There’s a Gas Station Up Ahead

RickHap — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:53:10 +0000

Interview with Bill Watterson 15 years after the comic strip stopped.

Bill Watterson, creator of beloved ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ comic strip looks back with no regrets

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

It’s always better to leave the party early. 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.

I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.

Bill Watterson

Bookstore

RickHap — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:14:14 +0000

FLYHYPERSONIC » Comic

There’s a Gas Station Up Ahead

Bookstore