Today’s offering is another tribute piece.
Much like our interpretations of some classic Penny Arcade actions, we bring you yet another redress of someone elses pilgrimage. This one goes not to another webcartoonist, however. This one is dedicated to one who has retired his characters from active circulation, and has moved on (some years ago) to other things.
Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes has always been, and will always be, my favorite comic. It was an integral piece of my weekend routine as a child. As most children do, I loved cartoons. Animated Looney Tunes, Ninja Turtles and G.I.Joe were required watching on any given day of the week in my formulative years. However, it is the still drawn, paneled one off jokes and the multi faceted color spreads that I looked forward to every saturday morning.
Arriving for breakfast, somewhere around the age of five or six, I was guarunteed to join my father in reading the newspaper. However, being that I cared little for world politics or the city lifestyle sections, I was given the priority of starting my morning with a bowl of cheerios and the saturday morning cartoons. As I recall, Calvin & Hobbes took up the coveted first spot, on that front page of a four page section, leading the way for Beetle Bailey, Peanuts reruns and that abomination of frigid humour, Family Circus (don’t ask. As soon as I read it, I hated it, much more than my general distasted for Garfield.)
To this day, I still enjoy comics, and cartoon. I still start my day off by reading cartoons. I do believe (as Watterson does) that there isn’t ‘low art’ and ‘high art’ – simply art. Cartoons are artistic, and they are dramatic or comedic, telling us stories and making us laugh. It is because of Bill Watterson that I started ‘tooning, starting with strange goofy creatures that had too many fingers on one hand, and not enough on the other. I’ve had other little incarnations of cartoon like figures, but I think this comic is my first serious attempt at recapturing and recreating what I loved so much as a child.
Why Calvin & Hobbes? Why did this one strike me over top of all the others that we have seen? Why not Pogo or B.C.? I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to put my finger on it. But I can tell you the strip that clicked it all into place. It’s a Halloween episode (making the timing of this post apprapo), wherein Calvin postulates about carving his pumpkin, and once done pontificating, begins the rough surgery with the line: “Ok Jack, time for your lobotomy!! Hand me a big spoon. Will you Hobbes? Ugh? No anesthetic even.”
I don’t think I was ever so upset or moved by a piece of visual art, as they day that I clipped out Watterson’s final strip in 1995, one of his infamous Sunday strips, depicting one of the more classic of Calvin moments of sledding down that infinite ravine in his backyard.
So, to the first comic that ever used the word ‘booger’ – thank you.
*sniff*
Sincerely,
Jamie
