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When he retired, he said it was because newspapers didn’t allow comics enough space anymore to create great art, and that the daily release schedule wreaked hav
by raldi 4y ago
When he retired, he said it was because newspapers didn’t allow comics enough space anymore to create great art, and that the daily release schedule wreaked havoc on him.
But that was about five minutes before the web emerged and made it possible to be a cartoonist without either of those constraints. So I guess those reasons were excuses, and the true answer was just that he didn’t feel like making comics anymore. (Which is also understandable.)
- kevinmchugh 4y agoI think he likely could have had his pick of magazines to do a monthly strip for as well. He has afaict a particular attachment to newspapers as a medium and delivery vehicle.
- tomjen3 4y agoBill Waterson could choose to publish in any way way whatsoever he wants. The microsecond he chooses to make a new Calvin and Hobbes strip anywhere he will have tens of millions of readers.
- bombcar 4y agoHe's comfortably well-off (as anyone who owns the rights to a relatively popular strip would be) and apparently doesn't desire fame or much beyond painting. There's also the difficulty of finding a trusted partner to handle the "web side" of doing an intermittent comic - some of the horror stories around comic artists taken advantage of would chill your bones and I'm sure Bill knows them. Gary Larson (Far Side) did eventually emerge from his retirement, having collected enough ideas in the meanwhile: https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff
- Trasmatta 4y agoHe talked a lot about how he was constantly going to battle with the publishers, and how much it drained him. It really sounds like it completely burned him out. Calvin and Hobbes ended in a perfect way, and he's been living life on his own terms ever since. Good for him.
- raldi 4y agoGood for him, I agree. It’s just sad that he predated the era when cartoonists no longer had to put up with publishers.
- jbullock35 4y agoIf memory serves, he has an interview or a foreword to a book in which he mentions another reason: he didn't want Calvin and Hobbes to continue for years or decades after its natural life. He felt that he had seen this with other strips: they kept going long after they should have stopped, and the evidence was that they were consistently uninteresting. He didn't want Calvin and Hobbes to be like that.