Saturday, June 7, 2014

Comic Strip Legends

So I found this post today, linked on news sites and though it would be awesome to talk about.

Bill Watterson is the creator of Calvin and Hobbes. He is somewhat of a different character when it comes to how he handles himself in the industry. Though Calvin and Hobbes is his creation and he has every right to their likeness he has never produced any copyright material for profit. That's right, all those stickers and shirts you see are technically not legal, but he allows their use anyway.

Besides his unwillingness to market his characters due to his personal believes (according to articles, I'm not sure we can say that for sure as he does not do interviews) he does NOT do public or even private appearances. He is famously reclusive and notoriously hard to find. After he ended Calvin and Hobbes as a series he left the public eye and became something of a legend.

Stephan Pastis the artist behind Pearls Before Swine was one of the many people to attempt to reach out to Bill Watterson, and like most expected to not hear anything in return. The response he got was something out of an artists personal fantasy and of course he wanted to tell everyone, but he was sworn to secrecy until the project was complete. Well today he is allowed to talk about it and it is an awesome story.

Here is Mr. Pastis' blog post about the exchange and some links to new artwork done by Bill Watterson.

Lots of people don't normally follow artists or care much about them beyond their artwork but I have found that it is far more interesting to follow how an artist develops over time and how their stories change. I've followed a great many web based comics over the years and read about and watch artists grow over time and it makes their work more substantial to me. Perhaps that is one of the topics I will try to cover in the future.

Geek:Out

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