strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Mar 11 04: paper tiger
Anybody who read newspapers in the 1980s and early 1990s should fondly remember Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. It was (imho) the best thing going in the funny pages at the time, by a mile, and probably the best strip we’d seen since Walt Kelly’s Pogo. It had Kelly’s lovely draftsmanship and sly take on human nature; it had the gentle soul and goofy surreality of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. It had art, it had smart, and it had heart.
And then it ended. Watterson retired the strip at the height of his game. At the time we heard whisperings that he was going to bring out something new sooner or later, but gee, it’s been eleven years already and there’s a whole lot of nothing out there. Watterson himself has had nothing to say on the subject: back when I was “in comics,” he was widely known as a grouchy misanthrope who shunned the public eye. He did not do interviews. That hasn’t changed a jot. The man just vanished.
Or so it seemed. Cleveland Scene ran this article about him last November, which I just stumbled across. What’s he up to? We’re still not sure, and he’s still not talking. It’s well worth reading, though, if only to make you want to go leaf through the strips again.
And if you do, a couple of resources: first, the site that hosts the interview itself, Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn’s, a dazzling compendium of Calviniana. It recently launched—and this is the really cool bit—a searchable database of the complete run of strips. That’s right! You could, for instance, read all the Calvinball strips in one go! The strips are all in black and white, but still. Such goodness. For your daily fix of the strip, you can also hit Universal Syndicate’s official site, which is frankly less fun. (But gives you those gorgeous Sunday strips in color.)
And while I’m on the topic, I hope—I pray—that Universal Syndicate recognizes a brilliant idea when they publish one. That gi-normous Far Side Compendium? C&H is the perfect next candidate. I’d buy one in a heartbeat.