It was 30 years ago this last New Years Eve that this wonderful strip came to an end:
As they say, time does fly. True to form, Watterson has never attempted any big comeback. By all accounts, he took the tremendous fortune he received from the strip and retired into a quiet life and pursing what projects interest him.
In its day, Calvin and Hobbes emerged as the comic strip that everyone was reading. From the blue collar to the Ivy League. It had come about in that golden age of comics in the 1980s. You still had the politically charged Doonesbury. And the grand dame of all comic strips, Peanuts, still dominated the top front page of the comics section. Also came Bloom County, an edgy and surreal comic strip that wasn't afraid to offend everyone. At the same time, you saw debut that strange unreal world of the Far Side. But among them all C&H skyrocketed to the top of the class.
The good news is that Watterson did what so few ever seem to know to do - he got out while on top. Oh, looking back you could see the cracks. You could tell he was losing his edge, becoming more preachy, and beginning to betray some of the rules he had laid out for the strip early on. But that was only toward the end. There was still enough good that when he finally closed up shop, he was still near the top of his game. And that's never bad.
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteWillie Mays famously said he would leave baseball when it wasn't fun anymore and of course ignored his own advice. Sometimes audience drags an author back (Conan Doyle, L. Frank Baum), and a few keep their good fortune to the end (Charles Shulz and perhaps Charles Dickens). When I thought of retirement from teaching, I had in mind a school secretary, liked if never really beloved, good if never really great, who passed up chance after chance to retire gracefully until she was in her mid-80s, pretty useless, cranky and isolated, and left not to cheers and good wishes so much as sighs of relief. I could have stayed a little longer (and kids and staff wanted me to), but while I still volunteer for yard duty and the occasional sub, I know I left in good time.