Calvin & Hobbes: Bill Watterson's First Interview in 21 Years

by Jordan Yerman | February 1, 2010 at 10:16 am

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Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson has been interviewed for the first time in 21 years. It's been 15 years since Calvin & Hobbes was discontinued at the height of its popularity. Bill Watterson is famously reclusive, and has never agreed to any merchandising deals for Calvin & Hobbes, wanting to avoid the played-out fate of a certain orange cat...

Calvin & Hobbes ran for 10 years and amassed a huge following. The question of whether or not Hobbes was real had popped up schoolyard and water-cooler conversations around the world. Fifteen years later, Bill Watterson briefly discusses fame, snail mail, pop culture, and growing older while one's creations stay forever young.

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?
This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

It's always better to leave the party early.

In 2005, Bill Watterson responded to readers' questions via email ahead of the release of The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, but this is his first one-to-one interview since the Eighties.