Dear Mr. Watterson

http://www.dearmrwatterson.com/DMW/dearmrwatterson.html

by danso • 13 years ago

58 43 13 years ago

aarondf• 13 years ago

In case you can't get through, here's the kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fingerprintfilms/dear-mr...

estebank• 13 years ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.d...

A documentary film about the impact of the best comic strip in the history of the universe: Calvin & Hobbes

danso2• 13 years ago

Thanks, I saw the .html in the URL and assumed the OP had a good ol' fashioned static site.

Here's the Vimeo channel for the documentary: http://vimeo.com/dearmrwatterson

Here's the synopsis:

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Calvin & Hobbes dominated the Sunday comics in thousands of newspapers for over 10 years, having a profound effect on millions of readers across the globe. When the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, retired the strip on New Year’s Eve in 1995, devoted readers everywhere felt the void left by the departure of Calvin, Hobbes, and Watterson’s other cast of characters, and many fans would never find a satisfactory replacement.

It has now been more than a decade since the end of the Calvin & Hobbes era. Bill Watterson has kept an extremely low profile during this time, living a very private life outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his quiet lifestyle, Mr. Watterson is remembered and appreciated daily by fans who still enjoy his amazing collection of work.

Mr. Watterson has inspired and influenced millions of people through Calvin & Hobbes. Newspaper readership and book sales can be tracked and recorded, but the human impact he has had and the value of his art are perhaps impossible to measure.

This film is not a quest to find Bill Watterson, or to invade his privacy. It is an exploration to discover why his 'simple' comic strip made such an impact on so many readers in the 80s and 90s, and why it still means so much to us today.

tomrod• 13 years ago

I'm very excited for this film.

marquis• 13 years ago

I have this a permanent tab in my browser for when I need some downtime.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes

mark-r• 13 years ago

That's what I have HN for.

Tyrannosaurs9• 13 years ago

For heartwarming tales of childish behaviour...

arms• 13 years ago

I can't wait for this. I have fond memories of reading the Calvin & Hobbes strips as a kid. 20 years later I still find myself flipping through the anthologies and appreciating just how well written and imaginative the strips are.

raldi2• 13 years ago

When Calvin & Hobbes shut down in 1995, Bill Watterson wrote a letter explaining why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson#End_of_Calvin_an...

His two stated reasons were the pressure of coming up with seven strips a week and a distaste for the tiny space newspapers gave him to work with:

" 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."

Then, almost immediately after this happened, the web took off and solved both his problems. For years I waited for his announcement of his webcomic. But it never happened.

I guess he wasn't so eager after all.

Tyrannosaurs9• 13 years ago

The page you link to gives the reason from an interview he did in 2010:

"This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of ten years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say. It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, ten, or twenty years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them. I think some of the reason Calvin and Hobbes still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it. I've never regretted stopping when I did."

You could read that as being about Calvin and Hobbes specifically but it feels to me that it's about cartooning in general.

It's understandable that someone who had achieved what he has achieved in the medium felt that there wasn't too much more to do and that it was time to try something else.

raldi2• 13 years ago

If that's the case, it's interesting that he was unable to see / admit it in 1995, and instead heaped all the blame on newspaper editors cramping his style.

fusiongyro3• 13 years ago

Anybody who liked Garfield as a kid has an object lesson in exactly what he was trying to avoid.

At the same time, I think the OP's point is that the "trying something else" never seems to have materialized.

danso2• 13 years ago

Knowing so little about him (I think this documentary claims to have the first audio recording of him in 10 years), it's hard to know how he's viewed the Web age...it's possible that he, being someone who grew up and was inspired by Peanuts in newspapers, still believes that is the prime medium (that, and books), and may not feel compelled to produce for the web, especially if his success so far has allowed him to live the life that he wants, in privacy.

That said, it's so rare to see an artist quit out of artistic principle...and also, refuse to sellout. He's fiercely protective of his copyright...not because he's selling his own C&H merchandise, but because he doesn't want his characters to be watered down in the same way that Peanuts has been. I would love to have C&H t-shirts, dolls...but I have to say, about a decade later, the scarcity of C&H has made it even more sacred and beloved to me.

bmelton• 13 years ago

I'm still confused how the litany of "Calvin peeing on X" stickers have been allowed to happen. It's clearly Calvin, and not some derivative. It clearly isn't parody or satire (of the work itself, or otherwise protected). And there are clearly financial beneficiaries of the stickers.

As a long-time lover of C&H, it simply confounds me.

teejaygreen• 13 years ago

This does not have the audio interview with him, that's in Stripped, a documentary about comics that's not out yet: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sequential/stripped-the-...

However, you can hear about 6 seconds of his interview in the trailer.

breadbox2• 13 years ago

I think you have mistakenly assumed that sharing his work with the public was not Watterson's absolute least favorite aspect of being a creator. I have no doubt that he is still pursuing creative activities, but I'd be surprised if he decided to share any of it with the world anytime soon. (I figure it will come out either after his death, or once enough decades have passed for him to feel up to facing the public.)

mr-ron• 13 years ago

As a die hard fan, I was immensely disappointed in this documentary. If you already know the story and have read the 10-year book, theres absolutely nothing more to learn from this.

For casual fans, it would probably be great though.

RodericDay• 13 years ago

I love Calvin & Hobbes but I dislike how casually it's touted as the best comic strip of all time.

It's pretty unfair given that most people haven't really exhausted the genre. I think (Mafalda)[http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/07/dwyck-the-dreams-of-chi...] is at least just as good.

adamc• 13 years ago

I love Calvin & Hobbes as well, but I'd list Pogo as pretty serious competition, and there are a number of other great, historically important strips (e.g., Krazy Kat).

jljljl• 13 years ago

Funny that you mention these two, as Bill Watterson cited both Pogo and Krazy Kat as major influences on Calvin and Hobbes in the Tenth Anniversary Book.

BTW, if you are a fan and for some reason have not read the Tenth Anniversary Book, I strongly recommend it. Watterson's commentary throughout is awesome and really highlights the brilliance of the strip.

http://www.amazon.com/Calvin-Hobbes-Tenth-Anniversary-Book/d...

m_myers• 13 years ago

Calvin & Hobbes and Pogo are two of my favorites also. But for sheer volume of jokes and puns packed into each strip, it's hard to top Get Fuzzy. Its basic premise is similar to Garfield (man living with cat and dog, both of whom can talk), but it's written by a cartoonist who hasn't been coming up with the same jokes for 30 years straight.

icebraining• 13 years ago

C&H has a special place in my childhood, but I agree that in terms of quality, Mafalda is just as good, or better.

That said, it's a strongly political strip, which no doubt alienates some people, and of course, it requires a good translation for anyone who can't read Spanish.

jason_slack• 13 years ago

I am becoming impressed with the documentaries coming from KickStarter campaigns.

Indie Game: The Movie

Story of Mojang (Minecraft)

Now this......

Roboprog2• 13 years ago

Thank God for a respite from the endless stories of the empire that have been on HN lately. I have very fond memories of Calvin & Hobbes, as well as Bloom County, and was sad to see those strips shut down in the 90s. I guess it's good for both artists that they quit before things got too tired, though.

Spaceman Spiff forever!

Roboprog2• 13 years ago

Oh, and can I get an "enterprise" version of the Transmogrifier? I'm gonna need that.

m0shen• 13 years ago

I saw this at the [Wisconsin Film Festival this year](http://wff.to/10SMEZh). It was very well done, with a fair amount of detail of Watterson's early work, inspirations and philosophy. His peers in the cartooning world, fans and critics speak of what he created with irreverence that seems mostly reserved for the great painters of the past century. Simply: Watterson created art that has inspired a generation.

As mentioned in some other comments, die-hard fans will probably not find any new information here, but I would say see it anyway. Even people who haven't even heard of Calvin & Hobbes, and casual readers should find it insightful and entertaining.

Dear Mr. Watterson

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