3 ms·
The blaming the papers wasn't a 1995 thing. By that point he'd already taken one sabbatical because of the pressure he felt and had managed to get the papers to
by Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
The blaming the papers wasn't a 1995 thing. By that point he'd already taken one sabbatical because of the pressure he felt and had managed to get the papers to accept some small changes to the format of the Sunday strips because he wasn't happy with the work he was able to do. Regardless of his intentions for the future and what he thought he may or may not be able to do, his dissatisfaction with the medium and the newspapers was very real.
If you read what he's said about the situation and his unhappiness with it my guess would be that when he quit he really just wanted out and he he probably didn't know what he was going to do next. Realising that he felt he'd done all he wanted to do with the format probably came later when he had some distance.
- calibraxis 13y agoYes, and he very likely was aware of the issue back in 1995. In an article about him, someone mentioned: "It used to be that 'you did it forever, no matter what the quality was,' says Moore, who doubles as a Times news editor. 'The new camp [of cartoonists] says that when the quality of the strip starts diminishing, you get out of the business.'" (http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-16/news/ls-3760_1_bill-watterson http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-16/news/ls-3760_1_bill-w...) His "resignation letter" was naturally too short to contain his complex thoughts on the subject.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoThere is commentary is one of the later books which covers off some of what he was feeling at the time. Reading that I don't think there's much doubt that his dissatisfaction was with the constraints of working as a commercial cartoonist rather than anything that would change between Calvin and Hobbes and another cartoon.