“Calvin & Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson recently gave an apparently extensive interview for his new collection called “Exploring Calvin & Hobbes.” The Washington Post is running an excerpt of it here. Watterson is famously press shy, so any interview is gold for the many longtime fans of his famous comic strip. His attitude towards his creation’s success is refreshingly humble:
I honestly assumed that the books would go out of print within a few years, once they didn’t have the strip in the newspaper to create the readership for them. But people kept buying the books anyway, and now parents are showing them to their kids, and a new generation is coming up reading the strip. That’s something I never anticipated at all.
As for why it continues to speak to people, I don’t really know. I always tried to make the strip entertaining on several levels, so one aspect might appeal even if others don’t. But really, I was writing to amuse Melissa (my wife) and myself. That’s as far as I understand.
Read the excerpt at washingtonpost.com.
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