Cartoonist Bill Watterson, the creator of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, has given his first interview in many years to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Watterson talks about the success of Calvin and Hobbes and his feelings about ending the strip at the top of his game:
“It’s always better to leave the party early,” he says. “If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 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.”
Here’s the interview, with John Campanelli.
Here is Campanelli’s accompanying article about the strip ending fifteen years ago.
And here is a slideshow of editorial cartoons by Bill Watterson, from early in his career.
