Bill Watterson's Thinking Behind Calvin And Hobbes

I am always thrilled to see the drawings  of Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes.
I feel happy. These feelings come from my appreciation of the disposition of  Bill Watterson. To bring to life the mysterious workings of human relationships requires great sensitivity. 
Bill Watterson's selective eye has given me pleasure. His inventive imagination gives me encouragement.

 Enjoy his mind and craft in the following:An excerpt from an Interview with Bill Watterson conducted by Richard Samuel West from Comics Journal issue number 127,
February 1989....
Calvin and Hobbes is America’s hottest comic strip. After less than three years in syndication, it appears in more than 600 newspapers. The three Calvin and Hobbes collections are permanent fixtures on The New York Times bestseller list. And its creator, Bill Watterson, has already won the coveted National Cartoonist Society Cartoonist of the Year award.




RICHARD WEST: How do you explain the popularity of Calvin and Hobbes?

BILL WATTERSON: Really, I don’t understand it, since I never set out to make Calvin and Hobbes a popular strip. I just draw it for myself. I guess I have a gift for express ing pedestrian tastes. In a way, it’s kind of depressing.
WEST: Isn’t it ironic that in a profession that’s become so formulaic you have created the most successful comic strip of the ‘80s by not trying to fulfill a formula?
WATTERSON: But in a way, I’ve ended up with the old tried and true. It’s a strip about a family - a familiar, universal setting that’s easy to identify with. I’m trying to put a unique twist on it, but it’s well-covered ground. The trend nowadays in comics seems to be to zero in on a narrow, specific audience, like divorced parents, baby boomers, and so on. I guess the idea is to attract a devoted special interest group to the comic page who will scream if the strip is ever dropped. That way, the strip stands a better chance of survival than a strip that aims wide but doesn’t hit deep. Generally, I don’t like these trend-of the-month strips because they’re usually the product of some market analysis rather than the product of any honest artistic sensibility on the part of the cartoonist. Still, with any strip, it’s not the subject that’s important, it’s what you do with it. A family strip can be hackneyed drivel just as easily as any other kind of strip.

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