Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: the unconventional story of Bill Watterson and his revolutionary comic strip PDF
Preview Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: the unconventional story of Bill Watterson and his revolutionary comic strip
LOOKING FOR CALVIN AND HOBBES The UNCONVENTIONAL STORY of BILL WATTERSON and HIS REVOLUTIONARY COMIC STRIP For Indie Everything would be nothing without you LOOKING FOR CALVIN AND HOBBES The UNCONVENTIONAL STORY of BILL WATTERSON and HIS REVOLUTIONARY COMIC STRIP By Nevin Martell 2009 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © 2009 Nevin Martell All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978 0 82642 984 1 Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1 Working on a Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Chapter 2 Making Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chapter 3 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Chapter 4 A Boy and His Tiger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Chapter 5 Calvin in Wonderland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Chapter 6 Welcome to the Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Chapter 7 This is How You Disappear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 vi Contents Chapter 8 Under the Infl uence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Chapter 9 There and Back Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Chapter 10 The Future is Always Uncertain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 There is another world, but it is in this one. — Paul Eluard This page intentionally left blank PROLOGUE If earth suddenly had to be evacuated and I was limited to grabbing the ten best people to save, Watterson would defi nitely be in there. There is a point where you stop rating people — you just rate them among the best. Can I say that Mozart is better than the Beatles? I can’t. I can just say that they both have gone above the cloud layer and are up there near the sun. They both are on that short list of things that are essential. Watterson is an essential. — Brad Bird, Academy Award-winning director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles I was a diehard Calvin and Hobbes fan from the moment I fi rst stumbled across it in the Utica Observer Dispatch in 1987. Its creator, Bill Watterson, had been drawing the strip for two years before I discovered it. During that time, he had hit his artistic and story- telling stride, resulting in a Calvin and Hobbes that was instantly thought- provoking, eye- catching and funny in a way I had never seen before in the comics section. I loved the relationship between the boy, Calvin, and his pet tiger, Hobbes, which was at turns playful, combative, philosophical and fantastical. They acted and sounded
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