Once Upon a Geek

Bill Watterson gave an interview this week to Plain Dealer reporter John Campanelli.  This was Watterson’s first interview since 1989.  Below is an excerpt:

JC: Because your work touched so many people, fans feel a connection to you, like they know you. They want more of your work, more Calvin, another strip, anything. It really is a sort of rock star/fan relationship. Because of your aversion to attention, how do you deal with that even today? And how do you deal with knowing that it’s going to follow you for the rest of your days?

BW: Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist — how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!

But since my “rock star” days, the public attention has faded a lot. In Pop Culture Time, the 1990s were eons ago. There are occasional flare-ups of weirdness, but mostly I just go about my quiet life and do my best to ignore the rest. I’m proud of the strip, enormously grateful for its success, and truly flattered that people still read it, but I wrote “Calvin and Hobbes” in my 30s, and I’m many miles from there.

An artwork can stay frozen in time, but I stumble through the years like everyone else. I think the deeper fans understand that, and are willing to give me some room to go on with my life.

To read the entire interview, click here.  My thanks to Joel Schroeder, OnThink, and my wonderful wife for sending me information about this interview.

Happy New Year!  Today is the final day of CALVIN AND HOBBES SNOW DAYS!  I hope you’ve enjoyed these snowmen strips all week.  Also, have you made a pledge yet to Dear Mr. Watterson, a film that will look to the readers and fans of Calvin & Hobbes to tell the story of the strip and its creator?  If not, then click here for information on how you can help.

One last time, bring on the snowmen!

Today is day four of CALVIN AND HOBBES SNOW DAYS!  Enjoy these snowmen strips.  Also, please consider making a pledge to Dear Mr. Watterson, a film that will look to the readers and fans of Calvin & Hobbes to tell the story of the strip and its creator.  For more information on the fund raising for Dear Mr. Watterson, please click here.

And now, bring on the snowmen!

Today is day three of CALVIN AND HOBBES SNOW DAYS!  Enjoy these snowmen strips.  Also, please consider making a pledge to Dear Mr. Watterson, a film that will look to the readers and fans of Calvin & Hobbes to tell the story of the strip and its creator.  For more information on the fund raising for Dear Mr. Watterson, please click here.

And now, bring on the snowmen!

Today is day two of CALVIN AND HOBBES SNOW DAYS!  Enjoy these snowmen strips.  Also, please consider making a pledge to Dear Mr. Watterson, a film that will look to the readers and fans of Calvin & Hobbes to tell the story of the strip and its creator.  For more information on the fund raising for Dear Mr. Watterson, please click here.

And now, bring on the snowmen!

I’m officially declaring this week CALVIN AND HOBBES SNOW DAYS!  Each day this week will spotlight a handful of Calvin & Hobbes comic strips featuring snowmen.  This collection won’t cover all of the snowman related strips, but will tackle many of them.

You may recall I’ve posted before about the upcoming film, Dear Mr. Watterson.  Well they’ve just started a funding campaign at www.kickstarter.com to raise $12,000 to help pay for the costs of production for the movie. So far, over $5,000 has already been pledged. Kickstarter.com is a website that allows them to gather pledges for the film (you can pledge easily, especially if you already have Facebook and Amazon.com accounts).  If they don’t hit their goal of $12,000 then they won’t get any of the funding.

Please consider making a pledge if you are able. The minimum pledge is only $3, and there are incentives, including the opportunity to be in the film, or to get a finished copy on DVD when it is released. I believe this is a worthwhile project and encourage everyone to consider pledging.  If you are interested, please visit Kickstarter.com by clicking here.

And now, bring on the snowmen!

As a parent, and a geek desperately clinging to his childhood, this image really speaks to me.

I’ve been a huge fan of Calvin & Hobbes since the early days of its publication.  I’ve got my own inner-Calvin, so I really connected with the daily strip.  I was very wrapped up in the series back then and was about crushed when Bill Watterson retired.  Now years later, I’m raising two children and passing on my own childhood interests to them.  On top of the emotional impact of the image, I gotta say the artist did a phenomenal job mimicking Watterson’s style.

Makes me want to shed some parental-man-tears.

Originally found at MotivatedPhotos.com.  My thanks to SGhoul for sending me this image.

…unless of course you’ve got these too.  Then you’re in the cool kids club.

Here are some interesting manga-style interpretations of Calvin and Hobbes.  The recent Charlie Brown Manga-Style post seemed to spark a lot of discussion, so I thought I’d do another on one of my all-time favorites.  If you have any sense of humor or love for childhood, then Calvin and Hobbes is probably one of your favorites too.

Even though I’m not really a big fan of manga/anime, I find these images interesting.  Also, as a non-fan of manga, I can’t absolutely vouch that these art styles qualify as manga.  I can just attest that they came up in web searches as “manga”.

Calvin and Hobbes by ~loveariddle

Best Friends by *spacecoyote

Calvin and Hobbes by Zatransis

Calvin and Hobbes by Glen Y

And just for for the Naruto fans, here is an April Fool’s Joke that was actually entertaining!

My thanks to Ravenface for directing me towards this post.  Also, if you listen carefully, you can probably hear Ed’s head explode as he sees the images above. 

I don’t really go for anime/manga stuff typically.  However, when I came across these manga-style Peanuts characters, I simply had to post them.  The concept is that the Peanuts gang grew up to be teenagers in modern times.

For Snoopy, the artist wasn’t sure which direction to go.  Here are his thoughts on the subject:

I still haven’t decided on a direction for arguably the most popular Peanuts character period.

So far it’s an older Snoopy….or Snoopy lives on through his off-spring. I not certain the mother should be revealed and I don’t want to have both Snoopy AND his kids around at the same time.

Snoopy’s attitude would virtually remain unchanged.

Prince would represent Snoopy’s pride, ego and his inherent ability to excel at most things he puts his effort into.

Penelope represents Snoopy’s general good side. The Snoopy that helps out Woodstock and participates in good causes.

Blockhead represents the side of Snoopy you don’t mess with. This is the Snoopy that dragged Linus around with his blanket, kicked the door of Charlie’s house when he is hungry and fought when he had to.

Again, anime/manga isn’t really my thing, but you gotta admit these images are pretty cool!