Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson

William B. "Bill" Watterson II (born July 5, 1958) is the author of Calvin and Hobbes. He was author and artist during the strip's decade-long run. Calvin and Hobbes abruptly ceased publication in 1995 when Watterson decided to retire. He is now removed completely from the public eye, and is reluctant to take interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself.

Early life

Watterson was born in Washington, D.C., where his father, James G. Watterson (1932 - ), worked as a patent examiner while going to law school, until becoming a patent attorney in 1960. The family moved to Chagrin Falls, Ohio when Bill was six years old; his mother, Kathryn, became a city council member. He has a younger brother, Tom, who is a high school teacher in Austin, Texas.

In 1980, Watterson graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio with a degree in political science. Immediately, the Cincinnati Post offered him a job drawing political cartoons for a six-month trial period. Watterson was however denied further employment beyond the trial period. At some point, he picked up a job designing advertisements, which he supposedly "detested".

During this time turned his attention to being a self-employed cartoonist. He once was approached with a offer to create a strip featuring the character of a robot with a propeller on his head, which had a huge licensing program planned with plush toys. He didn't decide to work said character into the strip of what would become "Calvin and Hobbes" as he was offended working on a character that wasn't his own and creating a strip just for advertising. He thus returned once again to designing advertisements for a while.

He attempted six concepts for a cartoon strip, all of which were rejected. His seventh attempt, "Calvin and Hobbes" was his first success.

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes was first published on November 18, 1985 to great public approval. Everyone who read it was instantly hooked. During its run, Watterson became known for battling against the arbitrary structure publishers imposed on newspaper cartoons and the limited size of contemporary comic strips. Watterson managed to get an exception to this constraint for Calvin and Hobbes, allowing him to draw his Sunday cartoons the way he wanted. In many of them the panels overlap or contain their own panels; in some of them the action takes place diagonally across the strip.

Retirement

In a brief letter newspaper editors made public November 9, 1995, Watterson announced his retirement:

Dear Editor:

I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted however, and I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises. I have not yet decided on future projects, but my relationship with Universal Press Syndicate will continue.

That so many newspapers would carry Calvin and Hobbes is an honor I'll long be proud of, and I've greatly appreciated your support and indulgence over the last decade. Drawing this comic strip has been a privilege and a pleasure, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Sincerely,

Bill Watterson

The last strip of Calvin and Hobbes was published on December 31, 1995. Since retiring, Bill Watterson has taken up painting, often drawing landscapes of the woods with his father. He has also been learning about music. He has also published several anthologies of Calvin and Hobbes strips. He tries to avoid the public eye and many newspapers have tried but failed to contact him. He felt that comic strips were a form of art and that they were being undermined. He also wanted to change the Sunday Strip format and felt like he was being pressured by deadlines.

Maxim is one publication that attempted to interview him and failed (it would have been highly unlikely for Watterson to accept being interviewed by a raunchy magazine like Maxim given his past insistence that Calvin & Hobbes are not meant to be associated with vulgarity). In their October 2005 issue, they stated their failure was that Watterson requested that Universal Press Syndicate not forward any fan mail.

In comparison to other cartoonists, Watterson has had notable similarities. Like Charles Schultz, he never had any assistants on the daily strip, unlike many cartoonists whose works continue as "zombie strips" after the cartoonist's death, being taken over by assistants ghostwriting as the original cartoonist. However, both strips from Schultz and Watterson are published today as reruns.

Watterson is married to a woman named Melissa, to whom one of his Calvin & Hobbes books is dedicated to (another being to his brother Thomas). Since his retirement from Calvin and Hobbes, the couple has had a daughter, named Violet.