Word: watterson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
These are grim times for the funny pages. Last year Gary Larson stopped drawing the Far Side cartoons, and now Bill Watterson is retiring Calvin and Hobbes. "I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels," said the reclusive cartoonist in a letter to newspaper editors. "I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace with fewer artistic compromises." Ah, well, there's always Peanuts...
...Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" is a pure joy to read. This is quite ironic considering that the title characters are named after two philosophers who had rather bleak views of human nature. The adventures of mischievous and precocious six years-old Calvin and his quiet, reflective, stuffed tiger Hobbes a not only capture a child-like sense of fun and adventure, but also at times see as social commentary. Watterson's recent leave of absence is understandable give his wonderful consistency. It must be imaginatively exhausting to continually come up with stuff this entertaining. Perhaps the strip...
...last year, Calvin has invented his Stupendous Man persona, and Watterson has manipulated it to begin showing us Life With Calvin from non-Calvin eyes...
...book is full of such leaps from the cosmos to suburbia and back again. Watterson's watercolor treatment of Calvin's alternate realities is striking in the Sunday comics sections of America, but, unfortunately, Yukon Ho! has no color. Instead of a blue insect head, we get a shade of grey. Instead of a rainbow of colored clothes pouncing on Calvin one morning, we see a few black and white objects flying at him. The strips are still funny, but they lose much of their artistry. No comic strip in the last 20 years has used color so well...
...imagination on display here is Watterson's, not Calvin's. Watterson became an editorial cartoonist in Cincinnati after graduating from Kenyon College, and even then his cartoons had an element of the fantastic in them. He has shown a dozen worlds that Calvin inhabits, and often the joy in the strip comes from simply being on an alien planet with Calvin, instead of laughing at his wisecracks...