.g.: what if there were actually no such thing as gravity, but it just seemed like there were because everything was constantly getting larger, reducing the space between objects?
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If we take the time to go through the strips at gocomics.com or arcamax.com I think we can each find something to admire
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I think this has happened to a lot of people in the past decade. My dad was always an intelligent, reasonable guy. Conservative, sure, but fairly well-reasoned in his opinions. He came from a very racist family though, so he was always sorta on that edge.
Then social media, Trump, and the recent rebirth of fascism world-wide happened. My dad has fallen down all the rabbit holes as a result. People like my dad were vulnerable to radicalization and I consider him a victim of all this in some sense. Not entirely though- he’s a grown man with the resources to know better and make his own decisions. However he was always fragile about this stuff and he has been exploited by right wing media and Zuck’s evil algorithms.
Adams, I don’t cut so much slack. That’s a man with every advantage and every resource at his disposal. He’s choosing to be human garbage beyond any pale and I don’t have any patience for that.
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