Dear Mr. Watterson Page #11

the comic page that last Sunday

in The Chicago Tribune

and seeing it and being like,

"Wow, it's over."

You just weren't used

to comics ending.

They kept going.

That was part of the deal.

The final strip

was the last hurrah.

All the elements that made

the strip wonderful were there

including the drawing

that was so much a part of it.

There were very few words.

- Everyone who was

a Calvin and Hobbes fan

remembers two strips.

One is that one that spoke to them

individually and the last one,

Let's Go Exploring.

It was just a wonderful way

for him to end it.

- The way he handled it was

so wonderful; with the toboggan ride

which was very much

a staple of the strip.

Going off into just wide open...

it wasn't nothingness,

as I saw it.

It was everythingness.

White is not the absence of color.

White is all colors, and you could

make whatever you wanted

out of that final episode.

Honestly, how else is a cartoonist

going to see the world?

It has to be a big,

wide open world,

because until you draw

your very last strip

you've got to come up

with a brand new story

out of that world

every single day.

You know, it was an end posed

as a beginning, basically.

- There's just something magical

about that particular strip

where it really is just looking

at the world afresh

and I imagine that's what

Bill Watterson must have felt like

when he finished that last strip;

it's a magical world

and now I can move on.

What's next in my life?

He's trying to show us all

that there's more to life

than a comic strip, I think,

and trying to make us feel

a little bit better,

but it doesn't work.

It doesn't work at all.

It gave the impression that

he was going to be exploring

new things and he probably is

exploring new things,

but he's not sharing those publicly.

That's too bad.

- The final strip, for me,

is bittersweet in the sense

that it was the end.

But, the thought that at the end

of it you're being told

"let's go exploring,"

which is something I think

Watterson did throughout

his time in the strip;

whether it was making leaps

in the artwork

so you had to kind of think

what was happening

in the little white space

between the panels,

or whether it was the fact

that an adventure didn't

necessarily end

succinctly at the end of a strip

so you had to kind of imagine what

might have happened afterwards.

He was always telling

his readers to explore.

There's still magic in everyday life

if you know where to look.

Maybe if we look in the right place

there is something else

as wonderful as Calvin and Hobbes

or something that will give us

that daily magic,

but we have to find it.

It may well be out there

as Calvin said.

It's up to us to look for it

and to discover it.

There's that saying that all

good things must come to an end,

but I'm not sure I believe it.

As long as there are new readers

being introduced

to Calvin and Hobbes,

Watterson's legacy will live on.

And with those final three words

that almost every fan can recite,

so many new adventures will begin.

So here's a question for you.

Have you guys or have you written

a letter to Watterson?

If so, what was

the experience like?

- I never have.

Not when I was younger

and not now.

I have a file, a Word file,

on my computer

and it's one line so far.

All it says is,

"Dear Mr. Watterson..."

- Very fitting.

- Nothing else.

- Very fitting.

- Not another word.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes