Dear Mr. Watterson Page #3

I don't know if you know

how Israel was in 2001-2002.

It was pretty crazy.

Open the newspaper and you saw

another bombing everyday.

It was really intense.

So I looked forward

to the Sunday paper

because they would run the strip.

And I cut them out and would

hang them up on my wall.

Even if there was something

horrible in the paper,

I would still get my smile

and a good feeling

from just reading that.

It relieves the stress of living

in that kind of a world.

When you need something

to smile about

you just pull out one of

the old comics and just read it,

and it brings you back.

And I think that's the beauty

of comics, especially Calvin.

For those of you who don't know him,

Calvin is a 6 year old

who some might call a bit

of a troublemaker.

But he's also extremely intelligent

with an endless imagination

and an incredible lust for life.

Hobbes is his ballast,

his voice of reason,

his co-conspirator and loyal companion.

There's Mom and Dad, Susie,

Rosalyn, Moe, Mrs. Wormwood,

and a few other characters.

But nobody else sees

and understands Hobbes

the way Calvin does.

And it seems the reverse

is probably true as well.

If I actually met someone who had

never read Calvin and Hobbes,

which does occasionally happen,

I would probably immediately

just go to my desk, pull a book off,

and say, here, take this.

This will change your life.

It's so hard to just sum it up,

other than to say

this is every one of us.

Certainly it's a family strip.

It's a kid's strip.

In some senses,

it's a gag-a-day kind of strip.

There's always a punch line,

some kind of gag at the end.

But in other ways, I think

it transcends all of those things

because there is a little bit

of philosophy in it.

There's a little bit of commentary

about society.

Certainly there's a lot of humor.

It's a very funny strip.

So it really, I think,

defies categorization.

There have been a lot of strips

out there about younger people,

Dennis the Menace, a whole school

of strips that try to recall youth

and make it relevant to readers

across different ages.

But Bill's take was so fresh

and so simple.

Here he just took this idea

and just blew it up

into this wonderful relationship.

It's the only strip

we've ever launched

that we had editors who hadn't

seen it yet calling us saying,

"Hey, we've heard about this thing

called Calvin and Hobbes.

We want to be sure

we get to see it."

I was just blown away immediately.

It was one of those things

that was so much fun to read.

It drew me in right then.

And I remember getting to the end

of the set and thinking,

where's the rest of it?

I want more.

I want more.

Here was a strip that was

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes