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Ever Wished Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? He Just Did
- guelo 12y agoC&H was great but calling Bill Watterson the greatest living cartoonist is ridiculous as long as Gary Larson is still around.
- vacri 12y agoLarson was fun and biology-oriented (for those who are into that), but Watterson's work gave a much deeper insight into the human condition. Mind you, Watterson probably hasn't had a chewing louse named after him (Strigiphilus garylarsoni).
- dasil003 12y agoI think they can happily co-exist as both being the greatest because Larson was the king of the single panel, and Watterson the king of the narrative strip.
- noonespecial 12y agoIts... its like _why doing a guest post for Zed Shaw. Can't. look. away.
- jsmthrowaway 12y agoI'm not sure who gets the shorter end of a comparison between Zed Shaw and Stephan Pastis.
- randallsquared 12y agoSo... you're saying it's a good comparison?
- tptacek 12y agoWhoah. Second panel of the second Watterson strip. Chills.
- Natsu 12y agoI had every single C&H book growing up. I wish he'd draw again... maybe they can teach him how to make a webcomic? No confining panel structure here...
- egypturnash 12y agoFrom what I've heard, dude is basically kinda done with the comics grind. Which is not surprising. I do a webcomic, and have no day job to distract me from it, and yet sometimes I can't even manage one page a week, let alone the six B&W strips and one Sunday strip that being a Syndicated Cartoonist involves. I have a friend who's doing the syndicate gig right now[1] and she's basically impossible to get ahold of because she's always got to stay on top of her buffer. It's kinda like coding for video games. It's a dream job but the reality is that there are a ton of other people clawing for the same position so you better work your ass off, kiddo!!11!!!. Well, okay, maybe less of a dream job now that newspapers are dead but you know what I mean. That shit burns you out but good. 1: http://www.gocomics.com/heavenly-nostrils http://www.gocomics.com/heavenly-nostrils
- tomjen3 12y agoI am sure there are pretty tough pressures on your friend, or any other SC. I am sure there are lot of others to replace them. But this man is not a SC. He is Bill Waterson. If he wants to have a panel once a week, in full color, only on thursdays any newspaper editor who turns him down is an idiot. As for making him a web cartoon artist, all you need would be hosting somewhere, a server that can handle the traffic and one message to whomever moderate the Facebook Calvin and Hobbes Fan group, plus a twitter account that sends a message each time a new cartoon is published.
- egypturnash 12y ago
- whatshisface 12y agoIs it just me or are the strips... just not that funny? All three of them are basicly the same joke, with one containing a minor reference to Watterson's page formatting preferences. Now that I think of it, that's really par for the course (or maybe a birdie) for newspaper comic strips in general. I guess it just seems strange to see the world's best living cartoonist come out of the fortress of solitude and do something other than leave the audience in tears of profundity.
- wisty 12y agoI think the jokes are by Stephan, and Bill just did the drawing. And yes, it's just a bunch of references to Bill and Stephan's work. Also, the final strip is pretty good. Not the one drawn by Bill ... the followup here - http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/07 http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/07
- vacri 12y agoIt's a bit of a pity then, since the primary strength of Watterson's work is his writing. His art is good, sure, but what made his name was the underlying substance, methinks.
- maxerickson 12y agoHe did it for fun (and for the charity auction). I think he should be able to do that without people complaining that they didn't get enough out of it. (I mean, I think he quit, at least in part, because he'd said a lot of what he thought he had to say and started feeling like a turnip)
- waterlesscloud 12y agoGive it 48 hours and Boing Boing, HuffPo, Medium, etc will all have long posts revealing the hidden profundity to you.
- noonespecial 12y agoFor Watterson that might literally be the funny. Like finding Jeff Gordon driving your kids' school bus one idle morning.
- suprgeek 12y agoAlmost like reopening old wounds..... Time to bring the C&H collection out of the bookshelf.
- fernly 12y agoI wonder if Watterson really believes the gag line for the third strip, "Nah, the art form's dying"? He might, being (apparently) a neo-luddite of some sort. But there has never been as many, or as good, comics as there are now, or as many busy, thriving comic artists. Hint: they are not found at gocomics.com.
- jsmthrowaway 12y agoWatterson was very outspoken about his displeasures with the art form and the grinding newspaper production process throughout the life of C&H. His beliefs, then, predated almost all online comics, but he discussed a modern take recently: http://mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclusive-our-interview-bill-watterson http://mentalfloss.com/article/53216/mental-floss-exclusive-...
- tesseract 12y ago"I could do better if I had more space" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes#Syndication_and_formatting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes#Syndication_a...
- Angostura 12y agoBerkeley Brethed ran several Bloom County strips which featured the need for more space too, such as: http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=82665 http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=82665
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- tomjen3 12y agoSomeone should introduce the man to the internets capabilities. Bill Waterson can have all the space he needs.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
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- Dru89 12y agoPastis is a prankster, but I highly doubt that his claim is fake. Pearls Before Swine is a well-known comic of its own right, without much need to fake a claim about working with Bill Watterson
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- teraflop 12y agoThe Washington Post talked to Watterson about the collaboration: http://m.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2014/06/06/exclusive-calvin-and-hobbes-creator-bill-watterson-returns-to-the-comics-page-to-offer-a-few-pearls-gems/ http://m.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2014/06/06/e...
- hysan 12y agoThough not linked, today's strip (http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/07 http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/06/07) seems like a fun ending to their collaboration. Assuming the short story arc is over.
- randallsquared 12y agoThe blog post says that he promised not to say anything until it was over, so it is.
- MilnerRoute 12y agoI wonder how he feels about the fan-drawn sequels? http://www.review-land.com/a-sequel-to-calvin-and-hobbes/ http://www.review-land.com/a-sequel-to-calvin-and-hobbes/
- bradleysmith 12y agoI do too. Thanks for sharing these, they're heartwarming for an old fan. a few relevant links from there: unofficial history of fan art projects: http://www.avclub.com/article/check-out-the-web-cartoonists-continuing-icalvin-a-93700 http://www.avclub.com/article/check-out-the-web-cartoonists-... 4 full color sunday strips put out by pantsareoverated.com (Dan and Tom Heyerman) where Calvin and Susie have a daughter, Bacon: http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/4/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/4/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/3/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/3/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/2/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/2/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/1/?s=hobbes http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/page/1/?s=hobbes Phil Barry on DeviantArt did 3: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/300/8/4/hobbes_and_bacon_by_phill_art-d5hlgju.jpg http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/300/8/4/hobbes_and_ba... http://phill-art.deviantart.com/art/Hobbes-and-Bacon-2-336731040 http://phill-art.deviantart.com/art/Hobbes-and-Bacon-2-33673... http://phill-art.deviantart.com/art/Hobbes-and-Bacon-3-354100089 http://phill-art.deviantart.com/art/Hobbes-and-Bacon-3-35410... User DomNX on DeviantArt did a series called "Calvin and Company" where Calvin and Susie have twins. The content linked in the article has been removed from facebook, as well as hir account on deviantArt (best I could tell). Found it from pinterest user Potatohappiness: http://www.pinterest.com/Potatohappiness/calvin-and-hobbes/ http://www.pinterest.com/Potatohappiness/calvin-and-hobbes/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891171/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891171/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891153/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891153/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891162/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891162/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891165/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/469218854897891165/
- coldcode 12y agoI've always wished I could draw. Even XKCD's minimalist art style is still an artist drawing stuff which is beyond me. I can't draw a straight line with a computer (they're very heavy). C&H was not only great art, it was an amazing look on adult life despite it being about a kid and a stuffed tiger.
- muglug 12y agoLook at the early XKCD comics, and you'll realise that the artist honed his skill over time. There's no secret to being a good comic book artist – it's just a love of the medium and a slavish commitment to draw as much as humanly possible.
- dredmorbius 12y agoI don't consider myself artistic, but for a few months in college took up sketching and found I could produce serviceable impressions of still-lifes and even a self portrait, after a fashion. Practice. It works.
- gets 12y agodrawing is a technical skill. No mystery or magic behind what anyone's doing. The nature of perspective and color won't change. If you want to draw humans, the basics of human anatomy and proportions are pretty constant and have been analyzed to death; add anything else you're interested in drawing and the same can likely be said for anything from wildlife, plantlife, machinery, buildings, vehicles, etc. You can learn to draw just like you can learn to add and subtract. Just do it.
- iamthepieman 12y agoThis is the best thing I've read in almost 20 years.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoI knew it! The style is unmistakable. I thought maybe Pastis was imitating the style.
- whoopdedo 12y agoIf a penguin shows up in the next strip I think we'll all know what's up.
- model-m 12y agoHoly shit. I did not expect this to ever happen, but I am mighty glad it did. And thank you for C&H, Mr. Watterson.