4 ms·

It's a shame that Bill Watterson just simply disappeared.

by mattm 14y ago

Wingman4l7 14y ago
There's a Kickstarter-funded documentary coming out called Stripped about comic strips, which has an audio interview with him. I'm amazed and cannot fathom how they got that, as he's notoriously reclusive, supposedly even more so after he stopped writing Calvin and Hobbes.
- zachrose 14y ago
  Nothing close to, say, J.D. Salinger though.
- thinker 14y ago
  Do you know when it's coming out? It looks like it was funded back in Sept 2011 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallfish/stripped-the-comics-documentary http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallfish/stripped-the-c...
  - Wingman4l7 14y ago
    There is a second Kickstarter to help cover the cost of purchasing the rights to additional footage ("Charles Schulz' TV specials, interview clips from Carson, 1930's newsreels and more"). It sounds like it's going to be very professionally done. Estimated delivery date is Dec 2013: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sequential/stripped-the-final-push http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sequential/stripped-the-...
soperj 14y ago
Not really. It's kind of the opposite really, because you know that he's out enjoying himself, rather than pandering to the masses. He's done his service to humanity, now let him be free.
- mattm 14y ago
  Yes I know he's just doing whatever makes him happy but I sometimes feel sad that if the internet had come out just 10 years earlier, he may have gone the self-published route which didn't really exist at that time for him. Instead of just being limited to 10 years of his creative expression, he may have had the opportunity to pursue it on his own for as long as he wished. Although articles about him are very tough to find, I read one interview where supposedly he does paintings and when they are done, he burns them. I guess my comment would better be rephrased as "It's a shame that by working in a system that is solely focused on profit, it caused him much more stress and discomfort than he was prepared to take on and, as a result, felt the only sensible path for him was to disappear."
  - intended 14y ago
    Someone tracked him down after a while and he finally did an interview. IIRC when asked about how he felt about C&H he said "That was the work of a younger man." I suspect his take on using the self publish route would be.. interesting.
    - mattm 14y ago
      Just came across this interview - http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watte... where he said "I've never regretted stopping when I did." However, I seem to remember from his 10th anniversary book, that the main reason for stopping was all the conflict and grief from dealing with the syndicate, not the content of the work. He had even taken a sabbatical at one point near the end of the strip because the stress had been too much. I guess I just like thinking about alternate realities. Even in a world where he self-published and had full control, it's still possible he may have discontinued the comic after 10 years. Maybe the time was just right no matter what.
  - Pxtl 14y ago
    Relevant onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/bill-watterson-writes-illustrates-shreds-new-calvi,21240/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/bill-watterson-writes-illus...
noonespecial 14y ago
The opposite, I assume, would be Jim Davis-hood. He said what he needed to say, and no more. Magnificent. (I'm actually expecting a disappearance of _why-like proportions from Randall Munroe in the not-to-distant future as well.)
- thebooktocome 14y ago
  I'd not be surprised if it coincided with his wife's eventual death or decline from cancer.
  - unalone 14y ago
    You're reading too much into his retirement. He gives a perfectly good explanation why he quit within the speech: Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came. Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions. To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works. As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons. Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards. The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need. What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts. On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience. It's strange to hear an argument for not selling out in an age where plenty of artists, even some of the most talented ones, have shrugged and accepted that being a sell-out is the quickest way to go about making money for doing what you love. I wonder if Watterson was simply old-fashioned, or if he noticed something that nowadays we're less capable of noticing.
ArkyBeagle 14y ago
It is a shame, but it is also wonderful.

It's a shame that Bill Watterson just simply disappeared.

by mattm 14y ago

It's a shame that Bill Watterson just simply disappeared.

There's a Kickstarter-funded documentary coming out called Stripped about comic strips, which has an audio interview with him. I'm amazed and cannot fathom how they got that, as he's notoriously reclusive, supposedly even more so after he stopped writing Calvin and Hobbes.

zachrose 14y ago
Nothing close to, say, J.D. Salinger though.
thinker 14y ago
Do you know when it's coming out? It looks like it was funded back in Sept 2011 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallfish/stripped-the-comics-documentary http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallfish/stripped-the-c...
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  There is a second Kickstarter to help cover the cost of purchasing the rights to additional footage ("Charles Schulz' TV specials, interview clips from Carson, 1930's newsreels and more"). It sounds like it's going to be very professionally done. Estimated delivery date is Dec 2013: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sequential/stripped-the-final-push http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sequential/stripped-the-...

soperj 14y ago

Not really. It's kind of the opposite really, because you know that he's out enjoying himself, rather than pandering to the masses. He's done his service to humanity, now let him be free.

mattm 14y ago
Yes I know he's just doing whatever makes him happy but I sometimes feel sad that if the internet had come out just 10 years earlier, he may have gone the self-published route which didn't really exist at that time for him. Instead of just being limited to 10 years of his creative expression, he may have had the opportunity to pursue it on his own for as long as he wished. Although articles about him are very tough to find, I read one interview where supposedly he does paintings and when they are done, he burns them. I guess my comment would better be rephrased as "It's a shame that by working in a system that is solely focused on profit, it caused him much more stress and discomfort than he was prepared to take on and, as a result, felt the only sensible path for him was to disappear."
- intended 14y ago
  Someone tracked him down after a while and he finally did an interview. IIRC when asked about how he felt about C&H he said "That was the work of a younger man." I suspect his take on using the self publish route would be.. interesting.
  - mattm 14y ago
    Just came across this interview - http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watte... where he said "I've never regretted stopping when I did." However, I seem to remember from his 10th anniversary book, that the main reason for stopping was all the conflict and grief from dealing with the syndicate, not the content of the work. He had even taken a sabbatical at one point near the end of the strip because the stress had been too much. I guess I just like thinking about alternate realities. Even in a world where he self-published and had full control, it's still possible he may have discontinued the comic after 10 years. Maybe the time was just right no matter what.
- Pxtl 14y ago
  Relevant onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/bill-watterson-writes-illustrates-shreds-new-calvi,21240/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/bill-watterson-writes-illus...

noonespecial 14y ago

The opposite, I assume, would be Jim Davis-hood. He said what he needed to say, and no more. Magnificent. (I'm actually expecting a disappearance of _why-like proportions from Randall Munroe in the not-to-distant future as well.)

thebooktocome 14y ago
I'd not be surprised if it coincided with his wife's eventual death or decline from cancer.
- unalone 14y ago
  You're reading too much into his retirement. He gives a perfectly good explanation why he quit within the speech: Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came. Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions. To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works. As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons. Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards. The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need. What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts. On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience. It's strange to hear an argument for not selling out in an age where plenty of artists, even some of the most talented ones, have shrugged and accepted that being a sell-out is the quickest way to go about making money for doing what you love. I wonder if Watterson was simply old-fashioned, or if he noticed something that nowadays we're less capable of noticing.

ArkyBeagle 14y ago

It is a shame, but it is also wonderful.