In only his second known interview since ending Calvin and Hobbes in 1995, the reclusive Bill Watterson discusses the role of the comic strip in an increasingly digital culture:
Where do you think the comic strip fits in today’s culture?
Personally, I like paper and ink better
than glowing pixels, but to each his own. Obviously the role of comics is changing very fast. On the one hand, I don’t think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now. On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing. I suspect comics will have less widespread cultural impact and make a lot less money. I’m old enough to find all this unsettling, but the world moves on. All the new media will inevitably change the look, function, and maybe even the purpose of comics, but comics are vibrant and versatile, so I think they’ll continue to find relevance one way or another. But they definitely won’t be the same as what I grew up with.
So should we be on the look-out for a Pixar-produced Calvin and Hobbes movie?
The visual sophistication of Pixar blows me away, but I have zero interest in animating Calvin and Hobbes. If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served. As a comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it to. There’s no upside for me in adapting it.
Go Comics recently made the Calvin and Hobbes archive available online. This summer, Dish readers reminisced about the comic here, here, and here. More here.
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