Let’s Go Exploring: Interview With Bill Watterson Released

We don’t talk a lot about comic strips here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives – we are, after all, generally comic book people, and we live in the 21st century. This means that we don’t exactly have access to, or much of a desire for, a daily newspaper comics page. The last time we saw a newspaper here at the Home Office, it was when Office Mascot Parker The Kitten had been here less than 24 hours and we were unsure if he knew a litter box from an Ultimate Nullifier.

We are, however, middle aged, which means that we were around in the days when, not only were newspapers a viable business with a future perceived to be brighter than being mentioned in the same breath as buggy whips, leaded gasoline and kitten urine sponges, but when the newspaper comic strip was in it’s probable final golden age. Here at the Home Office, we have huge collections of the favorite classic comic strips of our adolescence. Bloom County. Doonesbury. And, of course, Calvin & Hobbes.

Calvin & Hobbes occupies it’s own rarefied space in that pantheon, because of all the strips, it exists in and of itself, and that’s it. I personally have a stuffed Bill The Cat and an Uncle Duke action figure. I have seen Garry Trudeau hang around so long he has put Doonesbury on hiatus to produce TV shows and Broadway musicals. I have attended Comic-Con panels where Berkeley Breathed has talked about the history of Bloom County, and I even got to meet the guy and have him sign my first volume of the Bloom County collection by IDW… but Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson did the strip, wrapped the strip up, and then went off into almost complete retirement, leaving behind almost no comment. And unless you had a taste for decals of Calvin pissing on the Ford logo or t-shirts of Calvin and Hobbes dancing around a beer keg (if you happened to attend college in the late 80s or early 90s, of course), the only merchandise was the strip itself.

And thus it has remained. However, if you happen to live anywhere near Ohio State in Columbus, specifically near the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, an exhibition of some of Watterson’s original art from Calvin & Hobbes is starting today. And in a effort to hype the event, Watterson actually gave a brief interview discussing how he became involved with the library, a little about his process on Calvin & Hobbes, and his thoughts on the current state of cartooning.

I don’t want to give too much away, since the interview is brief, and you should really check out the whole thing, but here’s Watterson’s comment on how the world of cartooning might look to an aspiring creator in a world where a newspaper’s highest aspiration is often to be used to prevent paint from hitting a hardwood floor. You know, as opposed to preventing cat urine from hitting it:

Anyone can publish now, and there are no restrictions of taste, approach, or subject matter. The gatekeepers are gone, so the prospect for new and different voices is exciting. Or at least it will be if anyone reads them. And it will be even more exciting if anyone pays for them. It’s hard to charge admission without a gate.

That’s right, goatfuckers; with the Internet, any dipshit can throw up a shingle and publish any damn thing they want, whether they have any skills or not! Wait, what?

Anyway, if you do happen to be in Columbus, OH, the exhibition opens at 1 p.m. today until 5, and will be running until August 3rd.