Looking for Bill Watterson

Most people who read newspaper comics in the late 80s through early 90s enjoyed Bill Watterson's incomparable Calvin and Hobbes. Others grew up reading the strip in collective book form. Despite the lack of merchandising or continuous syndication, the blond 6-year-old and his pet tiger have remained just as beloved and timeless as contemporaries like Peanuts and Garfield .

A documentary called Dear Mr. Watterson that started streaming on Netflix this year examines the legacy and influence of Watterson and his creation. Several comic strip writers, artists, and syndicate representatives are interviewed, some who were colleagues and some who are fans. Bill Watterson remains somewhat of an enigma since he has remained reclusive and has consistently refused to be an interview subject, so of course the documentary can't provide a lot of insight into what makes him tick. Nonetheless, director Joel Allen Schroeder made a worthy tribute to the artist.

One of the people interviewed for the documentary was Nevin Martell, who is the author of a book called Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip. I found that a local library owned the book and I was pleased to discover that it made for an excellent complement to Dear Mr. Watterson.

Both the documentary and the book discuss how Watterson started as a political cartoonist and decided that wasn't for him. He always wanted to do something more imaginative and original. He based the town depicted in the comic strip somewhat on his hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. He also wanted his art to speak for itself and always refused requests to merchandise the characters. He was especially incensed at the idea of making a plush Hobbes toy, because he wanted it to remain ambiguous whether Hobbes was purely the product of Calvin's imagination. To answer a common question, Watterson was nothing like the mischievous Calvin when he was growing up; he was a shy and obedient child. As an adult, even when his work was awarded, he shunned the spotlight and seldom showed up to accept those awards in person.

What I especially enjoyed about Martell's book was that he described his struggles to interview anyone close to Watterson and inevitable failure to sit down with the reclusive man himself. This provided kind of a look behind the curtain of the sometimes frustrating process of writing a biography. It was also neat to find out Watterson had spent some of his early years in my hometown of Alexandria, Virginia before his family moved to Pittsburgh and then Chagrin Falls.

It is difficult to objectively review these two projects, as I have always been a fan of Watterson's signature work, and they're preaching to the choir. Suffice it to say, I think every fan of Calvin and Hobbes would enjoy Dear Mr. Watterson, and for more detail about the creator, all should definitely read Looking for Calvin and Hobbes.

For more information about Dear Mr. Watterson or to purchase it, go to the official site, and if you subscribe to Netflix streaming, click here to watch it.

For more about Looking for Calvin and Hobbes or its author, go to his official site.