William Boyd Watterson II was born on July 5,1958 and is an American cartoonist who authored the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.
50 Facts About Bill Watterson
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Bill Watterson concluded Calvin and Hobbes with a short statement to newspaper editors and his readers that he felt he had achieved all he could in the medium.
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Bill Watterson is known for his negative views on comic syndication and licensing, his efforts to expand and elevate the newspaper comic as an art form, and his move back into private life after Calvin and Hobbes ended.
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Bill Watterson was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
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Bill Watterson was born on July 5,1958, in Washington, DC, to Kathryn Watterson and James Godfrey Watterson.
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Bill Watterson has a younger brother, Thomas Bill Watterson, who lives in Austin, Texas, and worked as a musician before becoming an educator.
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Bill Watterson drew his first cartoon at age eight and spent much time in his childhood alone, drawing and cartooning.
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Bill Watterson found avenues for his cartooning talents throughout primary and secondary school, creating high school-themed super hero comics with his friends and contributing cartoons and art to the school newspaper and yearbook.
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Bill Watterson had already decided on a career in cartooning but he felt studying political science would help him move into editorial cartooning.
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Bill Watterson continued to develop his art skills and during his sophomore year he painted Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the ceiling of his dormitory room.
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Bill Watterson contributed cartoons to the college newspaper, some of which included the original "Spaceman Spiff" cartoons.
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Bill Watterson graduated from Kenyon in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
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Later, when Bill Watterson was creating names for the characters in his comic strip, he decided on Calvin and Hobbes, allegedly as a "tip of the hat" to Kenyon's political science department.
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Bill Watterson was inspired by the work of The Cincinnati Enquirer political cartoonist Jim Borgman, a 1976 graduate of Kenyon College, and decided to try to follow the same career path as Borgman, who in turn offered support and encouragement to the aspiring artist.
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Bill Watterson graduated in 1980 and was hired on a trial basis at the Cincinnati Post, a competing paper of the Enquirer.
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Bill Watterson quickly discovered that the job was full of unexpected challenges which prevented him from performing his duties to the standards set for him.
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Bill Watterson then joined a small advertising agency and worked there for four years as a designer, creating grocery advertisements while working on his own projects, including development of his own cartoon strip and contributions to Target: The Political Cartoon Quarterly.
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Bill Watterson wrote the introduction to the first volume of The Komplete Kolor Krazy Kat.
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Bill Watterson's style reflects the influence of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland.
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Bill Watterson spent much of his career trying to change the climate of newspaper comics.
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Bill Watterson believed that the artistic value of comics was being undermined and that the space that they occupied in newspapers continually decreased, subject to arbitrary whims of shortsighted publishers.
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For years, Bill Watterson battled against pressure from publishers to merchandise his work, something that he felt would cheapen his comic through compromising the act of creation or reading.
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Bill Watterson refused to merchandise his creations on the grounds that displaying Calvin and Hobbes images on commercially sold mugs, stickers, and T-shirts would devalue the characters and their personalities.
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Bill Watterson said that Universal kept putting pressure on him and that he had signed his contract without fully perusing it because, as a new artist, he was happy just to find a syndicate willing to give him a chance.
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Bill Watterson added that the contract was so one-sided that, if Universal really wanted to, they could license his characters against his will, and could even fire him and continue Calvin and Hobbes with a new artist.
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Bill Watterson was critical of the prevailing format for the Sunday comic strip that was in place when he began drawing.
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One of the more common ways is to cut out the top two panels, which Bill Watterson believed forced him to waste the space on throwaway jokes that did not always fit the strip.
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Bill Watterson conceded that this caused him to lose space in many papers, but he said that, in the end, it was a benefit because he felt that he was giving the papers' readers a better strip for their money and editors were free not to run Calvin and Hobbes at their own risk.
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Bill Watterson added that he was not going to apologize for drawing a popular feature.
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On November 9,1995, Bill Watterson announced the end of Calvin and Hobbes with the following letter to newspaper editors:.
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Since 1995, Bill Watterson has taken up painting, at one point drawing landscapes of the woods with his father.
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Bill Watterson has kept away from the public eye and shown no interest in resuming the strip, creating new works based on the strip's characters, or embarking on new commercial projects, though he has published several Calvin and Hobbes "treasury collection" anthologies.
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Bill Watterson was once known to sneak autographed copies of his books onto the shelves of the Fireside Bookshop, a family-owned bookstore in his hometown of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
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Bill Watterson ended this practice after discovering that some of the autographed books were being sold online for high prices.
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In October 2005, Bill Watterson answered 15 questions submitted by readers.
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Bill Watterson's syndicate revealed that the painting was the first new artwork of his that the syndicate has seen since Calvin and Hobbes ended in 1995.
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In early 2010, Bill Watterson was interviewed by The Plain Dealer on the 15th anniversary of the end of Calvin and Hobbes.
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Bill Watterson again confirmed that he would not be revisiting Calvin and Hobbes, and that he was satisfied with his decision.
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Bill Watterson gave his opinion on the changes in the comic-strip industry and where it would be headed in the future:.
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In 2013 the documentary Dear Mr Bill Watterson, exploring the cultural impact of Calvin and Hobbes, was released.
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On February 26,2014, Bill Watterson published his first cartoon since the end of Calvin and Hobbes: a poster for the documentary Stripped.
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In 2014, Bill Watterson co-authored The Art of Richard Thompson with Washington Post cartoonist Nick Galifianakis and David Apatoff.
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The day that Stephan Pastis returned to his own strip, he paid tribute to Bill Watterson by alluding to the final strip of Calvin and Hobbes from December 31,1995.
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Bill Watterson then posted a comic with Calvin, Hobbes, and Opus all featured.
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Bill Watterson chose thirty-six of his favorites, displaying them with both the original drawing and the colored finished product, with most pieces featuring personal annotations.
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In conjunction with this exhibition, Bill Watterson participated in an interview with the school.
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The book contained a lengthy interview with Bill Watterson, conducted by Jenny Robb, the curator of the museum.
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Bill Watterson released his first published work in 28 years on October 10,2023, called The Mysteries.
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Bill Watterson was awarded the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in both 1986 and 1988.
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In 2014, Bill Watterson was awarded the Grand Prix at the Angouleme International Comics Festival for his body of work, becoming just the fourth non-European cartoonist to be so honored in the first 41 years of the event.