the complete calvin and hobbes by bill watterson hardcover

The interview was conducted, transcribed, and edited by Richard West, editor of the late and lamented political cartoon journal Target, and longtime friend of Watterson. He agreed to do this one on the grounds that the strip be the center of discussion. Watterson values his privacy and only rarely gives interviews. Universal Press Syndicate snatched it up and launched it on November 1985. Ironically, UFS declined to distribute it, saying they didn’t think it would sell. United Features Syndicate was the most encouraging, and Watterson’s seventh development contract, this one with UFS, resulted in Calvin and Hobbes. For the next five years, Watterson submitted comic strip ideas to the syndicates. Unable to fulfill his editor’s fuzzy notion of what an editorial cartoon should be, Watterson was fired before the end of his first year. Upon graduation in 1980, he became the political cartoonist for The Cincinnati Post, an experience he remembers as relentlessly depressing but mercifully short. At Chagrin Falls High School and Kenyon College in Ohio, he drew for the student newspapers and yearbooks. Watterson was born in Washington, D.C., 1958.

Frankly, he’s not interested in it, and he tells us why in this interview. In fact, Watterson probably says “No” more than Calvin’s prank-weary parents. So why haven’t you seen the Calvin and Hobbes characters splattered across the American landscape on burger glasses, greeting cards, and as stuffed toys? Because Watterson says “No” to licensing. And its creator, Bill Watterson, has already won the coveted National Cartoonist Society Cartoonist of the Year award. The three Calvin and Hobbes collections are permanent fixtures on The New York Times best-seller list.

After less than three years in syndication, it appears in more than 600 newspapers. From the TCJ Archives The Bill Watterson Interviewįrom The Comics Journal #127 (March 1989), and conducted by Richard Samuel West.Ĭalvin and Hobbes is America’s hottest comic strip.

The complete calvin and hobbes by bill watterson hardcover