I have been reading the Bill Watterson biography since Christmas. It’s fantastic, I recommend it. One aspect of the book that I enjoyed was the context it provided for “Calvin & Hobbes”. I read the Sunday comics when I was home and they’re really awful. The comics in that section have often been running for ~50 years. When the creator dies, their family members often take up the strip. This has led to stagnation, and that stagnation makes Calvin and Hobbes stand out even more. The stagnation has also driven me away from the comics page and into the realm of web comics. One of my favorite comics has a collection of links to syndicated comic parodies:
Really? I was initially overjoyed when I heard of this but have since been avoiding the book like the plague after reading this rather negative review. Would you disagree with it, then? Your opinion would probably trump this.
I’ve been toying with rereading them all again. I actually almost posted this review here initially to warn people off and to bemoan the lack of good books about C&H.
That review is definitely on the negative side, but I’d say the biography is a book best left to short reading sessions over a longer period of time. Yes, the author does get a bit repetitive when it comes to discussing his interviewees. The fact of the matter is that gossip written on a bathroom wall is better than what we’ve gotten from Waterson, so I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It isn’t a scholarly biography at all and the conclusions are a bit lackluster, yet I see this as an even stronger indicator that Calvin & Hobbes was pure magic. The fact of the matter is, Bill Waterson is an asshole and I think he realized that the more he was the face of the comic, the more he would harm it.
Hrm, well with two people I know telling me it’s readable and one person I don’t telling me otherwise I suspect I’ll give it a shot. darw1n.net>avclub.com any day. Plus of course since stuff is hard to come by I suppose I’ll take bathroom wall-writings (bravo on that, I enjoyed it) if I can get them.
The parody comics were pretty great, by the way. I loved the one with the woman who was glad her husband died so she could get more sandwich.