Today's Most Surprising News

February 15, 2023 3:41 AM

Bill Watterson, creator of "Calvin and Hobbes", has a new book coming out, a project done in collaboration with John Kascht.
posted by Ipsifendus (27 comments total)

(Sees “Bill Watterson” and nothing else) Squee!
posted by Melismata at 4:25 AM on February 15, 2023 [15 favorites]

Art work is beautiful. Very excited for this.
posted by Fizz at 4:57 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

>won't grant any interviews or appear in any dopey documentaries for 30 years
>emerges from a cave with a very '90s book no one asked for
>looks nothing like any of his other work
>not even the primary artist

Absolute king shit.
posted by star gentle uterus at 5:22 AM on February 15, 2023 [33 favorites]

Don't forget that he did emerge from the cave a few other times:
- In 2011, he painted this in honor of another cartoonist who was suffering from Parkinson's
- 2014 was the year of the Big Watterson Comeback (well, big for him), which started with him drawing the poster for a documentary about comics
- That same year, he co-authored 3 Pearls Before Swine strips (the links to the strips are at the end of the blog post)
- Also that same year, he drew a poster for the following year's Angoulême International Comics Festival, in lieu of appearing to receive an award

and then he went back into the cave
posted by timdiggerm at 5:37 AM on February 15, 2023 [25 favorites]

Yeah, and I remembered he did do a brief segment (along with the promo poster) in the 2014 documentary Stripped. It's still very funny to me. [Edit: Sorry, didn't notice you had already mentioned that one.]
posted by star gentle uterus at 5:46 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

With Berkeley Breathed having spent a few of the past years taunting Watterson to do something new, I'm glad to see this coming out.
posted by hippybear at 7:11 AM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

I read ‘Bill Watterson, creator of “Calvin and Hobbes”…’, and my heart fell through the floor.
posted by lumosh at 7:18 AM on February 15, 2023 [25 favorites]

Request to change the FPP text to "Bill Watterson (WHO IS STILL ALIVE), creator of..."
posted by echo target at 7:52 AM on February 15, 2023 [15 favorites]

OH MY GOD TAKE ALL MY MONEY RIGHT NOW THANK YOU IN ADVANCE
posted by 40 Watt at 8:07 AM on February 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

It’s possible that some of my friends who are also fans will be unhappy that this is completely unlike his earlier work but I am so here for whatever the hell that guy wants to do. Thank you so much for this post!
posted by Bella Donna at 8:09 AM on February 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I totally respect Watterson's integrity re Calvin and Hobbes. He resisted selling out, and despite the certainty of continued riches and fame if he continued producing the strip or licenced it away, he avoided the descent into mediocrity.

Looking forward to seeing his new work, whenever he chooses to release some, but he certainly doesn't owe us product.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:10 AM on February 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

Exciting! I love when people known primarily for their visual art focus on a story and let someone else draw for a bit. This also reminded me to check when "Bea Wolf", the Weinersmith/Boulet collab, is coming out. (It's next month!)
posted by phooky at 8:53 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fastest book pre-order I've evah made!
posted by Faintdreams at 9:20 AM on February 15, 2023

Exciting! I love when people known primarily for their visual art focus on a story and let someone else draw for a bit.

Based on the product description on Amazon, it sounds like they both worked on the illustrations in a collaborative fashion:

For the book's illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration. Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate—a mysterious process in its own right.
posted by asnider at 9:27 AM on February 15, 2023

This sounds great but I've been hoping for a large, full-color edition of the collected Adventures of Spaceman Spiff. Including perhaps the unabridged Spiff and the Zorgwarg Queen or Spiff and the Scum Beings from Planet Q-13
posted by vacapinta at 10:37 AM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Watterson's voice has been sorely missed in the public discourse these last few decades, so I'm looking forward to hearing his opinions on (I'm guessing) global warming, vaccinations, and the deep state.
posted by The Tensor at 11:11 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bill Watterson has always to me represented the absolute pinnacle of creative and artistic achievement. He made something perfect, protected it from being ruined by capitalism, and disappeared into the woods. A Millennial Saint.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 11:28 AM on February 15, 2023 [10 favorites]

so I'm looking forward to hearing his opinions on (I'm guessing) global warming, vaccinations, and the deep state

I'd be very careful what you wish for here. Watterson seems like a good dude, but the last decade has been a parade of "Huh, so it turns out that person's actually a raving rightwing nutcase".
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:33 AM on February 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

Yeah, I think Calvin and Hobbes is a pinnacle of art, and I obviously hold Watterson in some esteem, but the past decades have really made me realize that you have to separate the artist from the art. I'm looking forward to reading this but I'm not sure the end result will be any better than anything made by a more contemporary graphic novelist.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 12:01 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Picasso could do pretty much anything, in one line lay utter simplicity and straight-up beauty. But then he spent fifty years painting a broken piece of a violin protruding from the asshole of an aardvark, maybe a woman riding on the aardvark, a woman with her nose coming out of her throat and one eyeball where her ear ought to be, and all of it in flat, ugly colors. It infuriated me, so frustrating to know how much more he could have given us.

Who am I to tell Picasso what to paint and/or what not to? He followed his heart, stayed true to his muse, didn't care if we didn't get it. John Lennon helps me here, people he'd meet would tell him to give us more Strawberry Fields, he'd tell them to go back to high school.

I do trust Watterson; based upon how he's lived I think we can assume that he's on the level. I'm interested, wondering what he's found. I'm not expecting Calvin and Hobbes; that was then, this is Coming Soon.
posted by dancestoblue at 1:10 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd be very careful what you wish for here. Watterson seems like a good dude, but the last decade has been a parade of "Huh, so it turns out that person's actually a raving rightwing nutcase".

That was, in fact, the joke.
posted by The Tensor at 1:26 PM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh, so Kascht is the guy whose famous people's portraits I see everywhere! Fascinating collaboration. The art they make together has little in common with either's work, to my eye. Maybe an artist could detect the DNA under that skin?
posted by TreeRooster at 1:27 PM on February 15, 2023

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:02 PM on February 15, 2023

... and then he went back into the cave.

With Berkeley Breathed having spent a few of the past years taunting Watterson to do something new, I'm glad to see this coming out.

The Raunchy Bill Watterson Artwork You Probably Haven’t Seen Before (Cracked)
posted by Melismata at 3:26 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

In 2011, he painted this in honor of another cartoonist who was suffering from Parkinson's

That cartoonist was Richard Thompson, the brilliant and now departed creator and artist of Cul De Sac. He was a frequent blogger, and his blog is still up on Blogger, where Mike Rhode keeps updating it as a tribute to him. Cul De Sac was just as great as Calvin & Hobbes, but in an entirely different way. (Example: casting snow magic.)

oneswellfoop isn't here these days, so I have to pick up the comics nerd slack for him.
posted by JHarris at 5:34 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

The article links to the Amazon preorder page, but with minimal effort I was able to preorder from my preferred local bookstore. Not ordering from Amazon: it’s real easy to do!
posted by badbobbycase at 5:53 PM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

I remember seeing those Pearls Before Swine strips and you knew immediately what you were looking at. Pastis has worked with other cartoonists before, notably Bil Keane. (Side note: if you get to hear him talk about his interactions with Keane, it’s funny and very good stuff. Keane approached him once, Pastis was like “oh no, this guy is gonna rip me a new one” and Keane told him “if you’re gonna parody my work, it had better be funny.” By all accounts Keane was just a ridiculously nice guy.) You see those Pearls strips and it immediately takes you back to the way you felt reading Watterson’s strips 25+ years ago. His style just does that. What he’s doing now is obviously different but I’m looking forward to seeing it, because he doesn’t have to do this, he wants to, and that is awesome.
posted by azpenguin at 7:39 AM on February 16, 2023 [1 favorite]