Dear Mr. Watterson Page #4

but on younger people

who were reading comics,

that there was this opportunity

to do different things for the art

and try to push the boundaries

a little bit.

My initial impression

when I saw them was the guy

is making it harder

for the rest of us.

Because he's setting this

ridiculous standard of excellence

that hadn't been seen since

the Pogo years in drawing.

- Most of the time I was just

trying to meet my deadline.

For Bill, it wasn't enough

to just meet the deadline,

you had to sort of move

the bar a little bit

over what you had done previously.

It was a completely

different approach

to the traditional four-panel strip.

There was just something

about it that was very magical.

The way he drew trees,

the way he drew water.

The way he drew movement.

The brushwork just continues

to amaze me and his writing,

which is so concise and yet

so deep and philosophical.

His approach at philosophy

and sort of representing

the human condition was something

that was always bigger

than just a little comic strip.

The conversations had

so many layers of meaning.

And if I could even

come close to that,

I would be absolutely thrilled.

Bill Watterson showed me

that a great, amazing comic

is great writing that can stand

on its own

and great drawing that can stand

on its own.

You take out either one of those

from a Calvin and Hobbes strip

and it's still great to look at.

It's still funny to read.

Put them together, and you have

one of the greatest comic strips

of all time.

Calvin and Hobbes was,

as far as a comic strip goes,

was such a huge influence on me

wanting to become a cartoonist.

It was everything a comic strip

should be.

It's very dynamic.

It's funny.

It's got a strong voice.

The artwork was fabulous.

There wasn't anything

not to like about it.

If he's not the most cited influence,

he's certainly the second

behind Schultz and Peanuts.

But he's up there.

And we get so many

submissions that say,

I've always been a big fan

of Calvin and Hobbes,

so I wanted to try and do this.

I think you can see an influence

of Calvin and Hobbes

to a degree in Zits,

a strip I like very much.

There's a kind of Calvin-esque feel

to the way that Jim Borgman

and Jerry Scott will play

Jeremy Duncan's fantasies

against the reality.

As a professional cartoonist,

I read it now and you just see

a master at his craft.

Someone that puts you to shame,

as far as what you're able to do

in comparison.

I actually have a comic that I had

to do for a class in college

at the School of Visual Arts.

So we had to do a comic

about our biggest influence.

Of course, what else would I pick

but Calvin and Hobbes.

One of the things that I feel

that I've gained the most

as a cartoonist from reading

this strip is learning how to do

such wild and crazy expressions.

Sometimes it's not just

the writing,

it's just the simplest crazy drawing

that will make you laugh

or smile and really influence you.

So I was very happy to get

my inner Calvin on

while working on this strip.

I got a lot of attention for a

resemblance to Calvin and Hobbes.

And some of it was very,

very flattering,

and some of it was less flattering.

And some of it was flat-out mean.

I tried not to take it personally.

I mean, the people who were

outraged that my strip might bear

any resemblance

to Calvin and Hobbes,

I think that was done mostly

out of a passionate love

for Calvin and Hobbes.

And anything that you write is

going to be autobiographical

at its heart.

Same with Frazz.

Frazz is me.

He's cooler than I am because

I can make him that way,

but he's me.

And likewise, ifl learned a whole

bunch from Calvin and Hobbes,

from Bill Watterson,

I'm not going to cover that up.

Honestly, I think it would be rude

to try and say,

"Oh no, I did this

all on my own.

This is all me.

I didn't learn this from anybody."

No, we're all standing

on the shoulders of giants.

Watterson certainly left us

a legacy of great ideas,

great drawing, great, great comics.

But he was last in a long line

of really amazing cartoonists

from the 20th century,

since the real blooming

of the comic strip art form.

And he very much valued

the work of Walt Kelly,

one of the cartoonists that I loved

to read when I was a kid.

If you look at Pogo, you can see

that he very strongly influenced

not only Bill Watterson,

but also Jeff Smith who does Bone.

Pogo was this world similar

to what Watterson created

where there were these animals

and these characters,

and they spoke about things

much bigger than the swamp

that they lived in.

They were possums and alligators

and chicks and all these things,

but they were politicians

and philosophers

and they commented heavily

on society.

So I can imagine why Watterson

found Pogo fascinating to look at,

and it's beautifully drawn.

And Walt Kelly, just no end

of genius in how he created Pogo.

- Schultz is of course such

an important cartoonist

and such a great one, that I think

pretty much any comic strip

that began after the early '50s

was influenced by it.

The scale of the stories

he would tell,

the intimacy of the strip

and of the settings,

the observations of children's lives,

all I think, again, can be seen

as influences on Calvin and Hobbes.

Just the notion of the world

from a child's point of view

was something that Schultz took,

and while other artists had

done things with it before,

Schultz did it so much better

and had so much influence

that, once again, you can see it

flowing into Calvin and Hobbes.

Well, I don't know Bill Watterson,

so I don't want to speak

to his motives,

but it appears to me

in reading his essays

and seeing some of his interviews

about Krazy Kat,

that Krazy Kat set a bar

that he judged his own work by

and would not be satisfied

with his own work

if it wasn't as idiosyncratic,

as imaginative, as personal,

as Krazy Kat was.

Watterson said in his first hiatus

he started to pay more attention

to what Herriman was doing

on those full pages

when the newspaper page

was a blank canvas

and he could have form

be dictated by content

instead of the other way around,

instead of saying,

"You've got eight panels here.

That's gonna be your narrative."

Instead, he could blow it wide open

and have the panels not be panels,

have the adventure,

the narrative flow,

follow whatever course artistically

he wanted to take.

All that stuff that Herriman gave

himself license to do

is right there on the page.

So I think, for a cartoonist,

it represented freedom.

It represented personal,

artistic, visionary freedom.

I think he saw that and saw this was

what he could do too.

There's something else deep

in the basement of the library

in Chagrin Falls.

Watterson lent his photography skills

to his high school yearbook

and his cartoons are

scattered throughout.

One of his drawings is a depiction

of the four photographers on staff.

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