Was Calvin And Hobbes the greatest comic strip of all time? Or one of the greatest works of art of the 20th century? What if we had gotten a spaceman spiff strip instead? It almost happened. And why did Bill Watson walk away from Calvin And Hobbes at the height of its popularity? Jump on this sled with me and let's glide off a cliff because today Rad, an 80s90s History podcast, is taking on Calvin And Hobbes.
Welcome to Rad and 80s90s History Podcasts recounting the history of the last time things were relatively normal and chill. I'm your host, Brian McCullough. Today my amazing special guest is writer and comedian, Five Time Emmy nominee Daniel Kibblesmith Daniel. Welcome to Rad.
I'm waving with my hand in case anybody's watching the video component of this. Actually we should probably set the background for non 80s and 90s kids listening. Calvin And Hobbes was a comic strip that was created by cartoonist Bill Waterson. It was syndicated from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995. At the height of its popularity, Calvin And Hobbes was featured in over 2400 newspapers worldwide. Calvin And Hobbes books have sold 45 million copies.
The strip revolves around a six year old boy named Calvin and his stuff tiger Hobbes, but his Hobbes just a stuff tiger or is he a sentient creature or an aspect of Calvin's imagination or Calvin's literal spirit animal or a manifestation of Calvin's id and or spirit or all of the above. More on that later, the story of Calvin And Hobbes is fascinating partly because the creator is a bit of a JD Salinger figure.
He created his art walked away, a creative genius that made a body of work that is beloved, but then has not done anything since almost three decades at this point. But the why why we're doing this episode is also because I would argue that Calvin and Hobbes had an almost spiritual philosophical role in shaping Jen Xers and how we think of the world.
Do you agree with that, Daniel? What's your what's your background with Calvin and Hobbes? I mean, I completely agree about its influence. I think that it's pretty inarguable whenever you speak to somebody who has a relationship with it. I think if you've heard of it, you love it. It's one of those one of those bodies of work where it's pretty much universally beloved by anybody who's encountered it.
You get people who are contrarians about like the Beatles or contrarians about the Simpsons or you know other long running institutions like Saturday Night Live where you can kind of chart their ups and downs. I think Calvin and Hobbes is one of the very few sort of like consensus choices of a perfect thing to be created in society.
I don't know I don't know if anybody who's like, yeah, I've read all of it. Be mine. And it tailed off at the end. It was great at the beginning, but I feel like it's also consistent all the way through. Right. Exactly. And as an elder millennial who badly wanted to be in Jen X was just scratching at the dog door of Jen X. Yeah, this was a seminal for me. I write comics and newspapers for people who weren't familiar. It was like a tick tock made of trees these days in your house every morning.
You know what? I was afraid to do this because it would be reductive or insulting. But like there were once things called newspapers. But I mean like seriously my background with it is like this was a routine part of my day growing up like you come down from breakfast, poor abolachirios and the newspapers on the table and your dad is maybe reading the news section and later on in my teen years.
Maybe I would go to the sports section first, but from the time I could read, you know, my brother and I would pass the comics pages back and forth. That was that was for us. And if you're seven or eight and there's this one strip that jumps out at you that really speaks to you. It was it was Calvin and Hobbes.
Yeah, it's did an incredible job of reaching you without talking down to you. And I think that that's sort of one of the cornerstones of its appeal, you know, then and enduring was that it was so unflinchingly honest about what it felt like to be a child that it allowed kids to acknowledge their own cynicism and dissatisfaction and ambition.
And you know, way that I think was really rare in children's media, which especially at the time was largely made by adults who had forgotten what it felt like to be kids and were marketing to a version of kids that they'd created in their heads. Well, and I don't know if you got this sense too, but like, you know, a lot of the other comics like peanuts, like family circus, like beetle, balier or the lock horns or something that were clearly from a different generation.
And you know, that's not true for everything like Garfield was, you know, contemporaneous, Kathy for better for worse, is it for better or worse? Yeah. And especially like the far side. So there were things that felt of a time, but like half the comics page, you sort of got the sense that this is written by people that maybe wrote jokes for comics in the 50s or something.
Right. Yeah, it definitely was, you know, new and fresh. And one of the things that I think makes it sort of an under reported tent pole of the the Gen X kind of pop culture pantheon and mentality is that sort of like it's a fresh look at something that has so long been dominated by a previous generation.
And you know, it's a it's a rejection of the premise, the same way that a lot of the music was a lot of the movies was, you know, these are this is work that is created by people who have seen all of those movies and listened to all of that music.
And are acknowledging that it exists instead of sort of continuing in the same track that kind of, you know, is in a parallel universe like it's a comic strip that felt like things that were happening in real life. I think peanuts is the only thing comparable. Right. You know, peanuts was allowed to introduce cynicism into monoculture. But it was as you're saying very much the product of a different generation.
People come back to peanuts. When we talk a little more about influences, but yeah, I'm going to make an argument for why the subtle difference between the peanuts characters and Calvin and Hobbes. But let's go ahead and and dive into, you know, a portrait of the artist as a young man.
So again, the strip was created by Bill Waterson, William Boyd, Waterson, the second who was born July 5th, 1958. So we're already talking generations and things like that. If we count 64 as the tail end of the boomers, he's the tail end. But he's definitely a boomer, which again is interesting. If I'm making the assertion that he molded Gen X in a way.
Waterson lived in Alexandria, Alexandria, Virginia until age six. His father was a patent examiner for the Department of Commerce. But in 1965, the family, which also now included a younger brother moved to Chagrin or Shagrin. It's spelled Shagrin, but Chagrin falls Ohio, I think, which is a suburb of Cleveland.
Apparently, the house that he grew up and did have a big hill in the backyard, according to his biographer, which is useful because, you know, sledding down hills is a big part of the Calvin and Hobbes strips. By the way, I should mention that a lot of the biographical stuff I got from a book called Looking for Calvin and Hobbes by Nevin Martell.
But the bottom line is is Shagrin falls by all accounts is a classic Midwestern idyllic town with, you know, a still functional downtown picket fences and the like. And Daniel, I've given you as I always do a list of rabbit hole facts that I found while doing research. So could you do me a favor and hit me with number one real quick?
Absolutely, I am here to learn that apparently there is a stone temple pilots connection to Calvin and Hobbes. Well, I wish there was a deeper one, but given this is an 80s 90s show I couldn't resist. Another kid that grew up in Shagrin falls about a decade later than Waterston with Scott Wyland, the front person of the stone temple pilots. I don't have any sense that they ran across each other or anything like that, but again, I couldn't resist throwing that in.
They weren't in the same tree house club to get rid of slimy. That would be great if they were engrossed together. Yeah, that would that would be much much better. But it is interesting also to like so, you know, Scott Wyland, you know, famously a rock and roller had some, you know, personal issues and demons and things like that.
Everything that I've been able to find biographically about Bill Waterston and especially Bill as a young boy is that he's not Calvin. If Calvin is this, you know, sort of rambunctious out there kid, everything that the biographers have found that I was able to find was that that was not what Bill was.
Calvin is not autobiographical. There's a quote from Bill's father that said he was a conservative child, not that he was unimaginative because of course he was, but in a fantasy way, it was nothing like Calvin. He didn't have an imaginary friend like Hobbes and he wasn't a Dennis the Menace.
But Waterston's dad did have peanuts books, some Charles Schultz collections. We should say again, if you're not familiar, peanuts is sort of like the, the, the load star, the base of, you know, 20th century newspaper comics. There's a quote from the Wall Street Journal where Bill admits that it was reading those books that from a young age made him want to dream of becoming the next Charles Schultz, which hit me with rabbit hole fact number two.
As a child, Waterston apparently wrote Schultz a fan letter and did get a response. Right, and he was so thrilled by this that he writes a second one and got another response back that was identical. It was, it was a form letter. Maybe that's more sparky.
So this might, this might shed some light on what we'll talk about later. Like this maybe was a never meet your heroes moment, you know, sure. But anyway, by seventh grade, Waterston is, is drawing cartoons and pictures for his friends in middle school and into high school.
He's drawing all the time. A lot of it is superhero stuff, drawing his friends as superhero characters having adventures. And in fact, rabbit hole fact number three, that space man spiff kelpins outer space hero alter ego came before the creation of kelpins kind of. In a more meaningful way, he will come before him in a second, but one of the regular things that Waterston draws was a character called Ram Fahir Rolf, which I guess is German for space man Rolf.
And space man Rolf has adventures that often end with him getting eaten by aliens. I wasn't, apparently, no one has images of this online or anything anywhere. But it's interesting. And you'll see again, like it was sort of that space man adventure character that that was sort of the thing that he always wanted to do at least at the beginning.
In high school, he draws for the school newspaper, the Valley lantern. He draws a lot of cartoons lampooning high school life rabbit hole fact number four, that the mascot for his high school was a tiger. So apparently he was drawing very often tigers because you know, the the tiger would speak for the school for various things or whatever. In 1976, he's graduating high school and on a whim, he submits an editorial cartoon to the local paper, which was the sun herald it got published.
He goes to Kenyan college in Ohio. And when he gets there as a freshman, he discovers that Jim Borgman had recently graduated the spring before him and Borgman had just been hired to be the political cartoonist for the Cincinnati inquiry. So Waterson decides he wants to be a political cartoonist. He becomes the political cartoonist for the campus newspaper at Kenyan.
He starts a strip just for the paper called Mewks and Fester. And quoting from the Martell book, three Mewks and Fester strips I was able to dig up in the Kenyan library from 1979. Mewks is spilling a beer kickstarting a food fight that's reminiscent of the strips in which Calvin literally fights with his food. And another Calvin moment, Fester is daydreaming in poly side class before creating a ruckus by coughing out a commentary. Oh, oh shit. Oh, bullshit.
Which I got the sense from the biography. This is like the era of like, you know, the movie animal house or whatever. Like just from what my dad is told me about like college in the 70s. I got a sense that Waterson had a real college in the 70s college experience.
And it's sounding like it. And it also, I think, is so easy in hindsight to map this on to that spirit of rebellion that ends up being the backbone of Calvin and Hobbs. That, you know, this is essentially how that character would behave as young adults. But there's two things that kind of don't track. I saw a lot of quotes that said that Waterson had a sharper sense of humor like a darker sense of humor than maybe came through in Calvin and Hobbs.
Like there's a, there's another picture apparently that the biographer found from college where Waterson drew himself sitting at his desk in a room full of empty beer bottles and cans and a poster of the Iatou Iatou La Comaini in the background. He's wearing a wife beater and shorts decorated with the Playboy logo while a thought bubble floats above him filled with nothing but an asterisk.
So that and he's a polysign major. He wants to be a political cartoonist. Like one of the things about Calvin and Hobbs, which is I'm not saying this makes it better or anything, but it's timeless because it's sort of a completely a political and almost a cultural in the sense that you kind of can't pin it down. Yeah, the things that it's satirizing are like the craziness of television commercials. Like things that absolutely absolutely predate the strip and are still relevant today.
Like it satirizes like political polling with him, you know, the runner where he's occasionally checking in on his dad's numbers and he's not clear how right how his dad was elected dad.
Like it definitely like it's a world where satire exists, but it's not Dune's Bay or something where if you read it two years later, you're only going to be able to understand maybe a third of them or even Bloom County, which I was a huge fan of at the time too, but like if you read old books of Bloom County and they're making jokes about Gary heart and stuff like that.
And it's like, you know, even even though that was another strip that involved children and anthropomorphic animals and things like that. Yeah, that that's clearly obviously dated, but with with a different purpose. You did occasionally need to be there for a lot of these things. And that's entirely fair because this was a daily thing.
This was a daily thing, right? This was this was monoculture as it was delivered at that time that you'd start the day with the comics page and you'd end it with Johnny Carson and you could talk to virtually anybody you met that day about peanuts and Johnny Carson and they would know what you were talking about. Yeah, it shared references and three channels and yeah, yeah.
So he graduates, Waterson graduates, he gets a six month trial as the editorial cartoonist for the Cincinnati Post, which was the paper my grandparents got. So he's actually going up against his his original idol, Bergman at the Cincinnati Inquirer.
It doesn't go well. His contract is not continued. Again, I just don't feel like water. Waterson even says like I guess I just didn't have the killer instinct that makes a great political cartoonist, which I think he made the right choice, even if it wasn't his choice. So by the time he gets let go from that paper, he's just taking jobs, doing lay out work for anybody, basically, mostly a weekly publication very much like the Penny saver.
Here's another Waterson quote. It was a real job and a real job is a job you hate. I design car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store and I hated every single minute of the four and a half million minutes.
So I worked there, my fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without having to do any extra work for it, which sounds a little Calvin, ask it sounds very Calvin. It sounds like the life that Calvin is trying to avoid around this time. He he marries his high school sweetheart Melissa Richmond.
And I believe they are still married to this day. He obviously needs to pay the bills, starting a family and a household. So again, he's doing a lot of freelance work, but the whole time he's trying to dream up strips that he can sell to a syndicate. Now, Daniel, I know that you have worked in comics like comic books and modern comic books, but are you familiar with how like the whole syndicating thing works for for newspapers and things like that?
Not properly. To me, it has always sounded vaguely like the mafia and it in my practical life, it boils down to like, okay, this website has Garfield, but this other website has like Nancy. So I do understand that they're a worrying territories. Right. And so the idea of a syndicate is you they they package materials and not just comics like you can also syndicate, you know, advice columns like, you know, dear Abby and and landers and things like that.
And they sell them to all of the newspapers around the country, you know, at the time we're talking about the early 80s, there's way more newspapers than there are now. And so the idea is if you want to be a cartoonist, want to get on the funny pages, what you do is you, you know, come up with a strip and you shop it around to the syndicates. The syndicates would get thousands of submissions a year, but here's the thing. The comics pages had a limited real estate in papers, right.
And so maybe one or two new strips get tried out in a year because you have the stalwarts like peanuts and Garfield. And so what is the turnover, especially if you have things like we said, like Beetle Bailey that has gone on since World War II or the Korean War or something like that.
There's not a great chance to break into the industry. Is it like comics is sort of different right because like because there's so many established characters and things like that. Like people always need new storylines, right. So it's not quite as hard as one or two a year. Yeah, I think that superhero comics are different in as far as the characters are these enduring institutions, but they're not necessarily locked to one creator or one creator team.
Or in some cases, you know, some of these are like literally like family businesses, you know, like I want to say maybe the Hagar, the horrible or high and low as are passed on to the child of the right. It always feels like a great nephew or something is now doing family circus. So yeah, you end, you know, as we're saying, it is very much this routine dominated medium where the comfort and the repetitiveness is all very built in.
So it's not and that's part of the that's part of the charm is like you're waking up in the morning. You don't necessarily want to be challenged. You want comfort food with your Cheerios, I guess. Right. Right. And it's hard to explain to somebody who maybe didn't grow up doing this, but it is so the placement of the strips is so consistent from day to day that when there was a new one, it was genuinely disruptive to your to your routine.
It wasn't like Instagram or TikTok or something where variety is expected. It was like somebody broke into your house overnight and moved the furniture. So if you are someone that aspires to get on these pages as a creator, you, you know, come up with a strip, you draw some panels. If a syndicate, first of all, you got to jump through the hoop of getting the syndicate to like it. Right. And the syndicate will help you develop it.
But even if you get a syndicate to say, hey, this is a good idea for a strip Daniel, they still have to shop it around. And again, there's no guarantee that papers will buy it. And so, A, it's this sort of going threading the eye of a needle thing to just, you know, get considered. And then the economics of it are kind of terrible because, you know, at first, maybe a few papers run your strip, but it could take years for you to build up to 30 or 100 or whatever.
And so, especially in the early years, if you're only in a few papers, like if you're making a couple hundred bucks a week, you're doing very well at like the vast majority of comics creators in the biography, the author said we're making less than $25,000 a year. And if you become a Jim Davis, and you create Garfield or a Scott Adams, creating deal, and you're in thousands of papers, sure, that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just from the syndicate fees.
But, and this is key for what we'll talk about later, the real money is then a packaging, packaging those strips into books. But then B is the licensing, right, is the calendars, the stuffed animals, the t-shirts, the toys. Again, you can make a decent living, just syndicating, but if you want to make real money, like apparently whatever the corporation is that Jim Davis has for Garfield has done.
Oh, pause incorporated clause incorporated pause pause pause is like has done like a billion dollars in its lifetime and sales and things like that. So, anyway, this is still Bill Waterson's dream. He's hacking away at it, which go ahead and hit me up with rabbit hole fact number five. The first strip that he tries to shop around was Space Man Spiff. Literally, I believe, called Space Man Spiff at this point. Now that makes sense, because there's a long tradition of this sort of thing.
The comics pages weren't always comedy. There were things like, you know, going back to John Carter from Mars, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, that sort of stuff, like even Orphan Annie was more of an adventure sort of thing, really.
Yeah, even Popeye was from, they called it the Thimble Theater because the idea was that it was an ongoing story that was small, hence Thimble Theater. He wasn't like a Bugs Bunny out of the gate. He was a supporting character in what was essentially a long adventurous soap opera. So, the other reason this makes sense is this is the early 80s. So, what's super hot right now is Star Wars and space stuff.
So, again, I was not able to uncover any examples of the strips. I don't know if they exist. But it sounds like the Space Man character was a sort of like a Han Solo rogue-like character. Apparently smoked a cigar. And it was like half adventure and half parody. And nobody really bites on it because they kind of want, you know, anthropomorphic talking dogs and bears.
And bears and tigers and stuff like that. So, he also tries to strip with a Groundhog on a frog. Another one called Critters that focused on Bugs. One was called Dog House, which followed a 20-year-old sort of sort of like a slacker character. Like there were two of them. One was named Sam and one was Fester.
And they're sort of like young kids that maybe aren't in college and aren't really doing anything with their life. But, key. One of the characters Sam had a little brother named Marvin who had a stuffed tiger who was named Hobbs.
Off to the races. Well, a little bit because what has to happen here is none of the significance bite on any of this stuff, right? And so they start to steer them in a way. They're like stripped down the characters and like maybe explore the idea. Again, I guess they're thinking of like the licensing and things like that. Maybe make Hobbs more important, right?
And this is where apparently Waterson is starting to investigate the idea of is Hobbs a stuffed animal or is here real character in a way like what is Snoopy? Like Snoopy interacts with the humans, but does not talk to them, right? So in a way, I think one of the genius things that Waterson hits on is this whole sort of amorphous concept of is the is the is the character that is the obvious stuffed animal character.
To what degree is it part of the reality of the strip or just in the imagination of some of the characters? Yeah, and it's from what I've read and you know, one of the recurring themes of this episode is that there's not a huge amount of biographical or autobiographical material about Bill Waterson. But from the notes that he put in the 10th anniversary, Kelvin and Hobbs collection, he himself seems to not want there to be a fixed answer to this question.
It really is situational. It depends on the comedy. And I think it's worth mentioning that like nobody doesn't get it. Like when you when you read it, your experience is not hindered by wondering about the logistics of Hobbs as a magical transforming tiger versus just this sort of idea that conforms to the story.
The originally so he's focusing on the tiger character and then the younger kid who originally was named Marvin and he switches the name to Calvin because apparently there was another strip that launched around that time with a character named Marvin. Now rabbit hole number six is a little bit controversial, but go ahead and hit me with it.
Okay, yeah, I'm very excited about this one because I've heard conflicting things. It is probably not true that the characters Calvin and Hobbs were named after the religious slash philosophical giants, Calvin and Hobbs. This is quoting from the Martell book.
Waterson later told an interviewer in 1987 that the names Calvin and Hobbs were a tip of the hat to the political science department at Kenyan College. I thought it was funny. Calvin was named after the 16th century Protestant theologian who believed in predestination Hobbs after the philosopher a century later who once observed that life is nasty, British and short.
Or that is what waterson would have you believe that's not true rich West told me and rich West was I believe a classmate of water. The linking of the two names wasn't natural. The strip did not come from the idea that both characters would be named after philosophical thinkers. However, Hobbs was definitely a tip of the hat.
And maybe perhaps a little bit of a smirk at his political science degree from Kenyan Calvin was just a coincidence. Now here's why I tend to believe this. I mean, you know, whatever he can he can retcon this and say that. But Calvin, if you understand Calvinism as a philosophy.
Calvin would be the exact opposite, you know, Calvinist at least in the classical sense are like these very buttoned up straight laced like not a dentist the menist style wild child Bart Simpson like character like what Calvin represents right.
And he's very questioning and you know, kelpins like relationship with faith is complicated and uninformed well, well, and certain there's a certainty especially to Calvinism but a lot of prodigy is Protestantism, which is I am certain because God is speaking to me through through the Bible and things like that. And I should say I don't know anything about this stuff. The closest thing I have to a religion probably is, you know, Calvin and Hobbs and other pop culture associations.
So this is something that I always took fully for granted because Waterson himself has said it. And listen, if in retrospect he's like, yeah, that's why I wanted to do it fine, whatever. I'm not going to quibble with that necessarily.
But let's talk about the philosophy for a second because one of the things and this will bring in the peanuts concept one of the things that I think is magical about the Calvin and Hobbs strips is the sort of philosophizing the sort of you know, you had Charlie Brown and the peanuts characters doing things like asking what is the meaning of it all and like being depressed.
Those characters very much spiritually fought in World War II. Right. And but also that's the thing about the penis characters is I would argue that even though their children, you feel that it is the voice of a middle aged person coming out of a child's mouth, right? Sure. I mean essentially, yeah, I don't think that it takes anything away from peanuts to sort of admit that.
But when you have Calvin like asking what the meaning of it all is while sledding down a hill and popping off like these Zen cones of like poetic existentialist wisdom, like it's different. And again, it's more timeless in a way. Like I don't know if I again, I don't want to sound like I'm denigrating what peanuts accomplish, but it seems it seems more expansive to me.
The philosophy and like the beauty of wet water. So does I think it's yeah, I think it's a broader humanist perspective. I think that peanuts is a little more certain about the awfulness of the world where his Calvin Hobbs is very much defined by that openness. I also think that it is from time to time plausibly how a really smart child would engage with those ideas. I think obviously Calvin talks, you know, in a more sophisticated way than a real six year old by a lot.
But I think that as a consistently written fictional character, Calvin is just a really, really smart person who's kind of reaching beyond his grasp a lot of the time. Some of what he is saying feels like he has heard it somewhere and he's repeating it. Because he knows how smart people talk and that's how he sees himself and how he aspires to mastery and understanding of the universe. And then just as often he's like, why did that bird have to die? He truly is a child at the same time.
Which by the way, anyone with children under the age of 10 like that that kids are great with that for being so sure of things like here's this fact because they want to seem grown up and you're like, yes, your fact is correct, even though it's not correct. But can I ask you a question about Hobbs from so if Calvin is like sort of this sort of seeker and questioner of things.
Hobbs to me always seemed like I mean Hobbs is like the straight man to the comedy sometimes but also Hobbs seems to be unperturbed by the world. It's not to say that he thinks the world is, you know, all puppies and lollipops, but he's not as worried about things like a lot of times the jokes at the end of strips will be Hobbs being like, yeah, or we could just go get ice cream or something like that. Right. Hobbs seems to comfortably exist in the world as it is.
He's very much Calvin's sort of, you know, sounding board. Like he is, I think in some ways, you know, Calvin is the kid that we are and Hobbs is the adult that we become. There's a really great, there's a really great strip where Calvin asks Hobbs, if he could wish for anything right now, what would it be? And Hobbs wishes for a sandwich. And Calvin says, that's a stupid wish. I'd wish for a billion trillion dollars and my own private continent.
And then the last panel gag is that Hobbs is eating a sandwich and he says, my wish came true. And I think that he just has this sort of, you know, more measured, more mature and experienced point of view that Calvin is this big, ambitious striver. And Hobbs is kind of like the happy adult who's waiting for him at the finish line. To figure it out or yeah.
So before we get off this sort of philosophical bent, what is your take on whether Hobbs is real or not, I'll give you a, I'll give you a water sink quote from one of one of the collections.
He said, I don't think of Hobbs as a doll that miraculously comes to life when Calvin's around neither do I think of Hobbs as the product of Calvin's imagination. Calvin sees Hobbs one way and everyone else sees Hobbs another way. I show two versions of reality and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it.
But what does that do for us the readers like is it, did you ever, did you ever make us, did you ever in your head be like, well, here's what's going on, it's just Calvin's imagination.
I don't know that I ever made any kind of like formalized, you know, like dogmatic distinction about what was happening. Like I think that quote sums it up perfectly and it's kind of hard to argue with, you know, obviously we have been debating like, authorial intent and like how truthful or consistent he's he's being about this stuff given how cagey he is. But I think that's right, you know, it's not toy story where he comes to life when your back is going to bring that up right here.
Toy story, there's a toy story like to use like from sci fi like it has a firm sense of the system of magic that is involved in toy story and there are rules and boundaries that are set down right right. I mean all that matters for the stories and the jokes to work is that Hobbs is real to Calvin. And you see Hobbs as a stuffed animal interacting with Calvin's parents all the time like he'll get lost in the woods or something and you'll see his mom talking to the stuffed the stuffed Hobbs doll.
And it does not, you know, spring to life and have a private conversation with her. It's just her kids stuffed animal. All that matters is that Calvin sees him as a friend and that they go on adventures together and the relationship that Calvin is projecting onto him makes him real so that we can experience these adventures from his point of view.
Well, and this is again, I think the key to the whole art here is this bringing the interior world of a child's imagination into the real world and kind of not because it like putting aside even Hobbs like all of the space man spiff or other like fantasy strips where he's going off and fighting dinosaurs and things like that. And then the gag at the end will be like, you know, he's wrestling under his blankets and bed and his dad is like what's going on in here or something like that.
But again, like that's that's sort of the real magic that Waterson tapped into was this sense that we all intuitively have a memory of maybe even if it's faint. The idea that there was a time when fantasy didn't necessarily have firm boundaries with reality kind of blended together. Yeah, I think that something we keep coming back to in in many facets is that Calvin and Hobbs is really successful in identifying what it feels like to be a child.
Not just in the sort of like, oh, I'm smarter and more sophisticated and maybe sadder than adults think I am, but also like I'm more playful. I live in a more pliable reality. Things can change for moments to moments. Peanuts really does feel like kids articulating what it feels like to be adults and Calvin and Hobbs feels like a kid who is authentically a kid, but sometimes uses the language of adults.
Let me ask you one more philosophical question. And this is a little dangerous because I feel like this could piss people off. Let's do it. Let's burn it all down. Are we sure Calvin is good? No, morally. Morally good. No, I mean, I think that's the tension of the comic. I mean, he's a child. I think it's very much about like, I don't think that, you know, something that we'll talk about this, but something I really reject is any kind of like future life for these characters.
And any kind of fans trying to manifest some sort of like larger canon or something, I find to be pretty repugnant and easily dismissed. But I do think that because Calvin is a child, like the idea of his development and future being in question is kind of like the point of the whole comic is like, yeah, he's he's misbehaves constantly. Well, and then there's a voice of reason around to acknowledge it to him. Like, hey, you want to make a better decision?
Right. Well, and also, you know, obvious analogs are like Dennis the menace, but that is an older adult not able to handle just the basic nature of a child. You know, Bart Simpson owes a lot to Calvin. I would argue, but the way Bart Simpson evolved, especially in the golden era of that show, he's genuinely has a good heart.
Calvin is angry and bitter. He's shirts responsibility. He's lazy. But it's like, there's an edge and an anger to Calvin that that I would argue even Bart is doesn't have a sharp edge like that. Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, I think Calvin and Hobbes is a two-hander. You know, that's why Calvin can be genuinely unsettling because there will always be this other balancing force.
I mean, Bart is his own, you know, there's Lisa obviously. And Lisa is very Hobzy. But Bart is ultimately, you know, his own Calvin and his own Hobbs. He has a conscience. Hobbs is the externalization of a lot of Calvin's, you know, more sophisticated reasoning. Before I come back to the timeline of the strip and sort of Watercins biography and stuff, can we just hit some things that are amazing, you know, aside from the.
Yeah, we're getting real brainy. Let's talk about how. Let's talk about how great this thing is. Calvin Ball. Again, this is so key to understanding. Like if you have had children or if you just interacted with small children, like the concept of making stuff up as you go along. Yeah. And Watercins refusal to let people assign rules to it. I think it's so important and so emblematic of his approach, this entire project.
The, the amount of the things that stuck out to me when I was eight reading these were the things like the transmogifier or what it like there was the one where there's several strips where a cardboard box will be a time machine or a Calvin goes into it and creates a second Calvin and then a third Calvin or whatever.
You know, again, speaking of like, you know, comic books and multiverses and things like that. The cartoons with the dinosaurs and the space adventures that are drawn in almost German expressionism style. Like that sort of that's the fantasy that I feel like no comic had been ballsy enough or crazy enough to do before.
Yeah, it was really ambitious and it was arriving at a time where the demand of craft had waned quite a bit. And a lot of Watercins writing that does exist is like complaining about the shrinking real estate on the comics page and how little respect is being paid towards the art and how much he loved, you know, full color.
Sunday, you know, Windsor, McKay, Prince Vallean's type, you know, old time comic strips and, you know, in the 10th anniversary book, he has landscapes that he's really proud of, you know, Martian landscapes or he'll prints a older version of a dinosaur fantasy comic and kind of lament that he didn't do enough research to make them look like real dinosaurs.
You can tell that he cares so much about doing next level work, especially compared to what was coming out at the time. I mean, this is just a pet theory of mine, but there's stuff about Calvin and Hobbes and Watercins commentary on it that makes it feel like he's trying to save the idea of the comics page by being an undeniable artist.
Like, no, I'm going to bring this back. Yeah, well, we'll get to that actually in a second when we get back to the biography, but just some other nuggets here, just to again, if people aren't familiar with the comics, but actually more if people are like, so again, Calvin ball.
If you remember what the rules of Calvin bar, Calvin ball are first, there are no rules. And then number two, you can never play the game the same way twice. And so in fact, the point of Calvin ball is to make up new rules as you go and just specifically, that's how you win. Is your constantly making up new rules to disadvantage your opponent. Right.
Then we mentioned this before, but gross is his get rid of slimy girls club, which Watercins admitted was based on a club he and his neighbors had growing up. And the character Susie Durkins is, I think, a classic care. It's a classic case of he understands that like, you know, at that age, especially boys, the way that you say, hey, I like you is by annoying the hell out of you and basically be. Please pay attention to me. Right. Right.
Then I made a list of some of the other alter egos aside from space man spiff because if this isn't clear space man spiff comes up in a lot of strips as the fantasy character, the fantasy world that Calvin goes into. There was also Safari Al. There was Captain Napalm. There was Tracer bullet, which I believe that was the one that was sort of like the 40s noir detective detective comic. And there was stupendous man. So again, these flights of fancy are.
It's just if you've never experienced it like that's that's the magic of these comics. It's a big deal. I'm going to establish like lore too because like peanuts had like running gags you know Garfield had like running gags but with Calvin and Hobbs even though it was like very serialized and very like a daily reset they would do these week long stories that had their own internal almost like science fiction logic where.
Like you're saying like he's making a bunch of clones this week that's what the box does when it's sideways when you turn the box upside down then it turns you into a tiger. Right what we're expressing here is that maybe 60 70% of the time you open up the paper on a Tuesday and it's a self contained strip and a gag. But then you would you would love it when all of a sudden oh they're going on this there's a narrative happening here and it would last for weeks.
And like that that was the best and with I mean that that had existed right like yeah absolutely I mean it probably it used to be I think the default was the comic strips would you know like true. Like you know like you were saying about little orphan orphan Annie is that like hey we're on a steamship and we're going to get it up or whatever.
But yeah it was not it was this really interesting blending with the gag strips where I think that like I don't know how because you know I I only really read and remember the big legendary ones at this point. I don't know how common in the 80s and 90s it would be to have like a runner you know like I know that like Kathy would have like an ongoing plot like she'd go to Paris with her mom.
Or she'd have a non going sexual harassment problem with with her boss like Kathy would do storylines with individual daily gags. But there was something about the the tools in water since toolbox where it's like this is a kid doing in a mat and generation game with his best friend sidekick where they're going to Mars this week. And it really was able to tap into this kind of larger adventure comic genre and spirit while still being like a daily punchline.
Let me let me drag us back to the to the biography here because I want to make a point that's relevant right now. So summer of 1983 waterson puts together a full sales packet for Calvin and Hobbes as the strip is by that point called and by the way apparently at that point the drawings the appearance of the characters were pretty much what they ended up looking like.
But it's not until July of 1985 that he finally sells it to universal press syndicate which I don't believe was like the bigger syndicate out there. But again he had shopped around so many things and been rejected so many times. So the point that I want to make is that within the first like three months of the strip running I think every character including the teacher, Miss Wormwood including the bully mo I think that I don't think that there was a single character that was introduced.
New beyond that first three months obviously real heads can check me on that but it if true it's fascinating that from the very beginning the universe was kind of self contained. Yeah it's pretty fixed I mean I know that there are flirtations with introducing new characters I know at one point the dad had a brother uncle max and he found that he found that to be very constraining because uncle max one could never call the parents by their names.
And two strips that didn't feature kelvin and Hobbes or revolve around them in some way just felt I don't know thinner I guess I'm projecting a lot onto the very little information that exists about this again in the in the 10th anniversary volume but basically he said that giving the parents like a larger world was a mistake.
And there's also a similar for a down like in experiment with like a scouting troop that kelvin would like not fit in with the scouting troop and it sort of feels like a like a symptom of the same problem that like adding more kind of formalization to this doesn't work that kelvin is you know just going to.
Bristle against structures like literally but also as like an artistic concept well right like kelvin will play baseball but it's not like there will be lots of interactions with other players on the baseball team yeah you don't see the game the way you see like Charlie Brown and peppermint patty play a baseball game. So what is in has has hit his dream he quits his day job in January 1986 by 18 months in the strip is in 300 papers and it just snowballs from there.
Now interestingly enough again in the biography you get a sense that right away and this is how we're going to have to go into sort of analyzing the artist here. This is where the crumlinology portion of our JD sale and your ask creator right right away.
So he's this is the dream this is what he wanted all along but right away he's sort of bristles against the the daily grind of having to come up with a new idea at a Kenyan commencement speech he gave in 1990 water since says drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money. It was in the work but then at the same time he says things like the best summation I could find from water sin for his own creative process was.
He said later he would sit down and quote staring a space for an hour and sometimes not come up with a single decent idea or sometimes no idea at all.
It's very tempting to go do something else and just drop a strip but I find that if I make myself stick to it for another hour I can come up with several good ideas but even then that was not enough sometimes and in the cabinet Hobbes 10th anniversary book he says and I think this is the key quote maybe anyone listening out there that wants to be creative or do anything really.
He says sometimes I just cross the whole thing out on occasion I've ripped up entire stories weeks of material that I didn't think were good the quality of a strip is determined by the quantity of ideas in the waste basket. So there's your sort of your quote your inspirational quote is sort of like the idea of just doing the reps just doing the work and even if only 10 or 5% of it is good you can get to quality by producing volume I guess.
Yeah I mean I know that's not true of everybody but I think it is potentially true if anybody is starting out to try that approach I mean I think it's also worth mentioning like obviously this guy is a genius and the idea is that he's throwing away I might not be able to look at it and think like why is this worse than you know the ones that you like the other thing that he's defined by is this like incredible level of you know the way he's doing that.
You know the aspiring to satisfy his own artistic aspiration above all else or perfectionism is another way again I'm going to we're going to get to his prickliness and a bit. You're someone that has written for a daily TV show you've worked with Stephen Colbert as we mentioned what I guess that's like that's a topical news related comedy show but can you speak at all to this idea of even if you love it even if this is your dream at some point going in every day and being like.
Alright now what we make the funny like right speak to me a little bit about I mean I'm someone that's done I do a daily news podcast that's over 1800 episodes now and the whole reason we're doing this is I needed to shake things up a little. Sure sure speak a little bit about the the grind of of of doing something every day sure well I mean look it is a grind you know your dream job is still a job that's why you ask them to pay you for it's.
I think that's doing something daily even if it's supposed to be funny or even if it's supposed to bring joy you are still rewiring your brain to work at the joke factory I think that you kind of through habits and discipline build yourself into like you know the talk show joke machine like you know how to turn on the machine after a while you know how to structure your life in such a way where it's like.
There were times when I worked there when I stopped reading real books and stopped listening to music because it was so important that I absorb enough news and podcasts in order to fuel the volume of material that you need to generate for a show especially during a time when you might write an entire hour of television and throw it away at 4 p.m.
and then the show goes on at 5 p.m. so I'm sure he got to a place where it did feel like this incredibly regimented thing and I can only speak to my version of it but then the joy becomes surprising yourself you know you you are kind of you're not on autopilot but you're operating from a place of confidence and consistency and then you think of the thing or someone else pitches you the thing that catches you off guard
and you laugh really hard and really organically and you remember like oh this is why I wanted to do it. You said something there that I wonder is also a key insight is you said something about like what was the phrase you used pushing the joke button or having the process to make the jokes actually happen.
Like other comedians that I've known like there's this concept of once you get good at being a comic or coming up with jokes and stuff like that it sort of takes the magic away from it because you see sort of the strings behind like you see the machinery that is required to make a laugh happen.
And I wonder if you can extrapolate that almost to any sort of creative endeavor once you're good at it or once you do it enough like you can see the tricks that maybe if you're not a magician you wouldn't know are there.
Yeah I think that's fair I mean that's the cliche with like comedians at comedy shows right is that they're standing in the back sort of like you know just the most you get is like a nod or something if you can make your comedian buddies laugh you know that you've actually broken new ground because you surprised them.
And you showed them a new way that something could be done but I think that's I think that's fair I've heard that LA is like a big sports town partially because basketball doesn't have three acts you know like that you can go to have this like shared experience and get a kind of narrative that doesn't conform to the thing that you think of as being very wrote and predictable and set and stone.
So I think there's a lot of truth to that I also think like I'm personally like a big softy you know if it's funny I'm I'm going to laugh my favorite shows are the ones where I can't predict what's happening but I'm you know I'm also like kind of dumb and like that means that there's more shows available to me then perhaps perhaps a more sophisticated creator so I think it's absolutely it's absolutely true of a lot of people that like I
I can't enjoy this anymore because I've seen too much of how like the sausage gets made I do have trouble watching like the political comedy talk shows now because the the rhythm of those is so consistent that it does trigger sort of like oh I would have done this slightly
differently or like maybe I see that they've like falling into a pitfall or or something like that but generally speaking look I'm you know I'm not a I'm not a big grumpus about it I can still I can still get on board for these things even if I like largely know how they're made and then as with being at my own jobs the joy comes from like oh a crazy left turn like I could not in a million years like I'm so in awe of the brain that made that decision.
I wonder if like that's the thing is if we're getting ahead of ourselves if Water Sun walks away because he thought that he had created like a perfect snow globe and then to to surprise himself he would have to break the snow globe and and go into left field and maybe he was was to in love with with the snow globe to do that. Okay so we've already alluded to the fact that one of the reasons why.
There was no TV show there were no movies no t shirts not the legal ones anyway there was a few counters there were the books but as we said where the real money is is the licensing water sin never does it. When obviously anyone listening to this you've seen Calvin pissing on things. We're finally getting there. Those those are not legal.
A quote from Water Sun is I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo but later added long after the strip is forgotten they are my ticket to immortality so. Listen again this is where the money is it's also if it's 50 50 with the syndicate the syndicate is putting huge pressure on water sent to license. This was like a multi year battle yeah and he refuses to do it like at one point like a toy company sends him.
Hobbs dolls you know different prototypes in a box and he takes them out in his backyard and burns them. And quote I found was he says I'm convinced that licensing would sell out the soul of Calvin and Hobbs the world of a comic strip is more fragile than most people realize once you're given up once you give up its integrity that's it.
I want to make sure that never happens instead of asking what's wrong with rampant commercialism we ought to be asking what justifies it popular art does not have to pander to the lowest level of intelligence and taste. I'm going to I'm going to give you this. What a Hobbs tiger have been that bad.
No of course not I mean I don't because because as a kid you a kid could live the Calvin experience could do what Calvin's doing yeah I think that's I think that's right I think that if you asked water sent he'd be disgusted because he should say like well a kid shouldn't be pretending to be Calvin a kid should be getting. But summer The Stepped alligator phone or inventor.
Exactly he has a quote that says the idea of a Hobbs doll is especially noxious because the entry of Hobbs is that he may or may not be a real tiger.
Yeah I think that's I think that's a completely valid aspect of it was that it would codify the idea that this is just a toy and you're projecting imagination onto it or got forbid it's like a toy that talks you know and now you're starting to sort of make rules About this thing that don't originate with waterson or don't don't don't originate with the strip
Look, I'm a parent of a young child. I see her imitating things like bluey and and superkitties and kind of modeling Feelings that she is authentically having but using you know essentially TV quotes or or TV scenes that she's recreating With us to sort of take them for a test drive. I don't think that's like Cancerous, you know like I think that that's I think that that's acceptable. I think that if a Hobbs doll Existed it would sort of live in that space where it's like I love Calvin so much
I do see myself in Calvin. I think it's okay to be Calvin in a more sort of like direct play sense but at the same time I he clearly saw it as this all or nothing gambits Well, maybe this is the time to ask you this question like you know Chuck Closterman has written extensively about this this idea of selling out was a very 80s and 90s and and Gen X thing but also I mean going back to like the baby boars when in the time of hippies
But Closterman wrote about it's it's specifically in the 90s where he said What was so maddening about selling out was that everyone even at the time knew it was idiotic There were so many contradictions the concept didn't really sustain itself as a thesis
Everyone knew it was crazy and yet you still had to accept it and you still couldn't sell out I don't know that that I think this is waterson's own sort of bugaboo but I guess also it does fit into his concept as we were alluding to of well comics the comic pages should be high art
And I want to bring it back to high art, I guess Yeah, and I can't remember hearing him use the phrase sell out like it didn't seem like what he was doing was informed by any kind of External cultural pressure as much as just a real like understanding and Protectiveness over what he created and and his
Relationship with it. Well hold on. We're gonna. I'm gonna give you something in a second, but yeah, let's do this Well, let's hit let's hit Give me Rabbit hole fact number seven This blew my mind that there was one single licensed t-shirt produced in 1991 the Smithsonian and Ohio State University put together an exhibit called great American comics a hundred years of cartoon art
This is so dorky. Of course. This is the only Right the only Exactly right right He waterson allowed the Sunday strip the one where Calvin is making faces for the camera If if real heads will have seen this where he's like
Yeah, making faces for the camera. He allowed that to be used on a t-shirt promoting that show specifically, but he never allowed it again Hit me with number eight and George Lucas Jim Henson and Steven Spielberg all approached waterson at various times to develop the characters for the screen so Apparently the Spielberg people went multiple times and he would not even take a call take a meaning Do you think how many times on one hand Steven Spielberg can probably take count the times that
Someone refused to meet with him right? Oh, absolutely. I mean if you find like a list of his like of things that were in development at some point and just Discarded like I don't imagine anybody said no after 76 right even if you were gonna say no you might just be like yeah, I'll take a meeting you know like The other thing is is like you know, we were alluding to the Calvin peeing on things
There was a lot of pressure and rightly so like the logic from the syndicate is it's like look there's all this bootleg stuff out there
We should say go online. There is to this day a ton of of bootleg Calvin stuff Calvin and Hobbs stuff and they're like well if you if you just let us license it then There's crap out there already if what you're worried about is crap Help us make it good, you know, yeah This is maybe a good time to talk about this idea of like You know who owns the art the artist or or or the audience You turn me on to this idea of Nowadays because there hasn't been new Calvin and Hobbs material for 30 years
There's tons of like fan fiction and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, and I don't want to say like strictly because because that's sort of like a You know, I don't want to like cast any blame in any direction, but the popularity of this thing and the absence of a way to
Engage with it in an official capacity the way you would with an ongoing relationship with like Star Wars right or Harry Potter Where you're engaging with the corporation every day Calvin and Hobbs doesn't have that so if you are if you have an appetite and you know
Apparently we do for more Calvin and Hobbs That is something the most people ignore they just read the books again But for some people it reaches this kind of fever pitch and with those people the things that get made end up being really intense Because they are the ones who need it enough that they've they've willed it into being
And so I think that the Calvin bootleg stuff. There's a lot of casual, you know, Calvin bootleg stuff It'll be like Etsy stickers of like art from the comic but then there also be things that are like really intense really revealing and there are Comics that imagine Calvin as an adult. He is often married to Susie He sometimes have children of his own that he has passed Hobbs onto And it's everything that Watterson
purposefully did not include you know, it's closure. It's canon. It's rules It's sentimentality that sort of like You know loves the original but misunderstands the role of sentimentality in the original And I find it all to be like very distasteful Yes So you would come down on the side that it Watterson as the artist if he is Disappointed in this stuff you would come down on that side Well, I think that it's not just that Watterson himself didn't want it to exist
I think that in other hands it doesn't work because I feel the same way about you know Facebook images where they'll like swap in the words in a in a peanuts comic to be about you know Being like hey, we have to bring back prayer in schools, you know like I find that
There are some works that are so completely tied to the author that you can love it without getting it And then if you don't get it and try to make your own you're gonna make something crazy I'm gonna I'm gonna counter this with the the George Lucas Argument which is you know, okay
George Lucas was the creator of Star Wars and he fucked up Star Wars by putting those crazy CGI Redone scenes later on and it's like can I just have the original cut back right and so And and by the way speaking of selling out at no offense George But I mean he sold out to the tune of multiple billions of dollars and now and actually hold on to that We'll come back to Star Wars as an example, but the idea of that Maybe even the artist is not the best steward of their artistic vision forever
Yeah, sure. I mean I think that we talked so much about like does it belong to the artist does it belong to the audience and I think it's So much more complicated than that and I think the best Susinct version I can give of my philosophy is that it belongs to the moment and I think that Star Wars is really Emblematic of that because George Lucas left to his own devices was going to make a bad Star Wars Right and that you know all of the all of the
Biographical information that we know about you know the way that that was sort of like saved and and The product of this incredible once in a lifetime collaboration and the audience that was ready to receive it The created Star Wars as we know it. That's why George Lucas right now cannot make Star Wars again And I think that Kelvin and Hobbes to me feels like something where they knew that so they stopped trying We're gonna we're gonna come back to Star Wars again at the end
But let me let me bang out some other biographical stuff here and unfortunately this is where we get into again Sort of psychoanalyzing 1991 Waterson was able to negotiate a new contract to give him full legal control of the strip The IP see one of the things he says is that
The whole time the the syndicate could have sold the characters the reason they didn't Was because they wanted to keep him happy and keep him producing right And so as much as they put pressure on him They never actually pulled the trigger on going over his head and so by 1991 The new contract that he gets gives him Complete control of everything nothing will happen to that IP that he or his heirs Do not allow to happen That That was a multi-year apparently acrimonious thing and it's one of the
Again to psychoanalyze this is maybe one of the reasons like maybe he burns out on it or He sees the sort of how the sausage is made and there's all of this legal stuff behind Whatever but I'm gonna tell you and I'm sorry to do this for people
But waterson seems to be from the very beginning a very stubborn and prickly guy like he stopped giving interviews very early on a bite very early on I mean like 1987 So like two years into the strip Here's a here's a quote that he gave from I believe the last interview well
No, no, no because there was a there's been a couple interviews in the last 20 years, but From when the last interview he gave when the strip was extant Um Calvin and Hobbes would not exist intact if I did not exist intact myself And I will not exist intact if I have to put up with all of the stuff He's referring to publicity, I guess
Um, I enjoy the isolation from people. That's how I work I read an article on garrison keeler where he said that fame has to a certain extent corrupted his work He gets some of his inspiration from being an unrecognized observer
But if he can't walk into a hardware store and overhear people and be inconspicuous He can't get his material So it sounds like he doesn't like attention Um, fine He's also prickly to his peers There is at least in the apparently in the comic creators community and infamous
Speech he gives a 1989 at the festival of cartoon art where he unloads on the industry itself quote The comics pages are full of dead wood Strips that had some relevance to the world during the depression are now being continued by baby boomers And the rest the results are embarrassing This is fairly gen X by the way Very gen X and also Like I'm laying that I'm sort of laying the railroad track for like like he's just like I don't
It's not as magical to me now that I'm on the inside of it. He He also accused fellow cartoonists of being too willing to sell out quote It's not surprising many cartoonists are as eager as the syndicates for easy money and are willing to sacrifice the heart and soul of the strip to get it
Mort Walker of beetle Bailey fame apparently gave a speech after him that said and and Knocked that down in a jovial way, but then told the biographer later Waterson had a tremendous amount of talent and if you read his work You'd think he'd be a friendly nice guy with a lot of fun in him
Frankly after that speech I was disappointed There's a lot of people in the in the biography that kind of walk on egg shells around him not diva I wouldn't say um But doesn't Again, it's the question of is it the artist is the tortured loan crater off the loan or whatever yeah
Well somebody who's aware of their own talents and And leverages it, you know, that's like that's a common figure in pop culture and all of that is really interesting to me because I had You know and I mentioned earlier in this episode I had imagined that this was more of a personal
Crusade and less of our response to like a broader cultural movement But the speech you're describing does sound like you know, it sounds like something Kurt Cobain would say the MTV awards Well, you know, like it sounds like yes I'm not to make this all about Gen X stuff like
Let me give you two more examples because again these these are sort of like okay. He's sticking up to the art But he's also throwing elbows right so um in 1992 Universal Press announced that the Sunday Calvin and Hobbes is had to be a full half of a newspaper page
Now he wants to create these crazy strips of you know Going around fighting with dinosaurs and full color and things like that which by the way Younger listeners if you don't know that the the the week weekday strips were black and white the Sunday strips were the ones that were in color
And allowed for more creativity and things now but think about this another way We've already talked about how the real estate in the comics pages is very very limited And here you have the most popular strip in the country basically stealing real estate from potentially Another up and coming strip so that again Did not endear him To to fellow artists and then He took multiple Almost year-long sabbaticals which at the time was unheard of like you if you were gonna take six months off
You get you bang out a bunch of strips and you bank them or you have your intern or your nephew as you say or whatever Draw them and stuff like that but he
Towards the end and I'm looking at the dates right now. This would have been 91 and a 92 he takes almost a year-long one and then a second one I feel like I remember these I don't know I do two are absent from the page or if they were running reruns, but I they remember the feeling of being a new one Right they were running reruns now so again, okay Respect for the artist and his like he needs a break
You know, whatever recharge your batteries, but also that is sort of disrespecting the audience there. I say There was another I don't think I haven't in my notes, but I saw another comics creator say that if you're lucky enough to become part of somebody's daily routine
On some level you owe it to them to be stand up and to be there And so I'm not again I don't want to I don't want anyone to think I'm coming up coming off as anti Bill waterson, but there is a bit of a sense of like it's my way or the highway even to the audience
Yeah, I am so talented the rules that have been established thus far don't really apply to me um, and I mean in both directions because I'm also turning down like the firehose of money You know and in turning down the firehose of money and this is like a very like you know sell out Connected idea
I now have even more leverage because my integrity is very visible So if I need to take a year off remember I'm the guy who turned down the firehose of license money I must know something right Well look I even remember having a sense of this feeling like You know when he takes those sabbaticals feeling like hey, maybe this isn't gonna last forever Well guess what he's taking those almost year-long sabbaticals and in the last few years of the strip like he's
Telegraphing it because I'll give you one example. Um, this is from a strip Monday July 17th 1995 so six months before the the strip ends um uh I can't remember what is happening in the strip but um Calvin says nothing is permanent everything changes
That's the one thing we know for sure in this world um He's saying that the Hobbes and It the the final strip I don't remember if it was it must have been telegraphed ahead at time like there was a press release or like There was probably an article in the paper But the final strip airs New Year's Eve 1995 I can remember this because it is New Year's Eve
Um, that was my senior year of high school. There's a lot of things changing in life and also that year was a We lost Calvin and Hobbes Far side and Burke breathed outland which was the the follow up to bloom county all that same year so yeah sort of the the day the music died Yeah of the comics pages. Yeah um So okay
uh the man did a total of three thousand one hundred sixty strips. We we've gone through all the permutations of this burnout uh losing the magic to it but um Let me let me posit one more theory here which is uh What if you're called to a vocation and we'll use artistic vocations as as the best example so a singer um a An actor or whatever where you're you're drawn to the craft but that craft requires you to be in public and Being in public or giving of yourself
Maybe you're just an introvert. Maybe it's just against a very basic
Part of your nature. You know Greta Garbo has the line from it's in a movie where she says I just want to be alone, but I mean like Maybe that's just the thing where there are certain people that have it a skill for something and because I don't think that this is a Bobby Fisher situation where there was something maybe broken and Bobby Fisher's brain right Yeah, I mean he's a very specific person but they all are you know we're talking about geniuses
What if what if sometimes people get called to do something that then doesn't fit with their overall personality Right like I think of um, I think Andy Partridge uh in next dc who had a panic attack on stage and they just didn't
Tour anymore and he was a rock star sort of like at the peak of you know or or on the upswing certainly Yeah, this is something I think about a lot like I have done live comedy And one of the reasons that I largely stopped was stage fright or or a version of sort of day before Apprehension that would kind of like consume my life Uh, I see my friends who you know go up on stage 350 times a year and I see that's that's a standup, you know That's a person who's who's wired for this and
Or I'll give you I'll give you another example like um Bob Dylan still on tour at least I think he still is He's been Bob Dylan for 50 60 years now like there's no reason that Bob Dylan still has to do a hundred dates a year
But he had he said in interviews that the phrase he always uses is I'm just a song and dance man So like Some people have success and All the money and all the fame in the world they've achieved everything they want and what they realize is is that like Yeah, but I'm still gonna die So what do I do before death is I just keep doing the thing that I'm good at and like Like like like like Daniel Day Lewis going off and making furniture or something like Bob Dylan is just like
Fuck it. I'm just gonna be on a never ending tour until I literally can't do it anymore, you know So there's the inverse of that Yeah, like this is just this is just how I'm wired. This is how I feel like myself is being out there So uh here's a watercent quote. I'll read real quick um I know most people dream of being famous or being a celebrity the attention is thought to be gratifying or ego building or something
I found it to be a nuisance all the way around. There's very little of it that I enjoy you become a cartoonist all your life all day It's no longer a job. You are defined by your work. You suddenly have no private life Oh, I'm sorry. You suddenly have no private time. You cannot be a husband to your wife. You are still a celebrity cartoonist I find that aggravating if you can't have a personal life. It really seems to me to be a sacrifice
So the man walks away. Yeah, that's pretty clear. Yeah If we knew more about him, I would maybe understand that point of view In a clearer way because it's like I all I know that he likes to cycle Yeah, you know, I mean he likes to paint. He paints by the way um he has they don't feel like hobbies that are incompatible with being a celebrity cartoonist is So I guess my my reflexive pushback against that where I don't really know what you're giving up But people that say
Why why don't you exhibit your artwork and he's like he's given reasons for that or whatever So the point is is strip ends in 95 not only does he do no other Publish creative work except for the one I'm gonna tell you about but um he doesn't give interviews Very rarely he did one with mental philosophy few few years ago last year a book came out called the mysteries with him and John cashed who I believe is some sort of a famous character character ist or something
I've read it. It's it's not very Calvin and Hobbes like it's more sort of Uh, what what would it be like jumanji? Who's that I don't remember who the artist is oh sure But those sort of like storybook with like large lush Now what I will tell you I don't want to spoil it too much because it's a very short almost children's book
The the lesson I'm taking away from this book. It's about the mysteries is the mysteries get revealed and found and society is disappointed And then eventually society forgets about the mysteries But the mysteries go on forever So it's almost a parable of you don't want to know yeah
The magic trick. Yeah, stop digging Yeah, stop stop not gonna in my door basically Um, let's let's let's bring this to a landing a little bit um You and I were talking about this offline um I think you know one of Bring it back to Gen X one of the original sins of Gen X was the Star Wars thing
Was this was if you were of a certain agent a certain background All you wanted was this you wanted more you want it and you had the toys and so I like fueled it because it fueled your creativity and and so definitely again The George Lucas had no compunction about silly and in fact that was the genius
Selling the toys when no one else had thought to do that yet. Yeah He was kind of the the the the trull shults of the movies, you know the first guy to be like no this could be this could be a whole ecosystem Um So that it's the original sin because we wanted it so bad we didn't get it and then it was given to us and it's like You know I could again I take the original trilogy unaddeded right now I'm glad that there's more stuff like I like some of the TV shows and and whatever um
And I know this is a different era at this point, you know corporations have figured out that that IP is the one thing that is essentially eternal um, but As we said offline
I'm gonna make the strong argument. We don't need more Calvin and hops Yeah, I would I would fully agree with that I think one of the reasons that we keep gravitating towards Star Wars as a comp Is that if I believe there's any kind of like you know almost physical ingredients to all this the best I could describe it as is potency And Star Wars is something where we've decided to You know water down the potency enough that we can just keep that faucet running all year round
And it will always generate money and it will always generate satisfaction And I think that the other way that that potency can manifest is to really keep it bottled up and keep it pure and intense And experience it the way you also said you said something at one point about the time in your life
Like maybe it's not possible you like we want the nostalgia Oh, I want to feel like I did when I was eight well, but you're not eight And you're not going to be able to feel that way anymore And so it's a full-zarend to try to chase that that sort of high
Yeah, I think it can be and I think what something like Star Wars like obviously there's a joy in sharing it with you know Your children in a new generation, but the trade-off is that they are making more of it And the more of it they make the more you change the circumstances and the
You know the the cultural moment in which it is being made So in order to share it with your kids you are sharing kind of a like a photocopy of it because they can't be you in 1981 they just can't Well or and I think of like bands and like um, you know bands that we love
That continue to produce you grow out of it they grow out of it you say to yourself well the later albums aren't as good as the first albums Maybe the artist thinks the same thing or maybe the artist doesn't maybe the artist is like I'm doing the exact same shit I don't understand but like
That's sort of like that natural process of you aging at like think in a way god only knows what Kirk Cobain would what music he'd be producing maybe so over him maybe you know People on like it when I say that John Lennon would probably be a Trump guy, but I just
Have this more weird it goes right? Yeah, right, but also don't control that stuff But also think of the art and like like there's only those albums and those songs that Kirk Cobain wrote and Those album those those books that JD Soundger wrote and there will never be anymore and um
Let me let me close by saying one more thing that we also talked about offline um, I think that I think that the spiritual successor to Calvin and Hobbes is bluey um, it has the same sort of sense of wonder and magic and the addition That blueie has to Calvin and Hobbes is it's not just the wonder of being the child It's also the wonder and magic of being a parent To children at the exact same time Yeah, I I don't know if I fully agree with this comparison, but I do I do very much see it
I think that blueie's dad and like I said, I have a three year old daughter I've seen all of blueie multiple times I think that blueie's dad Feels more like a grown-up Calvin than when fans try to draw comics about grown-up Calvin because it is very much about this commitment to a shared imagination That gets you away from the television and bonding with each other and forming your identity um, I think that blueie is missing The edge that makes Calvin and Hobbes work for me
But I also think it's really interesting that the creator of blueie keeps kind of signaling that there is a finish line for this thing And that there's a and that there's a really personal reason behind it And in that way it's very Calvin and Hobbes Yeah Maybe we'll be doing someone will be doing a
psychoanalysis podcast episode about about blueie someday um last thing Daniel, do you are there favorite strips that you want to mention I can give you a couple uh, any any last thoughts on on Calvin and Hobbes that maybe you haven't had a chance to bring up yet I mean anything that I'm going to say is something that the audience already has in their heads I think that the reason Calvin and Hobbes was so important to me was because
Like so many other kids. I was too smart for my own good I did have a problem with authority and it gave me the vocabulary To express those feelings and to feel like I was seen Especially feel like I was seen by an adult I think that Garfield and peanuts taught me the language of comics
And Calvin and Hobbes spoke to me in my own language That's that's that's beautiful um Daniel uh How about plugs anything how can we find you find more of what you're working on these days sure uh You know what I have a bunch of unannounced stuff right now, but uh
I work in mainstream comics and television and animation so I would say Just go to kibblesmith.com It's an old-fashioned homepage that I actually do update and I'm very easy to find on social media kibblesmith at twitter and Daniel kibblesmith on instagram uh And I will plug which I didn't do last time um I brimacola have a daily tech news podcast called the tech meme ride home As I mentioned a hundred or I'm sorry 1,860 episodes
As of the time of this recording. It's a 15 minute daily tech news roundup every day search The tech meme ride home and give that a try But for this uh show um thank you for joining us for this episode of rad the 80s 90s history podcast If you're watching this on youtube as mentioned
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